Community Relations:  2013 Bloomington Schools Referendum

The Challenge:  In 2013, Bloomington Schools proposed two levies to our community.  The first was a $2-million/year safety and security levy and the second was a $4-million/year technology levy.  The technology levy replaced our existing $3-million/year technology levy that had been approved in 2007.

My Involvement:  Our then CE Director, Tom Holton, invited me to be part of the YES4BPS Referendum Committee in the summer of 2013.  We held meetings in a church from 6:15am until 7:15am.  This created a clear distinction between our committee work and our work for the District.  I wasn't invited to fill any particular role--just to help as I could.  My contribution took two forms:  Recruiting a volunteer coordinator and speaking to adult basic ed students about the referendum.

The Volunteer Sub-Committee needed a co-chair.  I recruited Mary Jo Bayliss, our Metro South ABE volunteer coordinator.  Mary Jo had all of the organizational skills and people skills that our committee was in need of.  Mary Jo recruited, trained, and coordinated our volunteers for the referendum.

My other tasks was to speak with as many adult basic education students as possible.  I had previously taught classes on US elections to our students, so this was a natural task for me.  I spoke to each of our classes, close to 800 students in all.  I could not advocate for or against the referendum, but did provide information about referendums in general, our specific referendum, and elections and voting.  These discussions were very well-received by our students.

Results:  The referendum passed by a vote of 6,975 to 6,558, a margin of only 417 votes.  Our community has over 80,000 residents.  The margin was uncomfortably small.

Take-Away:  I learned a great deal from this experience.  I believe Community Education and the involvement of our CE staff played a significant part in passing our referendum.

For me personally, this was an eye-opening event.  I began to understand how CE connects with constituents who don't traditionally have a connection to our K-12 schools.  We reach parts of the community that may skew towards being skeptical of a referendum.  We create powerful relationship across spectrum of our community.

Participating in the YES4BPS Referendum Committee, along with other CE staffers, created stronger relationships between CE and other parts of our school district.  It greatly furthered the work that we had been doing to better integrate CE with the rest of the district.  We formed better relationships with other departments, principals, board members, and people in the community.  This helped us to spread our message about the value of the programs we offer.