School District Election Issues

 Read a couple of posts wherein a parent worried about the impact on kids after pending/possible school district cutbacks…someone suggested that things will be ok because mom and dad are the primary people in kids’ lives….certainly so, but there’s much more to the story….

Unfortunately, dad and mom can’t always provide the opportunities that a school system can (nor other forms of goverment, for that matter)…not without paying much more for them personally, in any case.  We had a long discussion with our son last night, now in OSU’s MBA program and a longstanding cancer survivor; we were talking about the “me” perspective vs. the “we” perspective when it comes to businesses and a whole lot of other things in life. As a former Hilliard school board member as well as a volunteer, it’s been my experience that the folks on the board and in the administration have long endeavored to be on the “we” side of the spectrum. If that were not so, the district would not have the premium standing it has earned.

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School District Election Issues and Property Values

I’ve written about this previously on our www.ikarensell.com web site and elsewhere, and want to disclose that I am a former member of the Hilliard City School District Board of Education.  We continue to market and sell real estate in the greater central Ohio area, certainly including Hilliard, as well as southeast Ohio’s “hills” vacation real estate, and as a result now follow a great many school districts.  This morning’s election results, which showed Hilliard’s levy issue losing by a handful of votes, along with a rundown of vote totals for board candidates, caused me to do a bit more searching.

The levy opposition posed by “For Hilliard Kids” and that group’s endorsed candidate offers a web site with a blog where I found a thread covering school issues and property values.  I fully acknowledge that I disagree with the thoughts there that state one does not affect the other…and for the record posted the following, which summarizes those thoughts I’ve posted before:

“I’d suggest reviewing the histories of property sales and values in central OH surburban districts that have had repeated difficulty in passing school issues…specifically, ask appraisers what the impacts might have been on property values; they’re bottom-line folks, ultimately reporting to even more bottom-line underwriters. And perhaps Hilliard’s major growth spurt (and subsequent ongoing property value increases, at rational rates) had some connection to voters repeatedly approving school issues. Doug Parker, former HCSD member”

As for candidate and vote totals, the local TV media web sites have done a nice job of presenting information online, including http://www2.ohiovotes2011.com/election_results/?page=Refresh