Inaccurate headlines, and the NCHS Swimming Pool

As anyone who occasionally reads this blog already knows, a bond issue that would have funded a new pool at NCHS failed by 400 votes earlier this year, even though other tax issues passed in the general election.  Hindsight is always 20/20, but it seems pretty clear that if the pool bond issue had been in the general election, it would have passed.  People just don't get out for special elections unless motivated, and the bond issue election came up at a time when Tea Party elements in the state appeared to be ascendant, but prior to their dramatic decline in the general election.  It seems reasonable to deduce that the actual population would have supported the bond issue.

Now we have to live with the consequences of that, which for now seemingly means no pool at NCHS in spite of having a massive new structure under construction which could house it.  The paper this morning, in one of its series of end of the year articles, briefly gave me hope as it featured a photograph of the inside of the now demolished pool in an article that stated early on that the district was saving money to pay for what the bond would have paid for.

That's accurate to a small extent, but that small extent concerns equipment for the new facility focusing on trades and sciences the district is building, not for the pools.  That is sort of, badly, cleared up late in the article, but not enough, I'm quite sure, to cure the confusion that the article creates.  The Tribune gets a D here on this one.

But still, why not get the pool built?  Yes, the money isn't there, but the huge structure is, and without trying to do something now, it'll never happen. We have a newly elected school board, and they should address this.  The last board backed the pools, and this one would seem to.  Let's try to get it built somehow.

NCHS seeks $350,000 for John F. Welsh auditorium

NCHS seeks $350,000 for John F. Welsh auditorium

I realize it isn't in any way related to the failed effort to get a pool, but I guess I don't want to let that one go.  Here there's a campaign to improve the auditorium, and the more power to them, but what about the pool?

Of course, they're only seeking $350,000 here, not an unreasonable amount, but if a private drive for the auditorium seems wise, why not one for the pool, while there's still space to put it in?

Lex Anteinternet: Why did the bond issue fail?

Yesterday the County's voters approved both the Optional One Cent Tax and the Lodging Tax, leading me to wonder once again about the topic raised here:

Lex Anteinternet: Why did the bond issue fail?: I can't ever recall a school bond issue failing here before, like the one that did yesterday, and it was only last year that the voters...

I really wonder, as the forces that seemed lined up against the School Bond also seemed lined up against the One Cent Tax.

Perhaps they were, and they shot their bolt with the Bond.  Of note, at the time of the Bond election local Tea Party elements were particularly active and seemed particularly strong, but in the later Primary and General elections, they really fell flat.

More probably, however, the strategy of holding a separate bond election was a bad one. The City wanted the District to do it, as they feared that if the Bond election was unpopular it would take the One Cent down with it, but what more likely probably occurred is that the elements opposed to any taxation or in the Tea Party camp in general were motivated to go tot he special bond election, which most people aren't  It didn't fail by much.

General elections here, however, get good turnout.  Chances are, I suspect, that if the Bond had been in the General election, it would have passed.

Why did the bond issue fail?

I can't ever recall a school bond issue failing here before, like the one that did yesterday, and it was only last year that the voters approved a Casper College bond.  So what happened?  A lot of bond supporters are asking that now.

 

Natrona County High School.

It's always hard to answer a question like that, of course, but what I'm hearing right now from various people is the following:

1.  The School Board chairman noted that County Assessor's tax notice came out just a couple of days prior to the election, and it noted what the additional tax would be for each recipient.  It amounted to $22.00 per $100,000.  He feels the bond was winning up until that point.

$22.00/100,000 doesn't seem like a lot for what we were receiving, but to some people it is viewed as such.  I heard one well off person complaining that we were still paying on the college bond, even though that person is a millionaire.  So people can react to a think like that.

2.  Based on comments that appear where the public can comment, there's a fair degree of Tea Party thought in the county right now, and as part of that there seems to be a general opposition to taxes and even pretty much to any governmental entity, school boards included.  That surprises me for this county, and perhaps its not as many as it appears, but there are clearly some folks who viewed this in that fashion.  One of the main opponents of the bond posted information to a page that represents itself as a Tea Party organ, so there was at least a little of that.

Tied into that, Tea Party folks are still very fired up by the events surrounding Cindy Hill, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction.  Hill has been a lightening rod of one kind or another. She generally came out of the Tea Party element of the GOP and has very distinct views.  Her administration of the department was highly controversial which lead to a legislative effort that limited her powers, although most in favor of the act that did that noting that the department was long overdue for reform.  She subsequently sued and the Wyoming Supreme Court overturned the law that limited her authority. All of this has lead her supporters to actually support censure of certain legislators and the Governor, although the action against the Governor recently failed.  Hill is running for Governor.

That wouldn't seem to have any relationship to the bond, and in real terms it does not, but some of her supporters do not quite see it that way for some reason. They also generally oppose Common Core, although quite a few people outside their ranks also do, which also doesn't have any direct connection but which some of them see as linked.

Added in even further, a legislative committee, late term, went in and actually modified the state science standards to eliminate curriculum dealing with global warming, on the basis that they apparently thought it to be propaganda against the state's largest industry. School boards and the department of education have been going back and looking at what they can do in regards to teaching the science. This also has nothing to do with the bond, but it puts education topics in the news at a bad time.

3.  Some folks oppose taxes in general.  One fellow I know just will not vote for a tax, that's his policy.  Additionally, the City of Casper has been in the news recently due to accusations that its .01 optional tax hasn't been used wisely, which makes people mad about taxes in general.

A troubling aspect of this is that if we tend to always oppose taxes, eventually it seems to be the case that the local option to tax or not slowly evaporates.  This happened in regard to the courthouse here, which failed in bond elections twice. Eventually the state undertook the cost. That made other counties upset, but the bigger story there is that mineral revenues are declining at the same time that the state is funding more and local entities less, which means that sooner or later the taxes will be there, but the local say may well be done.

 

NCHS at night.

4. Some folks strongly opposed a single item in the bond.

Everyone seemed to support safety upgrades, although obviously not enough to vote for the bond in slightly over half of the instances noted.  But in post voting comments, it's interesting to note that some people were strongly opposed to the CAPS facility while supporting the pools, and vice versa.

I think there was a fair degree of misunderstanding in both instances.  CAPS is being built. That's just the way it is, so voting against the bond is a protest vote at best.  Folks who voted against CAPS while favoring the pools torpedoed the pools, but are getting CAPS anyhow.

Having said that, the one thing in this that I somewhat understand is people who were opposed to the CAPS facility and resented it.  This came about because of a worthwhile concern of a different sitting school board which rightly noted that technical training needed to be upgraded at the schools, and that there was inadequate school space.  The thought at that time was that a new high school should be added.

That thought was right.  The county has four high schools, with one being a small alternative education school with very little in the way of extra facilities.  One is in Midwest, a town on the edge of the county, that serves every grade in that town.  The two big schools are NCHS and KWHS.  They're definitely overburdened in handling as many students as they do.  A third school would have made real sense.

Instead, the then sitting board determined not to do that, and for a really aggravating reason.  Adding a new school would have dropped the county's high school athletics down a class.  That is, Natrona County's kids would have been competing in some lower class, 3A I think.

Well, who cares?

