What is the Difference Between a School Levy and a Family and Education Levy?

There is so much talk of the financial situations at schools and colleges that a person cannot find out where there tax dollars are going. Silly me, I thought the Family and Education Levy was the same (or nearly the same) as a regular run of the mill School Levy. Mayor McGinn was backing the Family and Education Levy so I decided to ask him. Below is his explanation. If you can figure it out please feel free to list your comments on this website or send in a submission for possible publication.

Thank you for writing me about the Families and Education Levy and Seattle Public Schools administration. I want to clarify that this is a Levy for city managed services that support students, and not a school levy for the Seattle Public Schools. The City uses outcome based budgeting to get results for kids. This means we track how we spend our levy funds, to make sure they are meeting our outcomes, instead of being wasted on salaries.

As you know, I do not have jurisdiction over the school district administration. I appreciate your concern about Seattle Public Schools’ difficult financial situation.

Sincerely,

Mike McGinn
Mayor of Seattle

I think we need clarification on what exactly does city managed services do. How does it help the students? The money from this levy goes to the city not directly to the schools to pay their salaries. It must pay some city employee salaries to disburse these funds. He is trying to distance himself from the school district administration and their bloated salaries and how they skim off the major portion of levy money.

The school administration is run about as poorly as the State Welfare dept.  One small example is the unequal treatment kids get. At Garfield kids THAT WANT to take Spanish classes can’t because the classes are full but they were able to come up with a special Spanish class for Tony Wroten so he can cheat his way to play ball at the UW. His enabler Jim Valiere was fired for giving him and Valentino Coleman a “C” grade on his course he never took. Tony Wroten tweeted “we get a three person Spanish Class, #Niceeeee.” Wroten already showed he was trouble when he started at Garfield and had to hire a lawyer (I imagine taxpayers paid for that too) to prove he was eligible to go there. They are cutting Spanish classes, laying off teachers but can still have a special teacher brought in to help a “liar and a cheat” get into the UW. Wroten lied on his application so he should not be able to go to the UW at all, especially on a scholarship. Do you feel this is a good way to spend your tax dollars?

Where is our new Superintendent when we need her? Maybe she is ticked that she is only paid $224,000 where the old one that got fired was paid $294,000. For sure Levy money comes out of our pockets, not thin air like they want you to believe.