The view from the Idea Center

Get out your red pens and tell me what you would cut if you were a school official in a cash-strapped district.

Would you eliminate busing for high school students? Maybe some of those students can carpool with their friends who drive. Would you cut freshman athletics? Students would still have three more years of football or softball ahead of them. Maybe you’d cut drama, reasoning that TikTok is a worthy substitute.

The Willoughby-Eastlake School District asked parents to engage in this kind of exercise during a public meeting last night to talk about what to do in the wake of another failed tax levy. Voters on Nov. 5 rejected a 4.99-mill, additional, continuous levy. It would have raised more than $8 million to cover state-level cuts that have put the district in the red. Voters previously turned it down in a special election in August.

At the meeting, parents told school officials they didn’t like the idea of a levy without an expiration date. They said it felt like handing the district a blank check.

District officials said they were trying to avoid coming to voters over and over again for a renewal, the way they’re already doing with the five emergency levies that currently keep Willoughby-Eastlake’s schools afloat.

“We’re going to be on the ballot 17 times in the next 20 years," a levy committee member said. "People don’t want to vote for the schools anymore, you just get to that point."

The levy goes back on the ballot in March. I’ll see you sooner than that. 

Talk to you Monday, bright and early on the radio,
Amy Eddings

Need to KnOH

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Your ideas

Reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic are the traditional essentials for a child's education, but which programs and services can go by the wayside when money is tight? Call us at  (216) 916-6476 or comment on  our Facebook page. We'll feature some of your thoughts and comments here in Noon(ish) and on Morning Edition.

Yesterday, we asked if you think voters would support an arts levy in Cuyahoga County, and there's some optimism out there but skepticism is at work as well. "I am not sure you could make an arts levy fly. I'd vote for it, but consumers of the arts are a minority in this Browns-loving community," Pete Zicari said in our Public Square Facebook group.