Guest Columnist: Lady Mercerdale

A Matter Neither Fashionable Nor Optional

My Dear Gentle Islanders,

Once more, Mercer Island is asked to attend to a matter neither fashionable nor theatrical, yet essential all the same: the renewal of the Educational Programs & Operations Levy, to be decided in the February 10 election.

This levy is not a novelty, nor a flourish. It is the mechanism by which our schools continue to function as schools rather than merely facilities. Roughly sixteen percent of the district’s operating budget depends upon it—funding that the State of Washington does not fully supply, though it remains content to mandate the outcomes.

From this levy flow the ordinary excellences so often taken for granted: class sizes that permit instruction rather than supervision; the seven-period day at Mercer Island High School; music, drama, art, athletics, and electives that cultivate more than test scores; counselors, nurses, and support staff; special education services required by law but funded in practice by local resolve; transportation, safety, and the steady maintenance that prevents quiet decline.

It is worth drawing a clean line here. This measure is not the 2025 school bond. That bond was a capital undertaking—long-term, structural, and rightly debated—focused on buildings and physical infrastructure. The EP&O Levy is operational. It pays for people, programs, and the daily work of education. It must be renewed periodically because neglect in these areas does not announce itself with cracks in the walls; it accumulates silently.

Notably, this levy arrives without the familiar uproar. There is no organized opposition, no campaign of alarm or counter-alarm. Perhaps this reflects a shared recognition that schools are not a discretionary indulgence, but the civic foundation from which nearly everything else follows.

Support for strong schools cannot be confined to households currently escorting children to the classroom door. Property values, community stability, public safety, and civic culture itself are shaped—slowly but decisively—by the quality of the schools at the Island’s center. One need not attend the concert to benefit from the music, yet the orchestra must still be paid.

Ballots are in hand. Voting concludes on February 10.

The question before Mercer Island is not whether it esteems education in the abstract, but whether it is willing, once again, to sustain it in practice.

In grace, truth, and perfect confidence,

Lady Mercerdale

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