LOHS Green Team supports school bond
As members of the Lake Oswego High School Green Team, our main emphasis is to promote sustainability and environmental consciousness in both the high school and broader community through education, hands-on events, and activism.
We support the 2021 Lake Oswego Schools Bond because it will allow new ways for students to become involved in the environment through a wide array of improvements that support both sustainability and learning. For example, this bond can pay for new sidewalks that will encourage students to walk or bike safely rather than driving, helping cement active habits at a young age. It will also promote landscaping with native plants, which supports clean water, clean air and wildlife habitat. The bond will help pay for improvements to school buildings that will lead to lower energy usage, which is better for our climate and our future.
This school bond reflects our community’s desire to live more sustainably. It balances environment, equity and economics as a means of creating a more just, resilient and beautiful community for all. Please vote yes on the 2021 school bond.
Lake Oswego High School Green Team
members
Lake Oswego
Citizens taking initiative
Springbrook Park, Canal Acres, Bryant Woods, Cooks Butte, and Stevens Meadows are examples of natural habitats within our neighborhoods resulting from grantors’ foresight to convey development restrictions and/or decades of citizens’ painstaking activism pushing back City development. Could you imagine our beautiful City without these natural sanctuaries and abundant wildlife?
For decades, the City has failed to adopt strong protections; therefore, citizens have taken the initiative. Over the last 24 months, hundreds of LO volunteers dedicated thousands of hours and raised over $64,000 (!) from friends and neighbors to:
■ craft a Charter amendment with precise, deliberate and intentional development limitations to protect 16 natural parks
■ inform our community going door-to-door (pre-Covid), sending 40,000+ mailings to ~15,250 households (~30,000 voters), and through our website, email, and social media
■ collect 4,800+ voter signatures to qualify Measure 3-568
■ obtain prominent environment and conservation organization endorsements
Citizen initiatives aren’t easy. They require tremendous patience, persistence, and perseverance — then, add a global pandemic, wildfires and ice storms. Nonetheless, we forged ahead ensuring our community could choose to enact proven, sensible legal safeguards protecting these natural treasures. Our only gain, the enjoyment they provide our families and community.
Measure 3-568 — the ONLY citizen-led natural park initiative on the ballot — vote YES!
Scott Handley
Lake Oswego
School buildings need investment
One thing that the last eighteen months has taught our family is that our community’s school buildings matter — a lot. While most of us adults have adapted to a remote environment, most children need to learn in person, and they need space designed to help them succeed. I am supporting the 2021 LO School Bonds because that success is on the line.
Three of my children have attended River Grove Elementary. River Grove has an extraordinary group of parents and teachers, but the building is dilapidated and in disrepair. Kindergartners have been in portables for most of a decade. The library is tiny. This bond will replace River Grove and Lake Oswego Junior High.
I would encourage anyone undecided about the LO Schools Bond to compare River Grove and LOJ with the new Lakeridge Middle School campus. Lakeridge Middle is an incredible facility paid for with the last school bond passed in 2017. It provides students and teachers the space they need to thrive. It boosts home values. It demonstrates, for all to see, our common commitment to education and student success. Vote your values. Vote your pocketbook. Vote yes for the LO Schools Bond.
Taylor Murdoch
Lake Oswego
Please vote YES for the school bond
Next month we LO residents can demonstrate our community’s support for our children by voting YES on the school bond, Measure 3-577. The bond will rebuild LO Jr. High and River Grove Elementary Schools thereby eliminating portable classrooms, relieving overcrowded classrooms and common areas and immediately provide a safer environment for our students in case of a seismic event. The bond will modernize classrooms to support new and expanded STEM and Career Technical Education programs and replace computers throughout the district. It will enable needed capital repairs to be made and ensure safer, more secure campuses throughout the district.
Two of my grandchildren attended LO schools even though they lived outside the district because their parents wanted them to have the high-quality education they could receive here. Let’s keep that high quality going forward and give all our children the best education we can provide them. Please join me in supporting the school bond by voting YES on Measure 3-577.
Esther Schwartz
Lake Oswego
Community should invest in education
One thing is clear from the “year that wasn’t”: Our students desperately need our brick-and-mortar schools. We learned that students need in-person learning environments, which are shaped by our school buildings and classrooms.
This November, we have an opportunity to invest in this future by voting YES on the LO School Bond Measure 3-577, which advances a thoughtful and conservative approach to needed maintenance and repairs in our School District. It is phase two in a three-part plan.
The first phase, a bond passed in May 2017, was well managed with public oversight. Projects were completed on time and under budget. The centerpiece was a new Lakeridge Middle School. The second phase, Measure 3-577, will rebuild Lake Oswego Junior High and River Grove Elementary.
Our students deserve innovative, intentional learning spaces with their peers, not over-crowded classrooms in rundown buildings that were built in the 50s and 60s. Students deserve updated security and capital improvements that will make our schools more habitable, sustainable, and energy efficient.
Education for our youth is a valuable community investment, so whether you have a student in the district or not, please join me. Vote ‘YES’ for LO School Bond Measure 3-577.
Elizabeth Welsh
Lake Oswego