Measure X fails

I read with interest the proposal for the Richmond Elementary School District to sell up to $1.4 million in general obligation bonds for much-needed construction, reconstruction, rehabilitation, replacement, furnishing and equipping of the school facilities; provided the District’s voters approve the measure by at least 55 percent.  Five residents in the district signed the Argument in Favor of letter; but no argument against Measure X was submitted.  I taught at Richmond School for three years in the early 1990s, and then for 23 years at Diamond View Middle School; and I am familiar with two prior voter-approved school bond measures for these respective districts.

Back in the day at Richmond School teachers took their students outside for PE activities, and if it was stormy outside it was another game of “Head’s up, Seven-up!” in the classroom.

In 1996 Richmond School proposed Measure A for a $650,000 bond issue to build a sorely-needed multi-purpose building (the present-day gym).  The threshold was a higher 2/3rds majority for the District’s voters, and it passed with 69 percent approval.  So that leaves me wondering why our voters in favor of Measure X tallied only 44 percent? Could the argument be that it’s not fair that the inter-district students, whose tax-paying parents live outside the Richmond School District, are not sharing in the cost?

But those parents who live in the Susanville School District and whose children attend Richmond School are already paying for Measure S (a $9 million bond for the remodel at DV School, and other projects) that passed with a whopping 74 percent in 2008.

It’s also interesting to note that the percentage of economically disadvantaged students in the Susanville School District hovers over 70 percent, while the corresponding number in the Richmond School District is at only 22 percent.

I’d like someone in my neighborhood to step up and explain why the majority of voters here didn’t support Measure X, and thus Richmond Elementary School.  As a lady politician once said, “It takes a village.”

Phil Finkel, Richmond Elementary School District resident, Susanville