- Bonds are loans that schools can take out exclusively for large capital projects. Voters have to approve them because the loans are paid off with property taxes
- Just over half of the school bond proposals on the ballot in 2024 were rejected by voters.
- Several districts have reworked and re-proposed bonds after failing to pass them initially.
- School officials say economic pressures and mismatched priorities are among the reasons proposals fail.
The turf on Plainwell Community Schools’ football field becomes a little less forgiving every year.
“When you are a spectator and you're just sitting there looking at the field, it looks great. It doesn't look like it needs to be replaced,” said Plainwell Superintendent Matthew Montange. “But it's almost 15 years old. And when you … play on it and you fall on it, it hurts.”
The district, based in three lower West Michigan counties, can make small repairs to keep the field safe for kids to play on for a few more years, Montange said. But eventually, it’s going to need a more significant update.
That would have been one of the many projects the district would have taken on over the next few years with money from a $39.8 million bond. The district also wanted to build a new early childhood center and expand existing gymnasiums, also being used as cafeterias, to support an expected increase in enrollment.
But voters narrowly rejected the district’s proposal for that bond on the November ballot. It was the second time they rejected a version of the bond this year.
Bonds are loans that schools can take out exclusively for large capital projects: major remodels, new building construction, large technology upgrades, bus purchases and more.
That loan must be paid off with a property tax, also called a millage, which is why local voters get a say on it. And in a year where economic pressures played a big role in voters’ choices, school leaders say these bonds might have been a particularly tough sell.
“I think voters are reacting in this area to the fact that they feel under stress economically like their money isn't going as far as it used to and everything's more expensive,” said Roscommon Area Public Schools Superintendent Catherine Erickson. “And so when put with an opportunity to say, ‘no, I don't want to spend any more money,’ it's hard, they can't turn that down.”
Voters rejected Roscommon’s $12 million bond proposal in November. The money would have gone to fix or replace aging roofs, replace an old boiler system in the elementary school, and upgrade outdated fire alarms. It was the district’s first try, but Erickson said it's likely not the last.
“One of the advantages we were hoping to capitalize on in this bond question was that it's not an increase. We are simply asking to maintain the millage rate we have,” she said. “My guess is that we will probably make another attempt to pass this bond in the spring because that was still within the window of saying, ‘look, we're not going to change your tax.’”
More proposals, more rejections
Districts have relied on bonds for decades to cover costs that otherwise might come out of their operating budgets, which pay teacher salaries and utility bills. Legally, districts cannot use bonds for those basic expenses.
So they often, but not always, already have millages in place from past bonds that they can ask voters to reset for a few more years (or decades) without necessarily raising taxes. That was the case for Plainwell, Roscommon, and many other districts on the ballot across four elections this year.
Still many voters kept saying “no” to these proposals, sometimes more than once. And that answer might be getting more common.
It’s hard to come up with one explanation for the increased rate of bond failures this year.
Community Facebook posts and Michigan Public’s interviews with school leaders and an expert reveal a lot of possibilities: distrust of district leaders, economic concerns, confusion about proposal language and school funding in general, a perceived lack of value for adults without kids in the district, disagreements over priorities, gaps in district outreach, national political rhetoric about schools, and more.
Regardless of the reason, bond failures are “not a disaster,” David Arsen told Michigan Public in late October. He’s a professor emeritus in education policy at Michigan State University who has studied the state’s school finance system.
“This is one area where we have local control and the proposals actually get a lot of vetting,” he said. “These don't get on the ballot without a lot of discussion in local communities … about what we need, what it should look like, where it should be.”
Community sentiment is key – and hard to wrangle
Fenton Lake Community Schools in Genesee County failed by a small margin to pass a $68.2 million bond proposal this November. A previous bond proposal from the district was rejected in May 2023.
“The first bond was very different in the sense that we had proposed to build a new early childhood center. We really pushed our focus towards academics,” said Fenton Lake Superintendent Julie Williams.
In feedback after that bond failed by just 50 votes, Williams said the district heard that the community was not drawn to an early childhood center or some of the other academic-focused upgrades. Athletic upgrades sounded like a higher priority for many people.
So the district came back this time asking for some academic and safety upgrades, like upgraded security cameras, better traffic flow, remodels of aging buildings and new engineering classrooms.
But there were also a lot of athletic upgrades that were intended for any member of the community at any age to use — not just current students and their families. That included an indoor walking track, pickleball courts, event space and a new playground.
As a result of the new focus, the second bond attempt was bigger than the first – unusual among repeat attempts. It asked for an increase of 2.36 mills, which would cost a home with $100,000 in taxable value an extra $236 annually.
“I've heard a little bit that maybe we were asking too much. I think you have a contingency of families that would really love to see us with a field house and then others that said … maybe that’s too much,” Williams said. “I feel like we're in this Catch-22. We have to find the right balance that works for our community and still gets us the much needed upgrades for the education side of the school district.”
Fenton Lake’s school board is looking into options for bringing the bond back next year, she said. The district has put out a survey asking voters for feedback to help find that “balance.” Failing to get a bond again wouldn’t result in any cuts in the “short term,” she said.
“If down the road ... we can't find a sweet spot where there's a bond that we can pass, then there may be some things that would have to be cut. And I can't even imagine what that is right now because we're not going to cut teachers to add classrooms,” she said.
On the west side of the state, Plainwell Community Schools held information sessions, put out mailers, posted on social media and sought feedback through a survey between their first bond failure in May 2024 and the second this November.
Based on feedback, Superintendent Matthew Montange said the second attempt was smaller and more focused than the first. Still, he isn’t surprised the bond failed again “in hindsight.”
“But going in, we felt pretty good,” he said. “And I think there's some work to do on our end in terms of the different constituency groups that we're speaking with.”
He said there was a lot of communication with parents, who were generally supportive. But there was a “big contingency” on Facebook that the district may have missed.
“In hindsight their message was out there and it was stronger than we thought,” Montange said. “So we're seeing the impact of that. And the fact is the voters turned it down, so they're not interested in it at this point. So we've got to go back to the drawing board and decide what we want to do moving forward.”
And, Montange recognizes that while the district wasn’t asking for a millage increase, the existing rate that they were asking voters to renew was “one of the higher ones in the area” at 10.55 mills – $10 per $1,000 of assessed property value.
The Plainwell superintendent said he expects the district to wait until at least 2027 to try again.
“I don't think we're in any sort of dire situation by any means. But we do have to be careful with our funds and be selective in terms of what we want to do,” Montange said. The district expects to use up its existing $5.6 million capital projects funds and $2 million emergency fund to handle key projects, like air conditioning at two schools.
In the meantime, Montange hopes to increase the district’s connection to the community. One part of that will be broadcasting school board meetings, so community members can get a better look into how officials they elected discuss and decide on things like bond proposals.
All three superintendents said the bond failures do not reflect a lack of interest or care about education in their respective communities overall.
“I think in this election cycle there were a lot of forces in play that really weren't focused on the community and weren't focused on the needs of our children,” said Roscommon Superintendent Catherine Erickson. “This has been, and it continues to be, a supportive community of the school. We want to provide the best education we can for our students. And we know that that means going to school in some place that is warm and dry and safe.”