It would have only lasted for a couple of years, but apparently that's a big deal to people for some reason.  Indeed, it's such a big deal that Campbell County has for years operated under the fiction that it has one high school with two "campuses", which is of course absurd.  But that way it has unified teams that can compete in 4A.  I don't really care about that, but it is aggravating to realize that KWHS and NCHS were deprived of technical facilities so that we could stay 4A.

So, following Campbell County's lead in a fashion, we decided to have one high grade technical facility, CAPS, and to build a new building for Roosevelt, the alternative school.  We are doing that, but that did built a lot of resentment with people including, as I've learned as we proceeded along on this, a lot of teachers.  I'm sure a majority of teachers voted for the bond, but not all of them did, and CAPS is largely the reason why.

The irony, as noted, is that we're getting CAPS no matter what.  It's not the way I'd have gone about it, but it's what's occurring, so fully equipping it is a must.

And it'll apparently happen as the one thing that the district has already indicated is that it will start saving money over time to equip it.  So, the folks who voted against CAPS didn't really achieve their goal, but they did accidentally help keep NC from having a pool. That appears to be a permanent done deal.

Opposition to the pool I don't understand.  It seems its regarded as "nice" but an extravagance, by quite a few people.  By the same token, there's never been any opposition to keeping the NC football field and stadium, which were once slated to be taken out.  That sparked a real protest movement.  A big football field is nice, but it serves the same purpose as a pool.  And in this county, swimming instruction is required.  Now that is going to be difficult to achieve.

 

NCHS football player at KW stadium, Oil Bowl 1980.  Soon thereafter it was proposed that the NC Stadium be torn down.

For years and years I always said "I don't have anything against football" when topics like this came up, but I'm afraid that's slowly changing for me, and that's all the more reason I find this aggravating.  Now, I do agree a field is necessary, but not just for football. But I do continue to be amazed by the way that football so dominates the outside discussion of high school athletics.  I don't oppose the game, but I've gotten to where I do now worry about the head injury impacts that are becoming increasingly associated with the game.  I work on too many matters where people have sustained a traumatic brain injury not to take that very seriously.  It worries me that we seemingly sort of ignore that at this level, with potential long term devastating effect. At some point, and probably some point soon, it'll be addressed, I'm sure.  I note that there's no longer high school boxing like their was when I was in high school, which was also thought perfectly harmless at the time.  Football won't disappear, I'm sure, but it's probable that the game and equipment will be modified.

 

C Club Fights at NCHS, 1980.

I do wish, however, that people who find a pool extravagant would appreciate that it teaches something that's life saving at best and a lifetime activity always.  Now that's impaired and the need for the pool was every bit as great as the need for a field.

Today In Wyoming's History: Natrona County School District No. 1 Bond Issue Fa...

Today In Wyoming's History: Natrona County School District No. 1 Bond Issue Fa...: The bond issue floated by NCSD No. 1, which would have sought a $33M bond for use in upgrading the safety features of existing schools, pro...

The NCSD Bond Issue

The bond issue goes to the voters tomorrow, May 6.  Please vote yes, if you are a Natrona County, Wyoming voter.

Prior threads on the topic on this blog can be found here.

A yes vote will allow the district to replace the NCHS pool which is coming down in weeks, replace the old Aluminum pool in Midwest, repair the pool at KWHS, install safety features in existing schools, and buy scientific and technical equipment for the new CAPs facility that is presently under construction.

The investement of the public in eras past

Continuing on just a bit, on bond related topics, I can't help but note that the high school I went to, which is now seeing large scale renovation, was built in 1923. The pool was built in 1926, I think.  The football stadium, which was subject to a proposal to be abandoned at one time, but which a public movement saved, dates back to 23.

When I look around Casper at public buildings, I can find a few old ones that are really something.  NCHS, the Federal Courthouse, the old County Courthouse, and so on. Some were built with local money, some with Federal money, but at any rate, when they are examined, it is clear that they were built for the ages.

Some public facilities here are like  that too.  City swimming pools, tennis courts, parks, etc., were all built with local money.

I note this, as I really wonder about the current bond opposition.  I understand that people do not want additional property taxes, but these projects are not unwise.  Prior generates here were very obviously willing to invest in something that was calculated to last well after they were gone.  Indeed, looking at some of these buildings, such as NCHS, it's very obvious that they were consciously built with the knowledge that most of the beneficiaries of the bond issues that built them would be born after the generation that paid for them was dead.  Now people don't seem to think quite that way.  Perhaps we should.

I am also surprised by the ongoing "times are tough" talk here.  No, they are not.  If people are having tough times here now, they better be thinking hard about that, as for this state, these are really good economic times.  Indeed, historically, with the type of economy we have here, these are really good times.  If individuals who have long residence here are having tough times, what that means is that this economic model, which seems to be the one we prefer, isn't working. That should lead us to support a broader educational model, not a more narrow one.

Finally, it's distressing the way that education has become a political football for other philosophical and political theories.  There is a lot of rhetoric floating around about "local control", "Common Core" and the like.  At the heart of it, people who are dedicated in their opposition to government beyond a minimalist government are of the view that everything should be local in control.  I'm not intending to debate that in any fashion, and a person can spend a lot of time exploring that, but what I'd note here is that none of this has anything to do with the bond.  Ironically, the bond actually restores local control.   Prior to 1970, all school funding in Wyoming was through bonds.  100%.  Now, what we have left is those items which the state does not fund, but which may still be necessary as a practical matter.  Ironically, therefore, those who oppose the bond on the basis that they support local control actually propose to surrender as much control as possible to the state, as they'd essentially have all funding be from the state.

Education and the real, technological, world.

Fairly recently I wrote an item here about romanticizing the past.  Fairly recently, I received some well deserved critical analysis on one of the comments I made there, from a reader, but the comments themselves basically supported the overall thesis of the thread, which was that romanticizing the past  has its dangers.

 

Oil Bowl Rally, 1980, at Natrona County High School.

It may be somewhat okay to romanticize the past, as long as we are cognizant of the realities of what we're doing. And to admire an era in the past, or something about it, is not wrong.  We shouldn't live in the past of course.  But even worse than living in the past, is to believe that the past really is the present.

I bring this up in the context, perhaps surprisingly, of the bond issue here in Natrona County.  The other day I read a well meaning letter to the editor  I set that letter out, in part, here:
.

The school bond issue is ridiculous! They designed more than they had funds available assuming approval of more tax money to complete things. Swimming pools are nice but not needed. Times are tough: We don’t need these now. Maybe later.

Recent letters state the Wyoming State Board of Education’s job is to “approve academic standards.” In my opinion they have failed so far. Graduation rates, low test scores for reading and math and high school graduates barely able to read are proof. Despite creating the Department of Education, more money, new standards, etc., we are failing to educate. Forget about Common Core Curriculum or Next Generation Science Standards from a centralized government.

Here’s a thought: Let’s go back to mastering mathematics, (good enough to put man on the moon), reading, science (earth, human, biology facts), government (local, state and U.S.), finance like counting back change and balancing a checkbook) and writing and penmanship. Today’s kids would be in great shape if they were educated the way we were back before any Department of Education or National Education Association. We spent a lot less money. We don’t need the government or “education experts” telling us how to teach our kids. It is our responsibility to get them educated, not the school districts, state board or federal government.

