YSD Bond Update

     If you’ve been around Eisenhower recently, or just Yakima in general, you’ve probably heard of “Vote Yes for Yakima Kids.” If it’s still not clear, “Vote Yes for Yakima Kids” is a bond passed by the school district to put money into our schools; to repair buildings, athletic facilities, and overall improve things that need improvement. With Eisenhower recognizing that, Mr. Dewitt, one of our freshman English teachers, who also runs the newspaper and yearbook, organized for Eisenhower students to go endorse it through volunteer work. To dive a little deeper into what Eisenhower did as a school to campaign for this bond, I interviewed Dewitt himself to cover the basics of what Eisenhower did behind the scenes to help.
      The first question I asked was the one that most people think of when hearing that Eisenhower was involved: “How did Eisenhower help raise awareness for the bond?” With that, Mr. DeWitt responded with, “Students in my Link Crew and Advisory, along with students from Leadership and National Honor Society, were asked to volunteer their time; to help raise awareness that there is a bond, and then also see if we can get more people registered to vote to participate in voting, hopefully for the bond. So they (Eisenhower students) went to elementary schools and middle schools, also at IKE and Davis, promoting that during conferences for parents coming into the buildings.”
     The next question was just as important because it asked how Eisenhower would benefit from all this: “What will the bond do to help Eisenhower?” When I asked DeWitt, he explained, “Eisenhower specifically, in the bond, would be getting improvements to Zaepfel Stadium, so the stadium, the turf, and the track would be refurbished. The track and turf are at the end of their life span right now, and so that's where that comes into play, so not directly with Eisenhower, but the bond focuses more on fixing two of Yakima’s older elementary schools.”
      The last question is a little more personal to DeWitt explicitly. When asked: “Why is this important to you?” DeWitt “only” had this to say, “As a teacher in the district, and a parent to students that are in our school district, and as a person who lives inside the school district, anytime I have an opportunity to vote to help out the schools, I'm gonna vote to help out the schools. The community strengthens our school system, and if we are not willing to support it, then we are not willing to support our community. I felt very strongly about it, and I was asked to be part of the Vote Yes for Yakima committee. I took that as an opportunity to get students involved in promoting what this is, our students are people who either understand directly how aging, or broken down buildings, affect them, or saw how successful going to a school that got benefits from the last bond helped them.”
     Now you can see how the bond isn’t just important to the school benefiting, or the Yakima School District, it’s important to the people, it’s important to Eisenhower, because one win for the schools like Hoover Elementary or the stadium, is a win for all of us.