Why your vote matters for education

I've just been reading this essay by Jane Addams (she of the settlement houses movement) from 1915 on why women should vote (five years before they got the right to vote). It has everything to do with why EVERYONE who cares about education should vote tomorrow:

Chicago one spring had a spreading contagion of scarlet fever just at the time that the school nurses had been discontinued because business men had pronounced them too expensive. If the women who sent their children to the schools had been sufficiently public-spirited and had been provided with an implement through which to express that public spirit they would have insisted that the schools be supplied with nurses in order that their own children might be protected from contagion. In other words, if women would effectively continue their old avocations they must take part in the slow upbuilding of that code of legislation which is alone sufficient to protect the home from the dangers incident to modern life.

Two-thirds of the Worcester Public Schools budget comes from the state.
The state and federal government have EVERYTHING to do with what kids are taught, how much of it they're taught, how they're tested on it, and yes, how we pay for it.
Both levels of government also have to do with how those kids get back and forth to school, how their teachers are certified, how safe the buildings they learn in are (and how often they're repaired and replaced), what kind of food they're served at lunch, and what's in the textbooks they learn from.
If you care about education, you can't sit this one out.