10 May 2016
$89 million school bond issue being promoted with dishonest graphs
Are School District 5’s voters ready to approve $89 million for school construction? A planning committee associated with School District 5, assisted by a firm that may stand to gain from the project, hopes so, reports the Flathead Beacon. The committee will recommend to SD-5’s board of trustees that it hold a fall election to approve $62.4 million for the elementary school district, and $26.7 million for the high school district.
A fall election might be separate from the general election that ends on 8 November. School districts can be sneaky about that. If the issue is put to the voters, I favor putting it to them on the general election ballot.
Meanwhile, the committee recommending the bond is using dishonest graphs to make its case for raising taxes.
Here’s an example. The general fund budget per elementary pupil varies slightly around the Flathead, from a high of $6,822 in Whitefish to a low of $5,991 in West Valley. Here’s how the facilities committee presents the difference:
The column for Kalispell is 89 pixels high. But the column for Whitefish is 201 pixels high, suggesting that Whitefish budgets more than twice as much per capita on its elementary student. But that’s not true. Whitefish spends only 13 percent more.
The facilities committee distorted the graph by starting the Y-Axis at approximately $5,500:
When the Y-Axis begins at zero, the how the inter-district per pupil figures differ is presented honestly:
The committee’s dishonest graph was no accident. It was a deliberate attempt to exaggerate differences to gain a political advantage. It’s an old trick, but it’s just as dishonest now as it was the first time it was used.
And that it was used means the people promoting the school bonds are not presenting dispassionate analysis. They’re producing propaganda.