Why Should I Support the Bond & Levy?

1. The levy is critical to the operation of the district, and accounts for over 20% of the maintenance and operations budget. It is how we locally fund school busing, music, sports, counseling, maintenance, and many other vitally important programs.
2. Our children can have a future and make a life here. Port Angeles has a future. This is how we make that statement. Our parents and grandparents did the same for us, and now we have the opportunity to leave the same legacy.
3. Almost every child in our district eventually flows through the high school, and a quality high school impacts the entire community.
4. This benefits YOU, at any age, and in any circumstance. Schools are the number one reason businesses and medical providers cite for choosing a community, or for staying there. Regardless of whether you have kids currently in school, never did, or never will, a strong local economy benefits you, and the primary economic driver is the education system. Examples abound of employers and families choosing communities because of the school system. For retirees without children in the system, strong schools help recruit doctors, boost local business, provide beautiful local music, and create a positive feeling about kids and the community. The boost a new high school provides to a small town cannot be overstated.
5. Our district is worth supporting! While there is always more work to do, our district is doing great things and kids are succeeding. Our graduation rate is up nearly ten percentage points in recent years. Our test scores are at or above the state and national average in nearly all areas, and have improved again this year. We have a very strong vocational/technical program that is the envy of most other schools in the state. Our graduates attend college locally and internationally, and at schools everywhere in between. Our music programs are world-class. The list of great things our students and teachers are doing is long and exciting.
6. We will keep the best parts. Our Performing Arts Center will require some updating, but is still excellent and useful, and the community has been clear that it must be kept. Having a high school campus that makes these facilities attractive and which improves parking and access is a point of community pride, and will continue to encourage the frequent use and economic benefit they provide. Our gyms are very heavily used and routinely bring tournaments and events that draw visitors and revenue to the area. Our Performing Arts Center is loved by all and is a venue for local and world-class performances, as well as for our award-winning district music and performance programs.
7. We have a great community that is worth supporting! The plan is for the new school to be a community facility, with emphasis on spaces that can be used by the community as well as the students and staff.
8. Our schools must be flexible and suited to helping kids think and learn. America is based on innovation and collaboration and so is a great school. The physical layout is critical in that effort. Businesses and organizations struggle when the space and location are wrong, and kids are no different. Our current school is difficult to navigate and extremely spread-out. It puts kids in many separate buildings and does not have a way for different disciplines to regularly interact. Trade skills, music, math, science, social science, literature and the arts are still interwoven, and the more we can help kids in each discipline connect and collaborate, the more they will succeed.