The first comment I'd make here is the "times are tough" comment.  I hear this a lot, but here, they are not.  The entire region is booming due to oil plays. That should be self evident just looking around. To the extent that times are tough here, it's for those moving in who can't afford a place to live. That is pretty common, but the reason that's occurred is that property values have leaped, due to the boom.  Those folks, and they do have a tough situation, aren't the ones whose tax dollars would go to pay for the bond.

In actuality, the state is enjoying good times.  It's times like this in which we should build, and we always claim that we've learned from the last boom/bust cycle and that when times are good, we're going to expand our infrastructure, broaden our base, etc.  The school bond actually seeks to do just that.

But it's actually the following comments that cause me to make this post, as they're so common, and sadly, so off the mark.  We don't live in this world.

Here’s a thought: Let’s go back to mastering mathematics, (good enough to put man on the moon), reading, science (earth, human, biology facts), government (local, state and U.S.), finance like counting back change and balancing a checkbook) and writing and penmanship. Today’s kids would be in great shape if they were educated the way we were back before any Department of Education or National Education Association. We spent a lot less money. We don’t need the government or “education experts” telling us how to teach our kids. It is our responsibility to get them educated, not the school districts, state board or federal government.

"Back to Basics" has been an educational movement for at least 30 years.  Perhaps, although probably not, 30 years ago it made some sense. But that world of 30 years ago has died.  This no longer reflects reality at all.  It's not that these topics are bad, they're not, its just that not only do the schools teach them (except for penmanship, which has passed by the wayside) but they're doing well with them, and have a lot of additional material to teach.  In short, not only do the schools do much better with the basic topics than they were here 30 years ago, they are tasked with a monumental task of educating children for the world we live in today.

I graduated from NCHS in 1981. The first thing that I'll note about that is that, in spite of what people may sometimes romantically recall, the education being offered in the school now is far and away superior to what it was then.

This isn't to say our education was bad. Far from it.  It was pretty good.  Some of the critics of our local district later found that when we graduated we fared pretty well compared to the graduates of public schools elsewhere.  But, having said that, what students are taught presently, and how they are presently taught, has enormously improved.  The number of credits required to graduate has gone up and up and year after year, and the quality of that learning has as well.

And the world that we graduated into in 1981 just isn't the same as the one that exists now.

In 1981, when I graduated, with an oil boom going on, locals could enter a work world in which everything was mechanical.  Most boys messed with cars at the time in a "shade tree mechanic" sense.  When I graduated in1981 I owned a 1974 Ford F100, a vehicle which was only seven years old at the time, and which was purely mechanical.  It didn't last long after that, as it had over 140,000 miles on it, a tremendous number of miles for the time.  I could, however, actually work on it.  We presently have a 1997 Dodge D1500, a roughly equivalent truck, for use by the teenagers and around town here.  It's computerized and there are aspects of it that only a trained technician can work on.

This is equally true of everything else in that 1981 world.  All shop equipment was mechanical.  A drilling rig I worked on while in college was purely mechanical. The logging equipment used on that rig was electric and radioactive, with the data recorded in analog fashion.  When I went to basic training the howitzers we trained on were adjusted manually and hydraulically.  If we direct fired, which we only occasionally did, we used the guns telescopic sight.  When I switched to fire support I used a Brunton compass, binoculars, and a map to spot artillery.  I used the Brunton compass again while a geology student at the University of Wyoming, where I also learned how to make maps using a theodolite and plain table, instruments so old that George Washington would have recognized them from his surveying days.

All of this is now a think of the past. While I do feel that the past is much more with us than we imagine, it is folly to pretend that a graduating student today can get by with basic skills in a world in which absolutely nothing remains basic.  Reading, writing, and arithmetic, in their basic forms, are not going to suffice in this world.  A person needs to know how to apply them, or how they can be applied.  Ideally they'll have some experience in applying them.  And, beyond that, hopefully they will have received a solid foundation in history, science and a foreign language.

I should note that I also wrote a letter to the editor, although because of my late submission and my crowding the word length restriction, I'm not sure if it will be published.  It reads as follows.

As a lifelong Natrona County resident familiar with industry and the economics of our communities I’ve often heard that industry and commerce is the lifeblood of our community and that we should do what we can in order to provide an entry way for graduating students into local careers. I’ve also heard from those in business that they wished there was a greater pool of well-trained residents who were ready to enter the work place.  Natrona County School District No. 1’s Center for Advanced and Professional Studies (CAP) is designed to address those needs.

The CAP will provide high school students with a facility that will offer them training in a variety of fields relevant to our community.  Courses in business, agriculture & natural Resources, architecture, construction, and manufacturing & engineering, will be offered, giving those who take them a jump on a later college career or the ability to go directly into work.  For those planning to go directly to work, having these courses increases their chances of finding a good paying job in their immediate future.  For those going to college, exposure to these fields when they are still forming their plans offers them a big advantage later.  For those of us in the community, having this facility available to students increases the chances that our local community will benefit from a well-trained group of motivated young people, something we always claim we desire, and which employers clearly want.

The pending bond will pay for equipment at the CAP facility it will otherwise not be able to obtain.  Having modern equipment available to students is critical in this era in which nearly every industrial, technical and scientific job is now high tech compared to even a decade ago.

This provides another reason to support the bond, and to demonstrate that what we’ve claimed to be our views for many years really are.  In addition to building and repairing the critical swimming pools and upgrading safety facilities in existing schools this provides an ample reason to support the bond.  Please vote yes on May 6.

This touches upon the same topics, but here I'll add one more.  Here in this county, for as long as I have remembered, residents have looked toward the oil and gas industry for employment, while at the same time arguing that we need to broaden our economic base.  But in reality, we're not doing a good job of training people who want to enter these industries to do so at the entry level.  Here too we seem to look towards a romantic past that just no longer exists.  If we're really serious about this we need to adjust accordingly.  Of course, perhaps we really aren't that serious, or perhaps we just don't care to pay for our aspirations, no matter how minor the costs, either.

Young people have been the greatest export of rural areas for some time.  Generally, rural areas do a pretty good job of educating people really, and I think our district is no exception.  But then we find that we ship them off elsewhere to finish their education.  I can't say that these measures will stop this, but I am sure that for those who look back to some time when they imagine a more rigorous basic education, they look back to a world that never existed and which will not be coming back.

Postscript

A thought occurred to me related to my point yesterday on this particular topic.

Regarding the thought that a basic education ought to suffice for the modern high school graduate, the computer system present in a current model automobile is more advanced, and more complicated, than the one that was in the B-52 Stratofortress at the time it was introduced in 1955.

The B-52 is still around, but at no point in its history did they allow people simply to go to work on one without training.  Those who think a basic education suffices in today's world just aren't being realistic, when everything out there is now more complicated than this.

On a related topic, the writer above noted, one of the items was " finance like counting back change and balancing a checkbook".  Again, who actually does that?  It's rapidly becoming the case where everything is done electronically.  Yes, checkbooks still exist, but a lot of people don't use them.

And, based upon the math they're now teaching, the schools have this covered.  Actually, the amount of math expected out of a graduate now, is far more than it was in 1981, when I graduated.

The NCHS Pool

The NCHS swimming pool in an undated photo, with girls swimming team:

NCHS Pool.

