The Garden City Telegram
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Getting out the word
Published 9/12/2008 in News : Education
By EMILY BEHLMANN
ebehlmann@gctelegram.com
With less than two months remaining before Garden City voters see a $97.5 million school bond issue on the ballot, proponents are gearing up for a campaign expected to flood the community with yard signs, table tents, brochures, presentations and more.
The campaign is two-fold, USD 457 Superintendent Rick Atha said. The school district will be disseminating factual, educational information about bond issue plans, while six community sub-committees are focusing on promotional "Vote yes" efforts, he said.
Educational efforts
The factual information is this: The bond issue, on the Nov. 4 ballot, would fund a new, 2,000-student high school to be built north of Mary Street and east of Campus Drive; renovations at the current high school to turn it into a middle school; renovations at Abe Hubert Middle School to turn it into an elementary school; and renovations at Garfield Elementary School to make it into a district-wide early childhood center.
That information -- plus some building diagrams, further details on cost and description of concerns at current facilities -- is included in a brochure available at schools, businesses and bond issue informational sessions, according to Roy Cessna, public information coordinator for the district. The school district also is translating the brochure into Spanish, Atha said.
Similar brochures will be distributed in city residents' utility bills, following a city commission decision this week to allow the inserts.
The district also is using display boards with the same information to get out the details of the bond issue, Cessna said. There will be a display board in each school in the district, and in many banks and other businesses that have agreed to the displays, he said.
An additional USD 457 source of information is a "Bond Issue" section of the school district Web site, www.gckschools.com, where Cessna said voters can find "everything and anything you'd want to know about the long-range facility plan."
Atha and other district staff also intend to get out information by giving presentations to community organizations and civic groups. That effort began this week with a presentation to the Pheasant Valley Homeowners' Association and to the Garden City Community College Board of Trustees.
Other school staff are getting in on the effort, too, by providing information to parents at their individual schools, Atha said. That information will be tailored toward the audience, letting elementary parents know, for instance, what the plan means for them.
At a bond issue committee meeting, John Fuller of the architectural firm DLR Group, Overland Park, said a focus on parents is essential for a successful bond issue, adding, "If we don't get 70 percent (of parents) to show up and vote, we're wasting our time."
The school district has a $10,000 budget for the educational materials, coming out of the portion of the USD 457 budget designated for the superintendent's office, Atha said.
Promotional push
The promotional effort is centered on a tentative theme "Vote 'Yes' Nov. 4 for Our Kids, Our Schools, Our Future."
That was the slogan the community relations sub-committee planned Thursday night to place on yard signs, table tents and brochures the group expects will blanket the town in the final weeks before Election Day.
They'll get their budget for those items from the fundraising arm of the campaign, the ways and means sub-committee, Cessna said. USD 457 Financial Officer Kathleen Whitley, the staff liaison to that sub-committee, said the group is still being formed, so there were no details yet on the fundraising efforts.
Cessna said the ways and means committee also will provide budgets for four other sub-committees: a voter registration group, a speakers' bureau that will lead promotional talks for various groups and write letters to the editor, an information central committee that will take out media ads, and a "Count Me In" group that will target "yes" voters and make sure they get to the polls.
Previous campaigns
Bond issue proponents say they're hoping this election goes better than USD 457's previous efforts to address high school overcrowding with building projects. A $30 million bond issue in 1998 and a $33 million bond issue in 2000 both failed. Both would have funded a second high school in Garden City.
According to Telegram archives, several citizen sub-committees worked on aspects of each campaign, with efforts like a voter registration drive, presentations for civic groups, letters to the editor and promotional items like buttons.
Garden City resident Irv Stephens, co-chairman of the 2000 bond campaign committee, said he didn't have any advice for this year's campaign, as it's hard to think of anything the 2000 group could have done differently that would have made that bond issue successful.
"I thought we worked hard enough," he said.
He said he thinks part of the problem was that a lot of people didn't like the idea of having two high schools in Garden City, but he wasn't sure that the newly proposed one-high-school plan would fare any better.
"I'm not sure if anything will pass right now, but I hope it does," he said.
Board member John Scheopner, who led the ways and means committee in 2000, is more hopeful.
He said he thinks the biggest reason the bond issue failed is because despite being well-organized, proponents were unsuccessful in getting parents out to vote. In all, 8,369 people participated in that election, with 41.6 percent voting "yes" and 58.4 percent voting "no."
"The committees were knowledgeable," Scheopner said. "We made some good efforts. We stood in front of the schools and passed out information, but somehow we didn't get them motivated to get to the polls."
Solving that problem, though, might not take much work on the committee's part, since voters will turn out anyway for the presidential election between Barack Obama and John McCain, he said.
Although the 2000 bond issue also coincided with a presidential election -- between George W. Bush and Al Gore -- Scheopner said he thinks there is more interest in this year's election, and that more young people will be drawn to the polls.
A record 6.5 million citizens under age 30 participated in this year's presidential primaries and caucuses, according to data compiled by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, with the youth turnout rate rising from 9 percent in 2000 to 17 percent in 2008.
"I think we'll see record turnout (in the general election), and I think that will be a good thing for the bond issue," Scheopner said.
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