Activist group spurred school meet

The fruits of a week of activism by four concerned Colfax residents culminated in a 130-plus crowd of Colfax citizens Monday, Feb. 22 (see story, page 1).

The group, Future of Colfax Education, spontaneously banded together at a special board meeting Feb. 15 to see what could be done about informing the Colfax public about the status of the Colfax levy proposal which failed to get a 50 percent approval in the Feb. 9 special election.

As the meeting wore on Monday night, Colfax resident Kirby Dailey asked questions of the board and eventually invited four other people in attendance to join with him.

After the board meeting, the group turned their eyes on a campaign to inform the whole community about the facts of the levy. It would culminate in a public panel for citizens to weigh in.

“The goal was reached. We got the community out. I think the message was fairly clear from the community what they wanted,” Dailey said in a later interview with the Gazette.

Dailey does not work for the school, but lives within the district and has children at the school.

For the next seven days, Dailey, former Colfax substitute Michelle Miller, and two others pitched an exhaustive front on the city’s 2,800 residents.

They first formed two web sites that daily receive commentary, sometimes biting, on the ongoing levy issue at colfaxschools.org.

They passed out more than 500 flyers, some sent home with children, inviting people to the Feb. 22 panel and asking them to weigh in. Dailey said they made a goal of personally trying to get 15 people to the meeting.

“The community jumped in to relay the message. It was wonderful,” Dailey said.

Dailey called many community figures himself.

Terry Eng asked at the panel what kind of detailed program cuts would be taken for each levy, a question which the administration did not answer. Dailey told the crowd he would work with the administration to pinpoint such data.

They plan on passing this information out to the community once collected, he said.

Dailey said he, acting as an individual, would later like to have an audit conducted on the performance of the school board, the school superintendent, and the two school unions.