This old pool is about to come down.  Hopefully the voters approve the construction of a new one on May 6.

The Casper Journal on the School Bond Issue: I’m a yes

I’m a yes

NCHS 1945-1946 Swim Team

The newest NC team at the time, in its third season.

The pool they used is just about to come down, the last swim team to use it having practiced in it this academic year.  Hopefully the voters will approve the bond that allows for a new pool to be built.

Putting the Bond Issue in Prospective. Comparative costs.

Here's another Natrona County School District graphic that helps put the bond in prospective.

 

As this graphic nicely demonstrates, other Wyoming school districts have also had bond issues in recent years, and the proposed Natrona County one is the most conservative really.   Other districts, including Carbon and Albany Counties, are funding much more of their recent construction via bonds.  And in our case, the overall amount is naturally higher, as we have four schools, as opposed to just one.  Albany County's bond, as we can see, nearly rivals ours in amount, with a  much smaller population base and a single school.

Casper Star Tribune Editorial board: OK the school district bond

The Casper Star Tribune has changed its position (reluctantly, given the pools) and is now supporting the bond.
While I wish the Tribune would more fully endorse the pool, they finally see the wisdom of the bond and are arguing for it.  The paper is very much endorsing the CAP enhancements, and essentially indicates that prior to the recent hearings it didn't fully understand the bond proposals.  Indeed, it's indicating that its changed its position now that the proposal has been fully explained.  It deserves credit for being willing to continue to analyze and to change its opinion, something that takes some degree of courage, but something which deserves respect.

I have to say, I appreciate the Tribune's current editor, even when I disagree with him, much more than the former one.  He seems much more careful and thoughtful in his approach to things, and the overall quality of the newspaper has improved.

The Bond Issue: The actual cost

This graphic, generated by the Natrona County School District, nicely shows the actual cost to Natrona County property owners for improving the safety and relevancy of their schools.  $100,000 is highlighted, although I don't know if that's the median value of a county house or not, real estate values have been rising here. But as the Tribune points out, even for the owner of a $300,000 home the actual cost is only about $65.00 per year, an amount a person with a home of that value would no doubt spend on a night out here, easily.  Going to dinner, for a family of four in Casper, no matter where you go, is nearly always going to result in a bill over $80,00.  So the costs for the bond are are quite minimal, particularly given the longevity and nature of the improvements.

For those just entering school, no doubt the scientific and technical additions at CAP will result in their graduating with better options in life, making the bond cost on an annual basis worth it in and of itself.  So too with the swimming pools, with the 1923 pool at NCHS, coming down this summer, being a prime example, given that the investment there lasted for nearly a century.

The Bond Issue: The Mike Sedar Swimming Pool

The City of Casper's elected board, the City Council, has just voted to postpone rebuilding the decommissioned Mike Sedar Swimming Pool.

The old pool, which was ripped out either last summer or the summer before, was one of the principal pools in the town.  It was a 25  yard pool, and as amazing as it may seem to some, it was used for AAU swimming competitions when I was a kid.  Meter pools were rare at the time, and the pool had starting platforms at that time allowing it to be used in that fashion.  Principally built as a recreational pool (when most recreational pools were of a conventional construction) it also had a side area for a high dive, which was taken out some time ago based upon some concept of the appropriate depth for that, which it didn't meet.

Now it isn't there at all and now the city is pushing back its plan to rebuild the pool, which was going to be rebuilt in a much more elaborate, recreational pool, fashion.  The city noted that costs were going to be higher than what it anticipated but it also noted that it wanted to wait and see how the school district bond issue progressed.  In other words, they recognize the need for a pool, but may hold back to see if the school district, whose needs exceed the city's, achieves success in the bond issue thereby giving the city a little breathing room.

This is a distressing development.  In an era in which the news media here and all the government entities are telling us that the populations of the county is projected to rise, we seem reluctant to replace and repair (which is all we're really doing) those facilities that earlier generations of Casperites built, with smaller resources.  Right now we''re taking out one high school pool entirely and hopefully will be able to replace it.  Two others are in distress and need to be addressed.  A city pool has been removed and there's some question as to whether it will be replaced.  The old outdoor pool at Kelly Walsh was removed some time ago, and it was a city pool, and it was never replaced.  A party took a serious run at trying to grossly restrict or take out a local rifle range this past year. 

I'm not saying that a city needs to have everything, but in order to be a nice place to live it needs some facilities. And when the ones we have start to disappear and there's questions as to whether they'll be replaced, that's a long term problem.

The Natrona County School Board votes "yes" on the bond issue

The School Board voted to submit the bond issue, discussed below, to the voters for an election to be held on May 6.  I'll post the text of the issue when I have a chance, but here's a "huzzah" to the Board!

Natrona County School District Bond Vote

Tonight, February 24, 2014, the Natrona County School District will hold the second of its public meetings to take comments on the proposed bond issue, which will go to the voters, if passed, later this spring.

As Natrona County residents know, our single school district serves a population of at least 80,000 people and covers 5.376 square miles.  To put that in a bit of prospective, the state of Rhode Island covers an expanse of 1,214 square miles.  Vermont coveres 9,620 square miles.  So, the county is about four times the size of the state of Rhode Island and about 60% of the size of the state of Vermont.

That means the single school district serves children that come to its schools from a huge expanse.  The number of rural schools is not as large as it once was, in keeping with the reality that modern school requires modern infrastructure, and for the final stage of public schooling, high school, that is particularly true.

The district has four high schools, Natrona County High School, Kelly Walsh High School, Roosevelt and Midwest.  NCHS and KWHS are by the far the largest of the schools. Roosevelt is an alternative school, set up for kids who seek the benefits of its programs, and Midwest is a small community on the edge of the county.  Many Natrona County residents probably don't even realize that Midwest has a high school.  As can be seen, the concentration of high schools is naturally in Casper, simply because Natrona County, in spite of its vast expanse, really only has six towns within it, a couple of which are no longer really full towns.  Actual towns are the greater Casper area (Casper, Bar Nunn, Mills, Evanston), Midwest, Edgerton and Alocva.  Towns that once existed, and are sort of still there, include Powder River and Arminto.  The overwhelming majority of students attend NCHS or KWHS, which have huge student populations.

KWHS and NCHS are undergoing reconstruction.  Built in the 1920s, it is simply time for NCHS.  It's a beautiful school, but its facilities are dated.  This is also true for KWHS which is not nearly as old, but like a lot of buildings built in later areas seems to have borne the test of time less well. 

In Wyoming, school construction is basically funded by the state.  Education is legally a "fundamental right" in Wyoming, and all of the state's children have the right to the same basic education.  This has come to mean, both philosophically and legally, that the state's mineral resources, as reflected in income to the state, are distributed by the state, so that counties with low mineral production are not deprived of the ability to teach their children to the same standards that those with high incomes are.

This is not universal, however, as the state at some point determined that it would not pay for "enhancements".  Naturally, the state was concerned about being asked to pay for high dollar athletic facilities and the like.

But what is, and ins not, an enhancement has turned out to be a tricky deal.

In the proposed bond issue, Natrona  County School District No. 1 may be asking for funds that are not, in a real sense, "enhancements".  They are necessities.  The first of these is upgrades to existing schools for school security, something that cannot be ignored now that we have the ability to do it.  We blogged about that in an recent entry here.

