School levy campaign launched with Mine Plus Nine event

Almost three months to the day from spring primary election, the Wooster Schools Alliance kicked off the campaign for the 6.5-mill operating levy for the Wooster City School District that voters will be asked to consider on the May 4 ballot. More than 300 area residents, members of the district’s board of education, staff and faculty gathered at Wooster High School (WHS) on Feb. 3, for the Mine Plus Nine event to hear more details about the need for the levy and how they could support the levy campaign.The idea behind Mine Plus Nine is to ask individual members of the community who support the levy to seek out nine additional positive votes for the ballot initiative amongst their family, friends and colleagues. “Our goal is to contact as many voters as possible and determine how many yes votes we can expect the levy to have,” explained Trevor Dunlap, of the Mine Plus Nine committee.With more than 16,000 registered voters in the district, that would be a monumental task for one committee to handle. From that realization the concept for the Mine Plus Nine campaign was born.“Tonight we have printed off labels with the names of about 8,000 registered voters who are expected to vote in May,” said Dunlap, as he encouraged those in attendance to gather the labels containing the names of their family members, neighbors, friends, club members and work associates that were laid out in the WHS gym.“Tonight we are asking each one of you to personally contact at least nine other voters in the district to determine their support for the levy.”The idea behind contacting likely voters now is “to gather as much information as early as we can in the campaign. This information gives us the ability to map out the support that we can identify or areas that require our efforts,” said Dunlap.Superintendent Michael Tefs noted that the 8,000 person list being used is based off of a list of voters who cast ballots in the May 2009 election. “It’s a very typical list for Wooster other than on a presidential election,” Tefs noted.With more than 300 people in attendance, each taking at least 10 names, that puts a nice dent in the 8,000 name list.“We felt like if we got between 200 and 250 community members it would give us a nice start with basically 90 days to go,” said Tefs, of the larger than expected turn out for the kickoff. “With over 300 in attendance it certainly has exceeded our expectations.“I think it really shows that there’s passion about the Wooster City Schools. There’s excitement. There’s energy,” said Tefs. “Now we just have to maintain that for the next 88 days.” Earlier in the day, at the invitation of a student from the school newspaper, Tefs and board member Susan Marlar met with a group of 70 Wooster High School seniors, who will be eligible to vote for the first time in the May election, to discuss the levy.While he made it clear to the students that he wasn’t telling them to vote for the levy he was happy to see that they were engaging in the democratic process and challenged the students to ask questions and gather information about all sides of the issue.“It was fun for me because I try to engage with the students as much as I can,” Tefs said. “I was an educator first so whenever I get a chance to be with the kids it’s my favorite part of the day.”