After months or maybe even years of planning, you've finally made it to the end of your school bond election. No matter the outcome of your election, you have a job to do going forward.
Related resources
What comes next, regardless of your election outcome.
How passing a school bond has changed over the past decade.
An insider's guide to school bonds
Dale Scott teaches the importance of strategizing, preparing, and campaigning for a bond.
Stories of successful school tax elections.
This former superintendent shares insights from decades of experience both leading and consulting school referendum campaigns.
Lessons from over 50 districts on the path to bond success.
Transcript
Tyler Vawser: So I'm Tyler Vawser. I head of our marketing and media team. I work really closely with Melissa, who's our editor.
Melissa Hite: So a little bit about SchoolCEO, if you're not familiar. We are a school marketing magazine for superintendents, communications directors, and other school leaders published by Apptegy, as Tyler mentioned. And we use original research and perspectives to explore all aspects of school leadership, communication, and culture, and that does include a lot about bond referendums. So up there on the screen, you can see our three bond focused issues. The first two are from a few years ago, but the rightmost one was from the summer of twenty twenty three.
And those issues are great resources on this subject. We'll scratch the surface a little bit today, but in those issues, we have Q and As from bond experts and consultants. We have case studies on successful bond campaigns. One of them has an article outlining the five essential stages for planning and executing your bond, and a lot more.
There's so much in there. A recent reader survey we put out, our friend Rick Cobb, who's the superintendent of Mid-Del Schools in Oklahoma, said much of the blueprint for our successful school bond election last year came from the pages of SchoolCEO. We're going to go through a few things, in this presentation. We're going to start, by taking a general look at the state of school bonds, and the results of this year's bond elections.
Next, we're going to talk about what you should do if your recent referendum failed. And then finally, we're gonna end on a high note, as our CEO likes to say, and talk about what you should do if your bond referendum passed. So that's a little bit happier.
So let's get into it.
So first, we're going to look at the current state of school bonds. And just a note before we get started, the laws around bonds vary widely from state to state, as I'm sure that you know. So this is actually a pretty difficult topic to give universally applicable advice on. So we've done our absolute best to make sure that we're giving you info that's helpful for everyone. But just a disclaimer as we get going, be sure you do your own state specific research on this topic and make sure you're legally in the clear on anything that you're doing as you start to conduct your bond campaign.
So if you've been in education for a while, you probably feel that passing a school bond has changed a little bit in even the last few years. But what has actually changed?
Here at SchoolCEO, we've noticed three key things.
So the first is that the environment is more political and more polarized. I doubt that that's a shock to any of you because I'm sure you're seeing it in other aspects of your work as well, not just bond campaigns. But there are a few ways that that increased polarization could impact your bond. If your board is polarized, it might have a harder time getting unilateral support for your bond.
You might run into stronger, more vocal opposition to your bond. And because trust in public institutions, including public schools is declining, you might need to work harder both during your bond campaign and, even before and after your bond campaign to build your community's trust. So second bonds are just more expensive than they used to be, and that higher price tag comes with increased scrutiny. So there are a few reasons for those increased costs, but the primary one is inflation.
I'm sure we've all seen the effects of inflation on our personal lives, and it's affected the world's school bonds as well. It just costs more than it did ten years ago now to get the same work done.
And then finally, especially in our post COVID reality, communicating about your bond, just the pure logistics of communicating is a lot more complicated than it's ever been. You know, once upon a time, for better or worse, most people got their information from the local media.
And as you know, that's just not true anymore. You've got your website, you've got social media, you've got email newsletters, you've got in person events.
And because your bond needs support from your entire surrounding community and not just your families, you can't really afford to skip any of those communication channels. So that's a lot of work and it makes everything a little bit more difficult.
So let's look at some data from this year. In twenty twenty four so far, including last week's elections, we've seen more than two thousand one hundred bonds and levies on ballots across the country this year. This data is from school bond finder. Districts in all but school, all but two states, Wyoming and Hawaii held referendums.
And across all of those elections, seventy two percent passed. That's pretty far par for the course. Historically, about three out of every four bonds passed nationally in a in a given year.
And altogether, that's resulted in one hundred and eight billion dollars in bond funding for schools. And because of the way bond cycles work, there are still a few elections that will happen this year that haven't happened yet. So that number could go up as well as the passage percentage. So overall, not bad.
So before we get going into what to do if your bond passed or failed, I wanted to open it up for a little discussion.
Did your district have a bond or levy on the ballot last week or anytime this year? And if so, how did it go? You can answer in the chat if you would prefer, or you can raise your little hand emoji and, Tyler can unmute you so you can share with us.
Tyler Vawser: And Melissa, can you see the chat on your side?
Melissa Hite: I one second. I can make it so I can. I can.