Directly related to safety is funding for three swimming pools, one at NCHS, one at KWHS, and one at Midwest High School.  In a district that covers a territory as vast as that covered by some Eastern states, the need for this should be self evident.  These schools will be lifesavers for some, and will benefit all.  We have also blogged about that in this entry and in this one.

Finally, but not least in significance, we here in this area continually are told that our mineral extraction economy produces good jobs for local residents, particularly those who grow up here.  At the same time, those of us who have lived here for all or the balance of our lives know that quite often Wyoming's biggest single expert is our young people, whom, in lean times (and we have a lot of those) grow up, graduate from high school, and then leave in search of work, never to return.  We also know that the oil and gas industry is expressing a need for skilled employees, which in many instances they end up bringing in from out of state. And, additionally, if we're serious about educating our youth for the 21st Century, we have to admit that shops built in the mid 20th Century, aren't going to effectively serve that need. The Bond would fund construction of a Science and Technology center where students who wished to pursue these talents could.  We have blogged about that here.

The bond deserves to pass. The School Bard deserves credit for taking this on.  The people of Natrona County should come out to support them.

The Bond Issue. Safety

As folks who read this blog (and there's darned few I know) are aware, I've written on several occasions about the upcoming Natrona County School District bond issue, taking the specific topics of the swimming pools and technical and vocational training up.  The School District plan to address these topics is so well formed that I think that either one of them would merit the bond being passed in and of itself. The third topic of the funding, which I haven't addressed yet, certainly does, school safety.

This is a topic that's need is so self evident I would argue that no rational person can, after considering it, argue against it. Basically, the District proposes to add features to the existing grade schools to enhance their safety, through new entry ways, lighting and technical additions.

I will not dwell on the current age and why the District would rightfully consider such improvements desirable. Rather, I will point out something that people too often miss.  As technology improves, and as experience teaches, if we can improve something within our reasonable ability to do so, we ought to.  We particularly should do so where children are involved.

To give an example that is probably fairly obvious, consider the automobile of 1913.  Not too safe, right?  Mechanical brakes, no air bags, no seat belts, no safety of any kind really.  We could make cars like that today. We don't.  We don't, because we know how not to, and therefore we make them safer. 

Buildings aren't automobiles, they're more permanent.  But here too we retrofit builds that are old with sprinkler systems and fire alarms, and remove the asbestos from them with reconstruction calls for it.  When we can make buildings reasonably safer, we can, and should.

The State of Wyoming funds new school construction, thanks to the funds that the mineral industry pays through severance taxes.  But it doesn't pay for "enhancements".  Before we complain of that, we should consider that around here "local control" of schools is a big deal. Well, here's an area that we control, and as those in control, we can and should act responsibly.

The Bond Issue. Modern technical and vocational training.

I've posted on the upcoming bond issue here several times before, but I want to switch gears a bit with this post, as I think that perhaps part of the story has been missed, and even when not missed, perhaps the need isn't fully appreciated.  That need is for scientific and technical training, and this bond issue would fund a Science and Technology Center as part of the high school facilities for the district.

The need for something like this has been identified by those in the know for some time, but I don't know how widely that need is appreciated in the general public.  It's really pressing.

Years and years ago, "technical" training was available in most high schools, and of course it's never gone away.  Prior to World War Two a very high percentage of American men never graduated from high school, and the lack of a high school degree itself wasn't an impairment to obtaining employment for the most part.  One of the richest men to ever live in this county, Fred Goodstein, did not have a high school degree, but simply started off working in his father's oilfield pipeyard as a teenager. He built that business into a huge success, and expanded from there.

 

Dodge factory during World War Two.  At one time, most high school graduates were qualified to do a job like this simply by having a diploma.  This is no longer the case, as vehicles like this are no longer the norm.

But those days are really over.  They are over in part because we live in the Age of Certification, in which having some credentials to obtain employment is a necessity, both because it demonstrates proficiency, and because as the number of high school and college graduates expanded, that became the means of winnowing applicants. That, in turn, caused a certain magic to attach to the certificate, legitimate or not.

But beyond that, the world simply has become more and more technical, making a basic level of introductory knowledge in adequate.  To give a poor example of that, I think when I was in basic training in 1982 you could still get into the Army with a GED.  As an artillery crewman, we learned how to operate a self propelled howitzer whose systems were all mechanical.  Fire Direction  Control, the unit that plotted the mission, was by far the most technical, and they actually still used slide rules at the time, to plot their fire missions.  When I was later a Forward Observer, I plotted missions using a compass, binoculars and a map.  Sometimes I used a BC Scope, a huge set of mounted periscopic binoculars.

 

The military has always been a source of post high school technical training, but more and more, you need to be at least somewhat proficient to even enter the service.

Well, all that is a tying of the past and probably looks about as ancient to a modern artillerymen as a muzzle loading cannon does.  Now the SP is highly computerized and so is everything about plotting the missions.  A person, in order to do the jobs that required just basic knowledge on our part, now has to have a fair degree of technical knowledge.

 

Now, my point isn't that we need to boost high school education as the Army needs people with a technical background, although I will note that those entering the Army today must have an actual high school diploma. Rather, this is just one example of how much more technical the world is today.

To give another example, many years ago I worked on a drilling rig.  It was all a simple mechanical rig.  Most of the rigs in use today remain no more advanced than that one. But, that day is ending.  I overheard some time ago, in the barber shop (that reservoir of many talk) from a drilling operator who was working on a new rig in North Dakota.  He did not do his job from the drilling rig floor like they used to. He was in a warm, clean, inclosed high tech office attached to the rig.  He, indeed, could operate all its systems without ever going outside the office, so the arctic North Dakota winter meant little to him. Rigs of that type are a rarity in the United States, but from talking with a tool pusher who just came back from overseas, they aren't rare outside the US.  The irony, therefore, is that the US is actually behind in modern rigs, a fact that probably developed as our drilling industry was darned near dead for a long time.

Talking to local industrial employers, I know that they perceive that there's a lack of entry level skilled employees in the state. They'd like to hire them, and there's the work, but the employees aren't there.  Why not?

Well, we just don't have the facilities at the high school level to train them. We do still train in some technical fields at the high school level.  You can learn some automotive technology, small engine technology, and welding, for example.  And that's great.  But in order to keep up in this area, we're going to have to provide much more advance training as we enter the second half of the second decade of the 21st Century.

Take cars alone, as an example.

I still retain one old vehicle, a 1962 Dodge truck.  I can work on it, as its as old as I am, and its systems are those which I grew up with and learned how work on. Quite simple, really. But on our more modern vehicles, none of which are new, I have no clue how to fix anything. They are all high tech.

And the mechanics who work on them have been accordingly trained. They're not shade tree mechanics who were really good and worked into shops.  No, they're really trained. They have to be.  And that's the direction things are headed.  In ten years ago, as electric and hybrid vehicles become more common, this is going to become a highly technical field.  And this will expand. It will not be that many years from now that even a thing like a snowblower will be high tech, or a lawn mower, designed not only to do its job well, but to emit little, and use as little in the way of resources as possible.

A person can say, of course, that all of this is fine, and that post high school courses of study can address that.  But if we take that approach, it commits everyone to some post high school study. Should we do that?  I don't think so.

