Don’t Forget About Money for Schools: How Public Education Fared at the Polls
Lost in the chaos of the contentious presidential election this week was a slew of consequential proposals that touched on funding for many of the nation's 13,000 public school districts—most notably, for spending billions of dollars to upgrade and modernize buildings.
The biggest of all those proposals turned out to be a dud. The Houston school district put forward two ballot measures totaling $4.4 billion in bonds—$3.96 billion for school construction and maintenance, and another $440 million for technology and equipment for classrooms. But roughly 58 percent of voters rejected both proposals for the nation's eighth-largest school district, which enrolls 190,000 students.
School districts often pay for major building projects by issuing bonds that they'll pay back with interest over a period of decades. Most states require some level of voter input for districts that want to proceed with bonds.
Nationwide, roughly 3 in 4 school bond elections pass in any given year . The Houston outcome may reflect that voters were wary of the enormous price tag. (In Kansas City, voters this week approved a much more modest $180 million in bonds for public school buildings after rejecting a similar proposal for $420 million this April.)
The rejection in Houston may also be a signal that residents are rebuking the state's controversial stewardship of the district during the state takeover period that began in 2023.
The news for proponents of improving school buildings was rosier in California, where nearly 57 percent of voters approved $8.5 billion in bonds to fund construction projects for K-12 schools, plus another $1.5 billion for community colleges.
All kinds of factors can influence voters' thinking on bond elections , including the wording of the ballot item, local sentiments toward the public school system, and trends in the cost of homeownership.
In Round Rock, Texas, for instance, well over half of voters approved three proposals totaling $932 million in bonds for replacing equipment, building classroom additions, and modernizing school buildings. But on the same ballot, 57 percent of voters rejected spending another $65.9 million on the district's athletic facilities.
In some states, support from a majority of voters isn't enough for school districts to get a bond approved. Ten states require a larger percentage of voters to support a bond .
Those percentages might not seem so different, but they can have significant effects. In Napa Valley, Calif., 53 percent of voters agreed with investing $230 million in bonds to fund facilities upgrades like fixing roofs and upgrading HVAC systems in schools. It was the second time in three years that a majority of the district's voters said they approved bonds for facilities. But in both cases, the vote totals in favor fell just short of the state's required 55 percent threshold for approval.
In Idaho, school bonds need a two-thirds majority to pass. The Soda Springs district asked voters to approve a $55.1 million bond to be paid back over 20 years for a new high school.
The current building, according to the East Idaho News , lacks a common area for students, doesn't meet building code requirements for air circulation, fails to heat up sufficiently during the winter months, and forces students to eat lunch in a basement that some students with disabilities can't easily access.
In exchange, taxpayers would have seen an annual tax increase of $300 per $100,000 of taxable property value. For a home worth $300,000, that amounts to a $900 increase each year .
The district faced a steep uphill climb convincing 66 percent of its voters to support the increases. But in this case, the district would have lost out even in a state with a lower threshold for bond approval. Only 43 percent of roughly 2,000 voters approved the bond, according to local media reports .
Voters weighed in on a wide variety of school finance issues
Here's a recap of few other school finance-related races of note:
A burgeoning movement against property taxes hit a roadblock on Election Day, as 63 percent of voters in North Dakota rejected a proposal to eliminate property taxes altogether . School superintendents had warned that the move would cause chaos for their budgets, forcing them to rely on volatile state revenue to maintain basic services for their students.
In Georgia, school districts now have to decide whether to opt out of a newly passed referendum that caps property tax increases for homeowners at the annual rate of inflation. Sixty-three percent of voters approved the referendum . Districts and other local governments that want to reserve the right to impose higher tax increases to fuel their budgets can secure an exemption from the state policy if they apply by March 1.
Sports betting secured a razor-thin margin of support from voters in Missouri—50.07 percent in favor, 49.73 percent opposed, according to unofficial results from the Missouri secretary of state . The amendment's passage is likely to ramp up debate over whether state revenue from sports betting will end up benefiting schools in the long run—if such revenue materializes at all.
Winning for Missouri Education, the political action committee supporting the amendment, reported spending roughly $41 million promoting passage of the amendment—more than for any other ballot initiative in state history.
For the fourth decade in a row, Rhode Island voters opted against giving lawmakers the option to rewrite the state constitution . That means proponents of guaranteeing the right to an education and the right to school choice—both mentioned in surveys of voters and interest groups as priorities for a constitutional convention—would need to push legislation to amend the constitution to include those priorities, rather than getting it done during the rewrite process.
