The Seattle City Council today approved placing a renewal of the Families and Education levy on the November ballot. The council's Special Committee on Educational Achievement for Seattle Schoolchildren unanimously voted to send the legislation to the full council, which will vote on its final adoption March 28.

If approved by Seattle voters, the levy would inject $231 million into programs for low-income students which are not funded by the Seattle school district over the next seven years, doubling the earlier $116 million levy. It would cost the average household $124 annually compared to $64 under the previous levy.

The timing couldn't be worse for a levy hike or just any kind of education levy, given the recent financial scandal that resulted in the firing of former district superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson and chief financial and operations officer Don Kennedy for their lack of management and oversight.

A state audit revealed that the district had wasted $1.8 million on mostly-bogus contracts, prompting community members to question whether it makes sense to invest any more funds on the school district.

"I am painfully aware that recent events have shaken the public's confidence," said the district's interim superintendent Dr. Susan Enfield at the council meeting, adding that the district had ramped up its ethics and whistleblower policies and improved communication skills and fiscal oversight in recent weeks to address concerns. The city's Ethics and Election Commission will now investigate the district's whistleblower complaints under a new partnership between the two entities.

Both Mayor Mike McGinn and the council's Public Safety and Education Committee Chair Tim Burgess lost no time to stress in the scandal's aftermath that the district holds no authority over the levy money, which is directly invested by the city's Office of Education into preschools, health clinics, tutoring, summer school, and wraparound services for poor and minority students and their families. Over half the funds go to early learning programs and elementary schools.

If a program fails to work, then the money gets redirected to something else. In fact, the citizen committee which drafted the original levy proposal canceled contracts for programs that were not showing any results. McGinn has pitched the levy as an important means to close the city's achievement gap by making more students ready for college.

In 2010, only 13 percent of African American students and 24 percent of Latino students met the state’s 10th-grade math standard, compared with 68 percent of white students.

If the mayor and Burgess were rooting for the levy before, it seems that neither can finish their sentences now without talking about how important the passage of the levy is for the city. The reason is obvious. The levy is one of the most important partnerships the city has with the school district. If voters reject it, that partnership would suffer a big loss, as would programs for at-risk students, leaving little hope for tackling the achievement gap.

A little more than a week before the school district scandal broke, a Slog poll showed nearly 72 percent support for the levy.

Will Seattle voters approve another goddamn education levy? Total votes: 696

· Yes, it's for the kids: 499 votes (71.70%)
· Nope, I'm broke: 63 votes (9.05%)
· Just turn off the TV and the computer and tell your kid to study. it works better than any levy: 106 votes (15.23%)
· Levies suck. 16 votes (2.30%)

Which makes me wonder, has anything changed since the scandal broke? We all know the levy money will be controlled by the city, but even then, how comfortable are voters about paying higher property taxes for the benefit of a school district that wasted nearly $2 million in public funds on nothing?