Universities and colleges have increasingly become not only schools for advance academic knowledge, but advanced technical schools. That is fine, but students who do not wish to attend university or college, and not everyone does, should not be forced to do so. And a high school degree should have some immediate serious employment benefit outside of those which are the most basic jobs.  Indeed, that was the original purpose of high school.  The thought was that a graduate was ready to enter a shop, or office.

Indeed recently I heard an interesting author interview on the Priztzer Military Library podcast.  The author had written a book about his interviews with very elderly World War One veterans, when they were in their 90s.  One interview really struck me.  The veteran was asked the simple question about joining the Army, but he gave his entire life history in a few short sentences.  He'd graduated high school shortly before World War One, and during his last year of high school he'd been recommended to an insurance company.  He'd gone to work there immediately after graduating, and save for World War One, he'd worked there his entire career until retirement, rising up in it.

Now, his story would have been impossible.

Of course, this isn't a technical story, in that he didn't enter technical employment, but my point is that here in Casper, where there are many industrial jobs, those jobs are going to get increasingly technical over time.  Those who want those jobs, and the state and local community is always noting how these are well paying jobs, can be ready to enter them right out of high school, with the proper training.  If we don't give them the proper training, they're going to have to obtain it through an additional couple of years of study, where the public funding for the training is lacking. That isn't serving those students well.  This is another reason to back the bond issue.

Keeping a Swimming Pool at NCHS

I was on the Natrona County High School swim team in 1978-1979 and 1979-1980.  I might have been in 1980-1981 as well, my senior year, but I can't quite recall.  When I was a high school senior I only went to high school half days, and then to college in the afternoon, so I can't really recall if I swam that year or not.  Seems to me that I did.

Natrona County High School, a classic structure built in 1923, but with a pool that is now less than 25 yards long and in need of replacement.

I'm not the first member of my family to swim at the NCHS pool.  My father (graduating class of 1946) did as well.  And we're certainly not the only ones.  My wife swam at the pool while attending NC, and my father in law did as well, learning how to swim there.  And now my son, who is a member of the NC swim team, does.

I also worked at the NC pool one year.  I was a swimming teacher and a life guard there.  I obtained my certification to do that in a NC PE class.

The pool is the oldest indoor pool in Wyoming.  Indeed, it's one of the oldest ones in the Western United States.  It'll be destroyed this summer and, right now, the ongoing presence of a swimming pool at NCHS is in jeopardy.

The pool will be destroyed as a massive renovation project is going on at old NCHS.  Indeed, a massive renovation project is also going on at Kelly Walsh High School across town as well, and they're very nice Olympic sized pool is also slated for removal and replacement, just like NC's.  The high school in Midwest is also in need of a new pool (I hadn't been aware, up until recently, that it had a pool).  So a lot is going on construction wise.

Indeed so much is going on construction wise that that the wisdom of that, in my view, is questionable.  The renovations at NCHS practically amount to building a new school, while keeping part of the old one, in the middle of town.  It'll take several years to complete and is well underway now.  The renovations at KW are not quite as extensive, but are massive by any measure.  The alternative high school, Roosevelt, is slated to receive a completely new building.  With this much going on the logical question does occur of whether simply building a new high school, on the west side of town, with a pool and full facilities (Roosevelt lacks athletic facilities entirely) would have been a much better ideal, with some necessary improvements to KW and NC.  That idea was floated, but it proved unpopular for some reason.  It was frankly a better idea.  That being the case, the renovations are in the works.

 

 The Kelly Walsh High School pool, which was built on an unstable hill in the 1960s. The pool has required renovations in recent years as it slides downhill, which will continue to happen and render this pool unserviceable at some point.

As part of this, the old NCHS pool will be torn down.  Logic would require that new pool be built, and there are plans to build one.  Indeed, not only logic, but the law may require it.

Wyoming's public schools are required to teach swimming, and for a very good reason.  It's for that reason that the state's high schools have pools, not for team athletics.  Long ago the Legislature recognized that swimming was the one and only athletic endeavor in high schools which saved lives.

Wyoming is a dry state, and unlike states with a lot of beachfront of one kind or another, a fair number of people, particularly rural people, never learn how to swim.  If you are living far out in the country, in Powder River, Lynch, or Kaycee, or any number of similar towns, there's no pools nearby and much of Wyoming's pond water isn't really suitable for recreational swimming. We do have water sports, particularly in the reservoirs, but that doesn't guaranty that a kid growing up here will learn to swim. . .until he hits high school.

The legislature determined that in order to address that, and help keep people from drowning, swimming should be incorporated into PE, the same way the Navy required (and perhaps still does) swimming instruction for recruits.  You might not come out the worlds best swimmer from high school PE, but at least you'll know how to swim.

And some do go on to really become avid swimmers.  To my surprise, my mother (who did not grow up here) once related to me that she'd learned to swim as a young adult.  She was an avid, and very good, swimmer, but she didn't learn until she was an adult  As an adult, she swam every day for decades.

Swimming is also one of the very few high school sports that actually also a life long benefit to the participants.  Here, I'll admit I'm remiss.  I was an okay competitive swimmer at that time, and did that for most of my youth, but after high school I've only occasionally swam.  But I do still know how.  Everyone who learns swimming in high school won't stick with it, but they can, and some will. 

That contrasts enormously with other high school sports.  Some are lifetime sports.  Tennis, skiing, and the "recreational sports" they now offer. But the classic high school sport, football, is just a young man's sport and that's it.  The percentage of men who play football after age 18, if they were high school football players, probably is something in the two digits, if not 1 even a few years after they graduate. By their 30s, it's down in the 1 digit for sure.  Football becomes a watching, not playing, game only a few years after the former stars graduate.

All of this argues strongly for a new pool to be built, as planned, at NC.  And I think it might be an untested legal requirement.  But here's the oddity, sporting facilities are not funded by the state in Wyoming, even while the construction of schools is.

There is a legitimate reason for this, as one of the oddities of school construction is that communities will spring for some sporting facilities before academic ones, and the state didn't want any part of that. But with some athletic facilities, such as gyms and pools, they're really part and parcel of the academics and shouldn't be viewed that way.  Indeed, as the state requires swimming be taught, it ought to include pools in the funding.

But here funding is not forthcoming from the state and so the school district is planning to ask for a bond from the voters.

Recent bond issues have not gone well here, except for Casper College. The voters seem willing to pass bonds for Casper College, but otherwise they've been stingy in recent years.  Or at least it seems so (no school bond issues have been floated, so we don't really know).  Casper College has seen massive reconstruction in the past few years.

This started when the county tried to float a bond for a new courthouse several years ago. The old one was long in the tooth and they came up with a plan to renovate it and asked for voter approval, but a movement developed against it and it was voted down. That controversy had its own oddities, so perhaps it doesn't mean much, but it did occur.  Ultimately, funding was found via some other route and the courts moved across the street to the renovated Townsend Hotel, which is now the courthouse.  No county bond money was used, however.

 

 The Depression era Natrona County courthouse, a beautiful structure, it was built with one courtroom.  Voters rejected proposed rennovations to it.

 

The Townsend Justice Center. Built as a first class downtown hotel, by the 1970s the Townsend was a flop house, but with a pretty good restaurant, home to the down and out and prostitutes.  It closed in the 1980s, and was renovated in the 2000s as a courthouse.

