Tech Levy Fails

It’s been a long and interesting week. The big news is that our school’s technology levy did not pass - 1,094 to 747 - which for Oberlin is a substantial loss. Evidently a lot of people who said they were going to vote yes changed their minds in the booth. We could probably blame it on the electronic voting machines but more likely it was a combination of a lot of negative issues. Even a New York Times article about schools giving up their one-to-one laptop programs that appeared a couple days before the vote was a factor. I could go through the list but you’ll get a better idea of what we faced if you go to Community Diaries - a blog that was formed by a group who might have been opposed to the levy to discuss the campaign. Don’t know how effective it was as a lot of people stopped reading it after a while but it does highlight all the questions that came up. The campaign website that I worked on can be found at LEAP for Oberlin. The photo above shows a house painted encouraging viewers to vote No (Elizabeth you'll note the grammar). It is right next to the High School. That livened things up a bit. I had expected the vote to be close so the result is frustrating. We’ll need to reform and put a new issue on the November ballot. Otherwise our technology funding will disappear as of January 1st - a situation I would prefer not happening.