9/14/08

Dayton Daily News Editorial

A couple weeks ago, Dayton schools kicked off a 4.9-mill levy campaign with a big event featuring the mayor, city commissioners, county commissioners, business leaders, labor leaders and others professing support.

That is a nice change for the district from 2007, when school officials had a hard time getting even their natural allies on board for a 15.17-mill levy try. That levy ultimately lost in a crushing defeat that led to $30 million in cuts and 200 teachers being laid off.

So this time around there’s a sense of relief that the big community players are on board in support of a smaller levy. But if those leading the levy aren’t careful, they could be lulled into a false sense of security. And they’ve been pretty quiet.

Even a more reasonably sized levy will be a very tough sell given the city’s troubled economic climate. While the levy campaign in 2007 struggled to get the top dogs on board, it did have an organized drive going on at the street level. Levy leaders made a huge push to register parents, and board members and the superintendent were aggressively calling on community groups and knocking on doors to rally support.

It’s clear now that a 15.17-mill levy was so misguided that no amount of political push was going to get it passed.

This time, the campaign must guard against assuming it has an obviously better shot. On the surface, a levy a third of the previous levy’s size seems more palatable, and it’s tempting to count on a big turnout of sympathetic Democrats flocking to vote for Sen. Barack Obama to give the levy a boost.

But not everything has changed for the better since 2007. Even with a smaller levy and the possibly helpful political climate, selling a 4.9-mill tax increase while Dayton is battling some of its toughest economic times in decades will be a tall order.

If levy leaders are counting on news coverage and advertising to carry the day this fall, they are playing a risky game. With just eight weeks before a hotly fought presidential election in a swing county in a swing state, local issues threaten to be washed under by a flood of national advertising and attention on the top of the ticket.

There will be no substitute for the gritty groundwork of grassroots campaigning. Levy supporters need to mobilize their rank-and-file allies – parents, community groups, neighborhoods and churches – if they are going to persuade a majority of voters that the levy is needed to avoid even worse school district cuts.

Dayton voters need all the information they can get, and typically the word they trust most is what they hear from people they know.

So far, this ground game hasn’t been obvious in the way it was in 2007. If levy leaders are holding back for some reason, it’s past time to get the ball rolling.