Update on the Marysville Teachers Strike

Time for the weekly update on the Marysville Teachers Strike. First off, the first election update (with more counted absentee ballots) was issued on Friday, and the trends are holding:

MARYSVILLE SCHOOL DISTRICT #25
  Registered Voters - 32,892
  Precincts Counted - 72 - 100.00%
  Ballots Counted - 13,975 - 42.49% -

MARYSVILLE SD #25 - DIRECTOR - DIST 2
  Carol Jason - 8,819 - 67.04%
  Mark W. Johnson - 4,281 - 32.54%
  Write-In - 55 - 0.42%
Total - 13,155 - 100.00%

MARYSVILLE SD #25 - DIRECTOR - DIST 3
  Cary Peterson - 3,847 - 29.44%
  Vicki Gates - 7,903 - 60.47%
  Lisa Ann Griffith - 1,264 - 9.67%
  Write-In - 55 - 0.42%
Total - 13,069 - 100.00%

MARYSVILLE SD #25 - DIRECTOR - DIST 5
  A. Michael Kundu - 7,883 - 60.18%
  Erik M. Olson - 5,150 - 39.32%
  Write-In - 65 - 0.50%
Total - 13,098 - 100.00%

Basically, it would take a miracle for any of the hated incumbents to win at this point. Next update is Thursday night, and the final results are next Tuesday. Word is that the teachers at most of the schools seemed a lot happier after the election results. Things were just brighter. There's hope now. For some.

My husband decided to stop blogging, and has written a full explanation on his blog. Among the other news is the possibility that Eric may be losing his position at the Junior High thanks to the enrollment shortage. He won't lose his job, thank goodness, but he will lose his classroom and may be forced back into subbing, something he was trying to get away from, as being tied to the phone is a serious pain. Nothing is written in stone yet, but it doesn't look all that good.

The enrollment shortage is another spot where the current administration lied to the public. They repeatedly said that they had only lost maybe 40 students to other districts during the strike, but the instant the strike is over that estimate jumped to 270+ students. Nice way to lie to the public. And of course, the school board is blaming it all on the teachers, ignoring their own role in the mess. I still cannot believe the paranoid ranting of Helen Mount, the school board president, at the meeting I attended. She sounded like the worst kind of conspiracy theorist and everybody was out to get her, obviously. Lord prevent me from ever getting that out of touch with reality.

Anyway, the enrollment shortage will apparently mean lots of changes at lots of schools, not just Eric's. There's going to be a whole lotta unhappy parents very soon, and not a lot anyone can do about it. With public schools you only stay strong if you and your neighbors stand together, since state funding depends on enrollment. The new school board really has their work cut out for them... there's such a long way to go that I'm not sure if they are going to make it. And at the moment, there's no way to know if Eric will be a part of it, or if he's going to be job-hunting again starting in January.