Ladue School District Proposition 1 Passes, Rockwood Not So Lucky With Bond Issue

After a surprisingly heated and divisive election, I was relieved to see the Ladue School District Propostion 1 pass 53% to 47% (4,580 to 4,074).  The mailer above was something sent to me and all other student families via e-mail from our parents group (not directly versus postal mail) about actual mailers sent out by the opposing group, Take Back Ladue Schools. I received plenty of the bright yellow mailers which always spelled out exactly how much my taxes were going up, but I never received that one since I do not live in the city of Ladue even if I am just a few blocks from the city border (they probably just sent those to residents within the 63124 zip code.) I wondered if these rather divisive mailers helped their cause or hurt them. Following the article in the Ladue-Frontenac Patch, I personally do not think the mailers were "hateful and mean spirited and has racial, ethnic and religious overtones" as the article said, but I do think the tone may have hurt their efforts just by the "us versus them" mentality it implies. Yes, we all know that the median home price in Ladue is significantly higher than the median home price in Olivette and that a much higher percentage of families in Olivette send their kids to the Ladue public schools than families in the city of Ladue. But with a child attending the high school with students from all over the district, the last thing we want is more "us versus them".

Being the math nerd that I am, I was also curious how the election results compared to Proposition O exactly two years ago which also passed, but by a wider margin, 4717 to 3092 (60.4% to 39.6% with 57.15% needed). The county election site actually breaks down the voting so you can see the results by county "townships" which is interesting since the district actually lies in three different ones, the Clayton township (the southeast section), the Creve Coeur township (the northern section) and the Missouri River township (the southwest section). Here are the voting breakdowns for the three townships in 2010:

1) Clayton : 1595 Yes, 1519 No (51.22% to 48.78%)

2) Creve Coeur : 2203 Yes, 915 No (70.65% to 29.25%)

3) Missouri River: 919 Yes, 658 No (58.28% to 41.72%)

So in the Missouri River township Prop O just barely received the needed 57.15%, but in the Creve Coeur township it won with a more than 2 to 1 margin. And in my own Clayton township it barely even won a majority with only 76 more Yes votes then No votes. In fact since my wife, my daughter and I all voted Yes, our 3 votes represented 4% of the deciding margin if it had only required a majority within a single township! About half of the total No votes for Prop O came from my very own Clayton township. I am guessing the breakdown will be similar again this election. I will be interested to see the township voting breakdowns when those are released. I also noted that the total votes this year on Prop 1 (4580+4074 = 8654) was significantly higher than for Prop O two years ago (4717+3092 = 7809), 845 more voters for an increase of nearly 11%. If the same number had voted this year and 4,000 had voted NO the measure would have failed.

Unfortunately for the Rockwood district, their voting patterns were quite different than Ladue's. Back in 2010 their Prop 5 won 10,806 to 6,081 (64% to 36% of 16,887 votes) but this time their bond issue failed to hit the required 57.15% with only 54% voting Yes (7,579 to 6,470). So their total number of votes went from 16,887 to 14,049. What happened to those other almost 3,000 voters in two years? Maybe we in the Ladue district should be happy we had a strong opposition group to rile up the Yes voters in our district. Otherwise school supporters may have stayed home and just not voted like in Rockwood. Sometimes opposition is a good thing!