2008 Mt Lebanon Presidential Vote Breakdown

I had a lot of good emails yesterday regarding the voter breakdown from the Kerry/Bush election so I put together the results from last night. You can find them yourself here at the Allegheny County Department of Elections website.

Note that these are not the final "certified" numbers but there is little likelihood they will change.



The overall Mt Lebanon vote broke down to 10902 votes for Obama and 8983 votes for McCain with Obama winning 54.8% to 45.2% in Mt Lebanon.

If you want to see specific Wards and their Districts, please see this spreadsheet for a complete breakdown.

Thanks for reading.

James

2004 Mt Lebanon Voter Breakdown

With the election just a day away I thought I would post a Mt Lebanon Ward Map showing how we voted for Bush/Kerry in 2004.

In 2004 there were a total of 20611 votes cast for the Presidential election. 10727 (52%) were cast for Kerry/Edwards and 9753 (47%) were cast for Bush/Cheney. 1% went to other candidates.



I also thought I would link to a ridiculously detailed spreadsheet of voter registration patterns across Pennsylvania. They break down the numbers by County so you can look up Allegheny and see what has been happening at that level. Two thing about this spreadsheet. First, it is supposed to be accurate as of October 31, 2008. Not sure how the state can do anything that quickly, but ok. Second, it breaks down registration by age, new registrations, changed registration, active/inactive, new voter party, etc, etc, etc.

I am posting here on Google's site because its easier to share and forward to your friends. The original full featured spreadsheet can be found on the Department of State website here.

Hope you found this interesting.

James

Article Roundup

Part of the job of being a School Director is keeping up to date with the topics that are gaining attention in the education community. Outside of reading a couple of books, I try to keep up to date by reading many of the journals, magazines, and digests that come my way. It seems that once you are a school board member you get on a special mailing list.

Here is a partial list of articles I have been reading that I found interesting:

-From the, "Hey, things could be a whole lot worse" department- at least we are not going the route of the Belmont High School in Los Angeles. The nation's most expensive high school was just built and they are talking about tearing it down. Ouch! $350 million of taxpayer money will be spent. Check out the story here. Built on an old oil field and right next to an earthquake fault, costs have skyrocketed for this project.

- The American School Board Journal ran an article in its November issue outlining the plans both Obama and McCain have for education. The article started by pointing out the fact that education seems to be on the back burner for BOTH candidates. With a war going on and an economy in free fall it has been much easier for them to put education on the second tier of issues that concern voters. The ASBJ broke down the platform for the candidates as follows:



School Choice seems to be a major difference. Additionally, Obama does have a greater focus on early childhood education. The article lists the cost of Obama's plans to be in the neighborhood of $18 billion, $10 billion of which would go to early childhood learning. The article does not list any costs for McCain as he intends to redirect existing funds to pay for his plans.

- Two Western PA School Districts have merged. The Center Area and the Monaca School Districts, just northwest of Pittsburgh, have decided to merge their two districts. This merger was not forced by the State but instead was taken on independently by the districts. See the article here. Excerpt from the article below:

With local school boards facing spiraling prices for fuel, employee health insurance and other operating costs -- and opposition to increases in property taxes that largely pay for them -- the idea of consolidating to save money is becoming an increasingly common discussion topic.

-There is a another report that hails the benefits of full-day Kindergarten. I have written before that there will be a move towards mandated full-day kindergarten in this state. Please see this article detailing a report by Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children that outlines the benefits of full-day kindergarten. Excerpt below:

Schools with students attending full-day kindergarten in 2004-05 improved their third-grade reading scores on the 2007-08 Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests twice as much as schools where students did not attend full-day programs, according to the report.

That's all for now.

Thanks for reading.

James