Editorial

Schools should focus on levy

The Sisters School District desperately needs the money from a four-year local option levy (about $500,000 in each of the first two years, half that in the next two) to make up for cuts in staff and programs, to reduce class sizes and to pay for new textbooks and for long-deferred and sorely needed building maintenance.

If predictions of a statewide $780 million funding gap come true in the next biennium, local option money may be all that keeps Sisters' schools afloat.

The school board should ask voters to approve a local option levy in the November election.

The district apparently will need a new middle school in the next few years as the community grows and the aged current school deteriorates. Building a new high school and converting the current one to a middle school makes sense over the long haul.

But the board may be overreaching by considering a $26 million bond to build a new school complex complete with indoor swimming pool, indoor tennis courts, ball fields and a performing arts center.

Those amenities are worthwhile, but they do cost money -- money that many people whom the schools serve can't readily spare.

Judging from the comments we have heard from local citizens, votes gained by offering those amenities would be canceled out or outweighed by votes against from people who can't afford them or who don't think they should be asked to pay for them.

And many supportive citizens fear that a backlash against an overly ambitious bond request could take down the local option levy.

It is difficult to gauge that risk, but it is a serious one. The district cannot afford to sacrifice the local option levy to a dream of an ideal campus. J.C.

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Vote for Gore...and get McCain

Don't like your choice of presidential candidates this November? With a little patience, you could get to vote for John McCain.

If moderate voters swing toward Al Gore this November, the Republicans will have no choice but to anoint McCain as their candidate in 2004. McCain has taken some pains to merge back into the Republican fold since the dog fight with W. Bush last spring.

Al Gore is less dangerous to the country than the somewhat dim George W., one of those men born on third base who thinks he hit a triple. Worse, if Bush is elected, he will again be the Republican candidate in four years and there is no one on the Democratic side with very much to say.

So, moderates: Let's swallow our distaste for Alpha Gore and elect him president. Then, in four years, if Gore does as little as we expect, we can switch our votes to John McCain, who will hopefully have Colin Powell as a running mate and actually be able to give us campaign finance reform. E.D.