Tyler Vawser: Cool. Since I'm sharing, go ahead and you can monitor the chat directly.
Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Valonia, go ahead.
I think you can unmute yourself. Yep, there you Okay.
Valonia W: Hi. So we successfully passed our bond in May twenty twenty four. It was the first time we had gone to our community for a bond in eighteen years.
And we had both, we had two propositions. One was mostly safety security. And then we did have an athletics proposition. As we know, those are hard to pass a lot of times because your community feels like it might not be as important as something more that affects more students.
But our community showed up and I'm very grateful. It was a lot of hard work. And I just wanted to thank you all for sending over some of your SchoolCEO magazines that had a lot of great bond information. So I appreciate that.
Melissa Hite: You're so welcome. I'm so glad that those were helpful. And if any of you would like for us to send you one of those, we call them bond bundles, of those three print editions, if you would put that in the chat that you would like to receive one of those, we can make sure that we can get one of those out in the mail to you, if that would be helpful.
Brittany mentioned in the chat that twenty one out of twenty two referendums passed in Florida. That's fantastic.
Yeah, we can keep going. I saw we had some people in the chat that failed also, so we can get into what to do if your bond failed.
So, you know, we're starting out with a tough one, honestly, obviously. And if this is the position that you're in right now, I'm so sorry. It's incredibly disappointing to see months of work end this way. But even in the face of that disappointment, it's really important first and foremost, not to lose heart. You know, a failure isn't an opportunity to beat yourself up. It's an opportunity to learn from the experience and prepare to move forward. So that's what we're gonna talk about here, how you can move forward.
The very first thing that you should do after a bond vote fails is conduct what's called a post election analysis or PEA. So basically what a PEA does is it takes the demographics of your entire registered voter base, so everyone who could have voted in your election, and compares it to everyone who actually did turn up to vote. In the US, no election ever sees anywhere close to one hundred percent turnout among registered voters. So those numbers are actually pretty different, and comparing them will help you see what you might have done wrong or what you could improve upon in the future.
This is honestly a helpful step even if you won, but it's particularly important if you lost. So for the magazine, we've spoken a few times with Doctor. Don Lifto, who is a former superintendent who now consults for schools on referendums. And he puts it after winning the PEA paints a demographic picture of how you won, but after losing, it provides a roadmap for what needs to change in the demographics of turnout to get a successful outcome next time. Okay?
So in order to conduct your PEA, you first need to obtain a voter file for your local community. And a voter file can tell you a lot of things. It can tell you the names and addresses of all the registered voters in your community. It can tell you which voters actually cast ballots in past elections, including this most recent one, and also demographic info for those voters, such as their party affiliation, their gender, their race, etcetera. It's super important to note a voter file cannot tell you how anyone actually voted.
Your vote, if you vote, is one hundred percent private. So you won't be able to tell from the voter file whether someone voted yes or no on your bond or levy. You'll just be able to tell whether they voted at all. But there's a lot that you can kind of determine from that as we'll get into. So the process for obtaining that voter file data varies from state to state. But in general, you can get a voter file for election research from the county or state agency that oversaw your election.
Commercial vendors are also an easier and potentially more cost effective option. Doctor. Lifto recommends L2, which is a commercial vendor based in Washington State.
But whatever you decide to do, you need to get your hands on that voter file, and that will be the basis for your PEA.
So there's a lot that a PEA can tell you, but we're going to focus here on three major factors, and that's parent turnout, non parent supporter turnout, and also the timing of your election.
So as you look at your election results, you always want to see your district's parents and guardians overrepresented.
And what this means is if, say, thirty percent of the registered voters in your community are parents with kids in your schools, you want more than thirty percent of the people who actually voted in that election to be parents. Again, you don't know from the voter file how anyone actually voted, but parents typically vote yes on school bonds because they and their kids are the people who most directly benefit from a bond measure. Right? So this is one of the easiest things for a bond campaign to get right. So if when you look at those numbers, parents are underrepresented, that's a sign that you were extremely out of touch with what your parents and families actually wanted and needed from this bond. So before your next campaign, you're going to want to consult with your community way more extensively, especially parents, to make sure you have alignment between what the bond is promising and what parents and families actually want.
So even if parents are overrepresented though, you want to maximize the parent vote.
In a perfect world, one hundred percent of your district's parents who are registered to vote would have voted in your bond election, right? If you didn't get that one hundred percent, which you probably didn't because that's very difficult, you want to figure out which parents didn't turn out to vote and then kind of theorize as to why those parents didn't make it to the ballot box. So you can do this by isolating your parent data into smaller categories.
For example, let's say some neighborhoods saw a stronger parent turnout than others. If that's the case, can you see anything in your messaging or strategy that might have led to that outcome?
