Kitsap Education

In the Bremerton School District Board race for Position #4, David Boynton has now pulled out ahead of incumbent Cynthia Galloway by 110 votes. Boynton has 50.32 percent of the vote to Galloway’s 49.07.  On Bainbridge, the school district bond gained more votes. It’s approval rate is now at 61.36 percent.

Yet another count is set for Monday at 5 p.m. There are 900 ballots left to count in the county, according to the Kitsap County Auditor’s Office.

After the ballot count on Thursday, challenger David Boynton increased his lead over incumbent Cynthia Galloway in the race for Position #4 on the Bremerton School Board. Boynton now has 50.2 percent of the vote to Galloway’s 49.2. That’s 81 votes.

 In other school news, the Bainbridge Island School District’s capital bond is now passing with 61.38  percent of the vote. Sounds like good news for BI school supporters who want to use $32 million of the $42 million bond to rebuild Wilkes Elementary.

Early returns in voting Tuesday show Bainbridge Island School District voters narrowly approving a $42 million construction bond while several school board races produced surprising results.
The Bainbridge bond was passing with 60.19 percent of the vote, just squeaking over the two-thirds  60 percent supermajority vote needed to pass a bond. An almost identical measure failed by the slimmest of margins, less than 1 percent or 19 votes, in May.
Replacing Wilkes Elementary will consume $32 million of the bond; the remaining $10 million will be spent for renovations at six schools, the transportation facility and the administration building.
“We are absolutely thrilled,” said school board President Mary Curtis. “We’re hanging on to our 60 percent margin and we all could not be more pleased.”
A second ballot count will be completed at 5 p.m. Wednesday.

In Bremerton, current school board President Cynthia Galloway and challenger David Boynton were in a dead heat for the Position #4 seat. Galloway held a slight lead over Boynton with 49.85 percent of the vote to his 49.57 percent
In the race for Position #1 on the board, Scott Rahm had a 17-point lead over Christianne Martin. Rahm received 58 percent while Martin had 41. The winner in that race will fill out the term of Pat Jones, who resigned from the board in May. The term runs through the end of 2011.Carolynn Perkins was up by 27 points over Ruben Garcia in the race for Position #5. The winner in that race will take the place of long-time board member DeWayne Boyd, who declared earlier this year that he would not run for a third time.

In South Kitsap, Director District 3 challenger Christopher Lemke held a significant lead – 22 points – over incumbent Naomi Polen. Lemke had gathered 60 percent of the vote while Polen had 38 percent. Polen has served on the SK board since spring 2008; Lemke served on the board previously from 2001 to 2005. Incumbent Kathryn Simpson, who was not challenged, received 97 percent of the vote. She represents District 4.

In Central Kitsap, incumbent Eric Greene had an early lead over challenger Richard Romero. Greene, who currently represents Director Area 5, received 60 percent of the vote while Romero had 38 percent. In the race for Director Area 2, Mark Gaines collected 62 percent of the vote to take the lead over Robert MacDermid, who had 37 percent. District Area 2 is currently represented by long-time board member Carl Johnson, who did not run. Incumbent Bruce Richards, who represents District Area 1, was unchallenged. He received 98 percent of the vote.

In North Mason’s District 5 race, with 56 percent of the vote, incumbent Mike Gaudio was defeating Danielle Skeeters, who has collected 43 percent of the vote.

In North Kitsap, District 1 incumbent Tom Anderson, who was not challenged, received 98 percent of the vote. NK newcomer Kathleen Dassel, the only candidate to file for Director District 3 to replace Melanie Mohler, received 97.8 percent of the vote. On Bainbridge incumbent Mary Curtis (District 5) received 98 percent of the vote; Mike Spence, who was running unopposed for District 2, also received 98 percent of the vote.

Bainbridge school supporters are trying to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars by the end of June to save the jobs of some teachers who were laid off. For background read this story and this story.

I talked with Vicky Marsing, executive director of the Bainbridge Schools Foundation, about the appearance of the fundraising. Does it seem inequitable when a community like Bainbridge raises private money to restore teachers when other, less-affluent communities probably can’t do it?

Marsing pointed out that at $9,055 (2007-08 numbers) Bainbridge’s per-pupil funding is among the lowest locally (Bremerton gets about $9,600, for example)and lower than much of the state. You can see per-pupil amounts on OSPI’s website here.

“In many ways we already have an inequity going on here,” said Marsing. “We get significantly less dollars from the state than our neighbors do.”

Marsing added that Washington needs to solve its education funding problem ” at a legislative level and we need to demand equality across the board from everybody’s perspective.”

Could it be closer?
In ballot counting Tuesday, the Bainbridge Island schools bond measure came within a hair’s breadth, that’s .27 percent, of reaching the 60 percent supermajority required for passage.
The “yes” total went up .07 percent to 59.73 from last week’s count when it stood at 59.66 percent. Now just 65 votes stand between the bond measure and success. Another count will be held Friday; a final count will be held on June 2. The election must be certified on June 3.
Kitsap County Elections Manager Dolores Gilmore said her office is still expecting ballots from overseas and military folks. In addition, 77 ballots from Bainbridge remain in the “challenged” category. These ballots aren’t quite right – in most cases a signature is missing or doesn’t match the signature the auditor’s office has on file.
After the first round of ballot counting on May 19, 101 Bainbridge ballots were challenged. Using the ballot number cross-referenced with the voter ID number, the auditor’s office came up with addresses for the voters who cast those ballots. The auditor’s office then sent out letters requesting that voters come in to fix the problems. As of Tuesday, 77 were left.
Gilmore said today staff in the office will begin contacting voters with challenged ballots via telephone. Bainbridge Island school leaders could not be reached for comment Tuesday night.

The Kitsap County Auditor’s Office will release another count today at 3 pm of the votes in the Bainbridge Island bond election. I’ll update it here and in a story after that.
As it stands, of the 9,502 votes, 59.66 were cast in favor of the measure while 40.43 were cast against. The bond needs a 60 percent supermajority to pass.

Gee, this isn’t usually the story that emerges from a school election involving measures in Bainbridge and North Mason. Yet here we are at 9:32 pm on election night and it looks as if North Mason voters have approved a measure to pay for some renovations at their schools while Bainbridge voters have not. Is it the economy, stupid?