Last spring, angry parents, teachers, and community members forced out the superintendent.

Then, in November, voters sent three incumbents packing and swept a new, reform-minded majority on to Seattle's school board.

Now, only three months later, Seattle's schools face a critical pair of levies in a special election next Tuesday, February 3. In the wake of two waves of previous radical change, the fate of these levies could well determine the course of Seattle schools for years to come--just as tough new state and federal testing requirements come into effect.

Throughout the past year's local edu-insurrection, district critics have insisted that they support and care deeply about public education; it was the district's leadership, not the schools themselves, that was in their crosshairs. But that was the activists talking--not the voters.

If voters were, like the activists, simply disgusted with the regime of past superintendent Joseph Olchefske and his inert, enabling school board, it follows that they'll want to give the district's new leaders a chance to help fix the mess they've inherited. If, on the other hand, they're just disgusted with the performance of Seattle's public education system, period, next week's $338 million operations levy and $178 million capital levy could face the same electoral buzzsaw that shook up the school board.

We'll find out next week. And the stakes are higher than usual.

If the operations levy doesn't pass, "I cannot even begin to imagine what we'd do," says Brita Butler-Wall, one of the new school board members. Seattle school levies certainly have failed in the past--most notably, in 1994-95, when it took an astonishing five elections to get voters to approve a record-sized capital levy.

When levies have failed at the polls in the past, Seattle, like other districts, has routinely tweaked and then resubmitted the proposals until they passed. But Seattle doesn't have that luxury this time; the budget gyrations needed to plug last year's $38 million budget hole have depleted the district's reserves, leaving no money to fill the breach should voters even temporarily cut off the operating revenue. With classroom cutbacks already in place this year, and additional district layoffs already planned, Butler-Wall, new superintendent Raj Manhas, and other levy supporters aren't kidding when they say the effects of failure, particularly for the operations levy, would be devastating.

The operations levy, required by state law every three years, makes up about 23 percent of the district's annual budget. About 80 percent of that budget goes to the costs of personnel--meaning that loss of access to the property tax income authorized by the levy, even if only for the weeks or months until a second election, would cut deeply into district personnel.

As bloated as Seattle's school administration has been over the years, there's no conceivable way cuts after an operations levy failure wouldn't be felt deeply in the classroom. In effect, voters are being offered a referendum on the district's new leadership, but with an important caveat: it's the district's 47,000 schoolchildren, far more than the leadership, that would suffer if the operations levy fails.

Each year, Seattle parents and students are conducting referendums of their own; an astonishingly high number of Seattle families have opted out of the public school system, and Seattle's dropout rates, like the results of those newly-mandated proficiency tests, are nothing short of a scandal.

There's no question that Manhas and the new board face some daunting challenges. With the district losing some of the families most involved in their children's educations, the remaining students are weighted toward those with lower test scores--specifically, poor, non-white, and immigrant students that are the hardest to teach and have the most barriers to success. Along with the scores, combating disproportionality and the district's de facto re-segregation have to become a top priority.

Beyond general anti-tax and anti-public education sentiment, racial issues and distrust over past use of dubious accounting methods seem to be the two major threads of opposition to the levies. Such suspicions have been well-grounded.

But Seattle's schools are not going away; our choice is between trying or not trying to fix them, with the futures of 47,000 kids in the balance. The Feb. 3 election is for no other purpose than the levies--meaning that turnout will likely be low, and a concerted effort will be needed to reauthorize the district's property tax funding.

It's worth the effort. We've already put new leadership in place; let's give them a chance to succeed.