Letter to the Editor: Many on Vashon can’t afford the bond

Published 12:04 pm Tuesday, January 25, 2011

To the proponents of raising $50 million for Vashon schools: It wasn’t the right time before, and it’s not the right time now. Please be more sensitive to the needs of this community.

In response to the remark quoted in The Beachcomber from a passerby, “Who wouldn’t vote for education?” One answer: People who have no spare cash.

Education takes place in the meeting of two minds, “the sphere of the between,” as Martin Buber called it. Underneath the sentimentalizing of the issue lies the truth — a suffering community will have to come up with the money. The economy is still depressed, residents are losing homes to foreclosures, and the future is uncertain.

Before you vote “yes,” think about your friends and neighbors.

— Ellen Carleton