Following that, the library tried to obtain voter approval to move out of its antiquated home into a new facility.  I don't think they're campaign was what it should have been, which may explain their failure, but it fell flat and they voters told them to stay where they are.

Subsequently something similar was tried with a civic center, something we don't have but which a local committee has been planning for years. The center would, by my understanding, house the performing arts. Locals weren't sufficiently interested and funding commitments couldn't be met, so the project went to sleep, more or less.

A person may ask why all of this occurred, and frankly these stories may not be related. The courthouse project might have gone through but for the dedicated and somewhat misinformed leadership of the campaign against it, which spread some stories that were off the mark. And nobody is really that excited about courthouses anymore, even though at one time they were the center of a community.  The library campaign, in my view, was tainted by a certain atmosphere that seemed to be one of entitlement, which voters generally don't like.  And, frankly, the library has to better establish its relevance in an era when vast amounts of information can be had by turning on the your computer, and when you fear that your child is sitting next to some fellow at the library who hasn't showered since 1972 and whose looking up back issues of Skanky on the library computer.

The civil center might just frankly have been a bad fit for the community.  This city has always been very oil industry centric, and many people here just have no interest in a center for the performing arts. Again, they'll have to sell that better, or wait for a bigger town, I suspect.

But it also could be that we're in a boom right now and that impacts everything about our local economy and how people vote.  A large number of people are new here, and many of them really have roots in the states much further to our south.  Over time, the ones who stay will develop roots here, but right now, "home" is Bartlesville Oklahoma, or Odessa Texas, rather than Casper, for many.

 In this atmosphere, the Tribune took a pool and found that something like 57% or so of the voters approved the bond that was then being proposed, which also included proposed work to the NCHS stadium.  Most informed folks now that 57% is actually a pretty good percentage in an election.  A Presidential election that comes in that high is declared as "landslide" which creates a "mandate."  But here, where many elections are nearly uncontested, people are no longer use to the idea that an election in which a side doesn't roll in over 60% of the vote is normal.

Perhaps for that reason, the Tribune then came out against the pools. That's really bad as the Tribune has an influence, although not a commanding one.

Well, the current proposal relates solely to the pools.  And NCHS needs one.  I'm hoping that people realize that, and that the district continues to advance it.  If we omit one from NC, I think we may be in violation of the law, and we'll certainly be in violation of common sense.  Some rural kid isn't going to learn how to swim.  Those who naively state that it's okay for a student from one school to drive to another for that instruction live in a world of the future, where a car can get across a town whose roads were once cow tracks in 10 minutes. That day isn't here.  They'll just not learn it, we will have failed in our educational duty, and we're putting those kids at risk.

NCHS needs to get  a new pool.

Postscript:

The Natrona County School Board will be holding a session at University Park School on Monday January 27, 2014, at 7:30, which will discuss this topic. 

Postscript II

The board meeting last night drew a large crowd, a good number of whom were high school competitive swimmers.  Also, however, a fair number of faculty from NC and KW spoke in favor of keeping the swimming pool bond issue tied to the general bond issue, which is the matter really in dispute here.  Some very fine points were made.

One which I noted above was made by a businessman, who noted that 57% of the those polled is actually a very good percentage, particularly from the onset.  A Kelly Walsh math teacher who had analyzed the poll results made some good points about the small number of people polled and the degree to which that cast some doubt on the results.

Several people spoke very well on the teaching aspect of the pools, which is the primary point, really.  One speaker noted that school safety upgrades are on the general bond, but that statistically a child is much more likely to drown than be injured in any sort of school place violence.  And a NC teacher specifically noted the local instances of drowning that have occurred here, in recent years, every year and how failure to make the upgrades will undoubtedly contribute to that increasing as at first will loose one, and then sooner or later the second, pool.  Indeed, the KW athletics coordinator pointed out the numerous problems KWHS is presently having with their pool.

Postscript III

The pool bond issue hit both the Casper Star Tribune and the Casper Journal. The Journal ran a comprehensive article on the recent school board meeting, the Tribune ran an editorial.

The Journal's article had some very nice quotes contained in it, including some from the School Board which I think correctly shows the enthusiasm that actually exists for the pools.  The journal noted the following being said at the conclusion of the meeting.  I should note that these comments came at the end of the meeting. At one point the chairman of the board noted that they were not taking the matter up that night, and were moving on to the topic of dual language immersion, so that the people who came to support the school were free to leave, that topic having been concluded for the evening.  Apparently the board felt it should address the comments at the end of the meeting.

I  wish all the people were still here so I could tell them thank you for being so interested in caring,” said trustee Paula Reid. “We’ll have more to come on this, so I ask them to please stay tuned. We'll need their help.”

“We had roughly 25 people get up and passionately speak to the pools,” said trustee Suzanne Sandoval. “I don't see any way other than it needs to be one question, and I would actually question whether or not we need to go forward with the polling at this point.”

“I so appreciate all the people who came out in support of the pool,” said trustee Rita Walsh. “I would agree with Suzanne that I don't think it's necessary to go forward with more polling information at this point.

“I would like to thank and recognize all of the swimming community who showed up and the passion that they showed,” said trustee Kevin Christopherson. “I was born and raised in this town, and I swam in both pools — though there's not much left of the NC pool — but it's kind of scary to think that what our parents and grandparents built for us, out of purely taxes, that we couldn't do that for the future generations that are going to come and use these swimming facilities. So I have faith in Casper that this is going to pass. I think we should keep it as one question.”

“I, too, was really impressed by the passion that was felt in this room tonight,” said trustee Dave Driggers. “We're going to need that passion, we're going to need every one of these people that spoke, and their grandparents, and their parents, and to drag about five or six additional people to the polling places. If we can somehow be assured that this passion will remain in the next three months, not only through verbal support, but going to the polling places and actually voting, I agree with previous trustees comments that probably additional polling probably won't help that much in the question.”

“About the swimming, I would just like to say that passion is an amazing thing, it gets you all kinds of places you wouldn't expect,” said trustee Dana Howie. “I enjoyed listening to all the stories and … I took swimming lessons in the NC pool and I taught swimming lessons in the NC pool, and they need the pool, and then we also need to keep Kelly Walsh's pool viable and improve it if we can. And we can't forget Midwest either, because Midwest needs a pool; the school is part of that community, the school is the community. So I think that's just as important as well.”

The Casper Star Tribune, however, took a negative stand on the pool once again, calling it a "poison pill" on the bond issue.  The Tribune seems to feel that the vote for the bond will go negative if the pools are on it, even though over 50% of those poled are in favor of the bond issue right now.  The really weird thing about the Tribune's editorial, however, is that it fails to address that the separation of the bond issue  will mean that the separate topic will be for school safety enhancements.

That's odd, as swimming is not only a mandated topic for students in Wyoming, but it's also a mandated topic for safety reasons.  Next to driving, water poses one of the most substantial risk to life that there is.  We have drownings in this are every year and quite a few people do not learn how to swim until they are in high school.  The tribune just ignores that.

The tribune in particular ought to know better, as it's located nearly directly across from that part of the Platte River Parkway dedicated to river sports, and where there's been a drowning within the past few years.

