Editorial: R-I levy increase worth getting angry over

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No matter where exactly across the country we are, us folks in rural communities have a lot in common.

Take a walk down Main Street in any small town and things will seem a little more casual, whether it’s in the rolling hills of Idaho, the dry heat of New Mexico or in one of the small towns that dot our own Nodaway County landscape.

But even though the people are spaced a little farther apart than you might find in a city, we think we’re probably a little more closely connected to each other as a community.

And at the cultural center of just about any small town is its school.

Pride in our school districts says a lot about us, which is probably why it’s so important to rural communities. It says we care about our future by investing in our children. It says we care about our past through a shared sense of tradition. And it says we’re willing to come together and contribute to something we all value.

Or, at least that’s what we tell ourselves.

It was hard not to think about our shared community values while watching West Nodaway Superintendent Mitch Barnes give a sermon any Baptist minister would be proud to claim during a community forum held in Clearmont on Monday to discuss a proposed $1 tax levy increase.

When Barnes was elevated to superintendent in 2020, he didn’t hide that he was appalled at the financial state of the district, which had deficit-spent its way hundreds of thousands of dollars into the red.

He cut programs and he cut jobs — 14 the first year and another five this year.

The budget has been and continues to be in the black.

And he’s been shouting from the rooftops since his first day that no matter how many cuts he made, it would never be enough on its own to get the district to where it needs to be.

In its first go-round on the ballot in April 2021, the modest levy increase, which would bring West Nodaway from nearly the bottom to the middle of the pack in the region, failed with 54 percent of voters coming out against it.

The next time, in August, 53 percent turned it down.

But in that April election last year, only 413 voters in the district — 35 percent — cast a ballot on the issue one way or the other. In August, that figure was down to only 327 votes.

It’s against that backdrop on Monday that Dr. Barnes found himself getting texts and phone calls and emails about a presumably anti-levy flyer filled with lies and misinformation, and shortly after that, a teacher walked into his office to say that she’d love to continue working at West Nodaway, if only they had just a little bit more money to pay her or a community that made her feel like it values what she does.

“A good teacher,” Barnes said of her, now is off to get both somewhere else, joining two others who did the same over the past two weeks.

Maybe it was all those factors coming together at once that allowed Dr. Barnes to get a little angry about the situation his district finds itself in, angry enough to plead for a chance to rehab the ailing heart of a community and angry enough to advocate for the kids in his charge that seem to have fewer and fewer as time goes by.

The next decade is going to bring many much, much more difficult decisions to our rural school districts. Things won’t get easier from here.

But on April 5, the facts are clear: Vote yes to keep your district afloat, vote no or just don’t cast a ballot to sink it.

We like to say that we’re caring, compassionate people, that we want our kids to be even more successful than we are, and that we want to pitch in however we can to make our communities that much better.

We like to talk a big game about children. About pride. About community.

But it’s hard for those platitudes to have any meaning when nearly 800 members of the community don’t think the future of their school is worth weighing in on either way.

It’s hard to keep saying we care, that we’re compassionate, that we want our kids to be successful when the majority of those who do bother to cast a ballot use it to keep their school at the bottom of every list — along with the kids who go there.

And it’s hard to keep pretending that our actions don’t speak louder than our words.

No, we certainly can’t blame Dr. Barnes for getting angry.

As the stakes get higher and the margins get smaller, isn’t it about time someone did?