The positive role of local schools on our community is so pervasive that too many neighbors may not pause to connect the irreplaceable influence to our lives.

Understanding the detrimental affect of schools to potentially become under-contributors — not attracting sustainable employers or employees, not engaging a vested community, not preserving real estate values to underpin city services (and personal investments), much less not turning out qualified graduates — underlies a knowledge often taken for granted on how to continue building the vibrant and valued community we choose to live in. Gaining an accurate understanding of how Washington public schools – both K-12 and higher education – are actually funded and why is not always easy, but with recent reforms is becoming easier, and well worth the effort.

The Lake Washington School District (LWSD) has an enviable record of publicly involving the community in budget decisions. The Lake Washington citizen volunteer School Board and district administration have also demonstrated state-wide leadership in fiscal transparency. As the sixth largest district in Washington, LWSD ranks No. 2 out of the largest 15 districts on dollars per pupil spent on teaching while also being second best at spending the least for central administration per student. There is an effort for improvement, and it can be accountably measured.

Local community leaders in every arena and industry, many of whom publicly endorse the school levies (check your organizations of choice for their outlook), join in asking the Redmond Reporter’s readers to renew an irreplaceable investment by us, each local voter, for our own futures by voting “Yes” to approve all three LWSD funding measures on the Feb. 9 ballot.

Byron Shutz, Jr., Redmond