It's odd that in this day and age we have such a skewed sense of risk that we make sure we teach certain safety related things, irrespective of the risk, and then will go on to urge the omission of others.  There has been an organization campaigning in the state recently to raise the driving age up to 18, for safety reasons.  The Tribune opposes that.  In school, we require kids to sit through a class with the euphemistic name of "life skills", even though that class trespasses on the beliefs of many parents, in the name of health safety.  The difference would simply seem to be a lack of understanding that pools equate with safety.

Postscript IV

From the Natrona County School District's website:

Central Services Facility

Public Notice - Board of Trustees to Hold Bond Issue Public Hearings
02.04.2014
Notice of Public Hearings
Natrona County School District No. 1
Board of Trustees

In accordance with Wyoming Statute 21-13-701(c) The Natrona County School District No. 1 Board of Trustees, prior to submitting a bond proposition to district voters, will hold public hearings for the purpose of providing an explanation of the need to obtain district funding for building and facility features that are in excess of state standards for buildings and facilities and taking public comment. The hearings are scheduled for:

Monday February 10, 2014 6:30 - 7:30 p.m.
Monday February 24, 2014 6:30 - 7:30 p.m.

The hearings will be held at the District Central Services Facility located at 970 N. Glenn Road Casper, WY.

Postscript V

 

Swimming Pools — NCSD Transform

Swimming Pools — NCSD Transform

Nice site on the proposed pools and the bond issue.

Here's the reason for the bond issue:  "While the State of Wyoming requires that Natrona County Schools operate and maintain a swimming pool to serve the needs of the district’s high school students, it is unwilling to pay for these facilities."  In other words, the state requires students have access to a pool (for safety reasons really), but won't pay for them.

If they aren't built, NCHS won't have one, and the district will arguably be immediately out of compliance with the law.  That would, quite frankly, seem to invite a law suit, which isn't the district's fault really, but that's what it might do.

Midwest, which tends to be the forgotten high school in the county, has an inadequate pool, would almost certainly seem to be out of compliance with the law without a new one.  For some reason, we tend to forget that Midwest even has a high school, let alone a pool, but they have both, and they need a new pool.

Here's something else worth noting:

The original proposal being discussed by the Board of Education has been
scaled back in scope and now includes the following projects:

• Replacement of NCHS’s 85-year-old
  swimming pool with a new 8-lane pool, diving area
  
  and seating
• Renovation of
  the existing KWHS swimming pool—including new pool equipment, plumbing,
  electrical, lighting and pool deck surface—providing 8 lanes, diving area and
  additional seating
• Design and
  construction of a new Midwest Pool with new supporting equipment, plumbing,
  
  electrical (within the existing pool building), new roof and remodeled locker
  rooms, restrooms and offices

What this doesn't note is that without the bond issue, at least the NC pool will be gone.  It sounds like the younger KW pool is in a terminal state as well.  It's usable, but long term it doesn't look good for it.  While some people are balking at the cost, it's important to note:

The scaled-back
proposal for improving the district’s swimming pools is an estimated $5.8
million LESS than the cost of constructing one large aquatic center to serve
the needs of the entire district. 

Note only is it less, but frankly the idea of "one large aquatic center" to serve the needs of the district is absurd.  No such central location can conceivably serve the needs of Midwest and we know it won't.  Those kids won't be bused across the county for swimming.  It'd take up at least half the school day, if the weather is good.

For that matter, swimming will drop off for both KW and NC students with a central pool.  Casper isn't that easy to get around in during the day, as any Casperite knows.  Students at NC, if they leave during the day, go west, not east, as that's the easy way for them to go.  KW students go east for the same reason.  Where could a pool even be built that would be only five or so minutes from both schools?  Nowhere.

And consider the actual pools. Here's the proposal for Midwest:

Midwest Pool.  A very rational sized pool, that the students there deserve.

And here's the one for NCHS.  Again, this is hardly a palatial pool, although it is one that would allow NCHS's swim team to have swimming meets in their pool for the first time in many many years.  Indeed, it's worth considering that should an increase in fuel costs ever cause the state to cease funding local busing, and that end up in terminating our county's unique "school of choice" system, about half the KWHS swim team would end up going to NCHS, assuming that, at that time, KW's team has a demographic similar to the existing team, and assuming that at that point in time KW still has a pool, which it very may well not, should the bond issue fail.

The real reason, of course, for the state requirement that the students have access to a pool is that their risk of dieing by drowning is reduced, a very worthwhile goal. And its that average student that the pools serve. These pools would do that job nicely, and the bond for them is well worth supporting. 

Postscript VI

Its interesting note how some will view projects of this type.

Having adequate swimming facilities at the county's three high schools (I sometimes think people in the county forget that Midwest even has a high school) benefits everyone.  It benefits everyone as it teaches a life saving skill, it benefits everyone as it teaches a lifetime sport, and the facilities have always been used by the public when not in school use.  And yet the Casper Star Tribune has been against them.

This morning, however, the Tribune is editorializing about the State Land Investment Board not funding, to the full extent of the request, a petition put in by Casper for a conference center.  The state will only fund half.  the Tribune complains about that and calls the board a "clown car" for its procedures in regards to this request and states that now the county must find a way to come up with the rest.

Oh?  Why is that?

The Tribune doesn't really bother to tell us, but basically we can surmise that it agrees with the logic advanced for this proposition. That is, it provides lacking conference space and facilities for Casper, which in turn causes Casper to fail to draw conferences we'd like to, which in turn would boost the local economy.

The argument is strained in several ways. For one thing, there's not really a shortage of big space in the community.  We have a college that allows its facilities to be used, and much of the college has just benefited from new construction.  We also have a selection of hotels, which by and large are the facilities that host such events in most places.  I've been at numerous conferences and classes in this city's hotels.  The opponents of the state funding have noted that they feel that essentially the state is being asked to enter into something that's the domain of private enterprise, and whether the proposal is a good one or not, the critics are at least partially correct on that score.

In contrast, the arguments in favor of the pools are the same ones that can be advanced for the conference center, but without the same counters.  We very well know in this community that some sporting facilities draw in enormous crowds to the town.  One that I would never have guessed would do this has been soccer fields, and yet it is now very well demonstrated that this towns soccer fields are a big draw during the soccer season, bringing in thousands of dollars in revenue.  Basketball does the same thing at the high school level, as does wrestling.  At the college level, the College Rodeo Finals are a huge event here.  Having two decent pools to replace the one going out and the one that's wearing down would do the same thing, and we should know that.

And yet, we also know that private enterprise doesn't build pools. Of the several pools in this town, there's only one that's a competitive meter pool, that being KWHS's.  NC's was when built, but it was a competitive yard pool, and subsequent construction has shortened it to 23, rather than 25, yards.  The diving boards were taken out some time ago.  Another yard pool belongs to the YMCA, which is not a private enterprise entity but the property of what few realize is actually a religious organization.  The town's aquatic center lacks a lane pool, and has rather sort of what I'd call a "fun" pool.  Unlike conference space, no private enterprise organization is going to build a competitive pool.

It's things like competitive pools, soccer fields, athletic facilities, that are a proper role of local governmental entities of various types.  It's odd that the Tribune would be boosting something that is arguably the role of private business, irrespective of whether it is a good idea or not, while opposing something that is clearly in everyone's best interest and not arena of private enterprise.