Where does school levy money go?

To the Editor:

Isn’t it funny how, within the mass propaganda campaign to “Vote Yes for Our Kids,” so little is mentioned about how the taxes we are encouraged to regularly, every two years, levy upon ourselves are not predominantly spent on school maintenance and repairs?

Four years ago, the Dayton School District floated a (failed) 20-year, $19.9 million construction bond to fix a school they lamented was simply falling apart. In an April 5, 2014 Union Bulletin article by Rachel Alexander, superintendent Doug Johnson brought out, reluctantly I imagine, some interesting points:

Johnson “explained that maintenance and operations levies are used to fund a wide range of things that state funding doesn’t cover,” Alexander wrote.

“Among those are athletics and other extracurricular activities . . . He said about 20 percent of Dayton’s current maintenance and operations levy, or $225,000 per year, goes to regular maintenance.”

Really? 20 percent? One can’t help but wonder, if more than 20 percent of Maintenance and Operation Levy money had been regularly spent on school infrastructure and repair, would we need a Capital Levy for “Security, Health, and Efficiency Improvements”? (What odd, open-ended wording.)

In every “Maintenance and Operation Levy” I’ve ever been assaulted with, all I’ve heard about is that the money is earmarked to repair and update aging, ancient, unsupportable, distressingly awful infrastructure. Little is said about athletics and extracurricular activities. (By the way, after the 2017 state legislative session raised all our property taxes – seen your updated tax bill yet? – to “fully fund basic education for public schools,” the new name for M & O Levies was changed to “Enrichment Levies.”)

So my question is this: given that all I read about in school-friendly newspaper articles and editorials, half-page ads, and the laminated flyer sent to my home is about the ancient, aging boilers, what percentage of the amount demanded is earmarked, exclusively, toward replacement, upkeep, maintenance and repairs of the school’s physical infrastructure?

And what percent goes elsewhere? (“Security.” “Health.” “Efficiency.”) And specifically, what is that “elsewhere”?

Carolyn Henderson, Dayton