You know, maybe parents who did not turn out to vote couldn't see what their particular neighborhood school stood to gain from the bond. You know, maybe next go round you can hit that geographic area a little harder in your campaigning. Whatever patterns you see, recognizing those patterns and asking why they're there will help you figure out how to alter your strategy next time. Okay?
So next you wanna focus on your supporters who aren't district parents. So throughout your campaign, you should have identified supporters of the bond, you know, people that you were confident would vote yes.
What you're gonna do is compare that list to the actual election day data and see what percentage of those supporters actually made it to the polls.
Ideally, this group should also be overrepresented. Again, that just means if, say, twenty percent of your registered voters were identified as supporters, you want supporters to make up more than twenty percent of those who actually showed up.
And then if supporters aren't overrepresented, or even if they are, you're going to do exactly what you did with your parent data. You're going to break it down further and look for those patterns. So Doctor. Lifto recommends looking specifically at gender, age, party affiliation, and geographic location.
And again, as you see those patterns emerging, ask yourself why emerging. Let's say that turnout was low among your identified supporters who are senior citizens. Why might that be? Maybe those people don't drive anymore.
Maybe they couldn't drive themselves to the polls. Next go round, you might want to focus on coordinating more rides to the polls. Everyone's data is going to look different, so I can't tell you exactly what you'll find here. But more than likely, you'll see that people of a certain age or party or neighborhood, what have you, were less represented than others.
And you can use that information to kind of adjust your strategy for next time.
So the timing of your election could also play a role in whether your bond passes or fails. It's easy to think that all elections are the same, but other issues and candidates that are on the ballot with your bond measure affect things like overall voter turnout, which in turn affect whether or not your bond passes.
Different states have different laws on this, so you might not actually have much choice in when you run your bond election. But if you do have control over that, it's a factor to consider.
So according to data from FairVote, which is a nonpartisan research organization that investigates voter turnout, registered voter turnout in the US hovers around sixty percent for presidential elections and around forty percent for midterm elections.
Turnout in local odd year elections is generally even lower, usually less than twenty seven percent. So what is better for a bond election?
It kind of depends. If you don't have a lot of community support for your bond, you don't necessarily want a higher turnout that will be mostly made up of no voters.
So if you ask bond experts like Doctor. Lifto, the general rule of thumb, and I want to hit general very hard, is to look at your demographics and especially the party affiliations of voters in your area. Again, in general, big generalization, but you kind of have to generalize with this. In general, Republicans are more likely not to oppose or are more likely to oppose school bonds, and Democrats are more likely to support them.
So if you live in a pretty blue area, a high voter turnout like you would get in a presidential election year like we just had will probably help you out. If your community is pretty red, you might want to go for a mid term or even odd year election. And of course, like I said, that's a generalization. There are plenty of Republicans that do support school bonds. There are Democrats that don't. But just in general, that is the way that things tend to go.
So another thing to think about is the timing of your bond election in relation to your last bond election. And Tyler, our VP of Marketing, talked to Dale Scott about this. He's the president of the election consulting firm DSNC. Tyler, do you want to talk about this a little bit?
Tyler Vawser: Yeah. So I put the link in the chat earlier, and we'll send an email out after probably tomorrow morning, where you'll get all the resources that Melissa's already talked about. But one of the things that Dale Scott brought up is most school districts, part of their messaging for a bond is that, like, we need this money and we need it now, and it's really critical.
But then he sees too often that if you lose the bond and it doesn't go your way, that the response is to wait three or four years until there's a better time and you feel more confident that it will pass. But that can actually backfire because people are hearing on one hand that it's critical and you need it right now. And then they see that we wait for years and then we tell them it's critical again. And so his advice is if you use, you know, it's critical, we need it now right away as part of your messaging, You should actually try to get it back on the ballot as fast as possible. That makes sense with some of those other guidelines that Melissa just shared around timing and presidential elections and that kind of thing based on your community. So that's one of the really key things that he talks about.
The other thing that I learned from this was a lot of times when we're writing language for ballots, that's coming from politicians or attorneys or different people that are involved in the political process.
And a lot of that has to be that way. But he makes the good point that lawyers are not great marketers. And so, obviously, you need a lawyer to approve how your ballot measure shows up, but try to be involved in that process and talk about the benefits. Because for many voters, they may not have fully researched this beforehand. And so when they are sitting in the ballot box and they're trying to make a decision, it really matters how that is crafted and the way that you propose it. So he encourages where you can and different laws in different states, you know, have your mileage may vary here a little bit, but try to get involved where you can about how it's written into the ballot so that it's not just lawyer speak and that it's accessible to everyday people.
Melissa Hite: All right. Tyler, so we're gonna have another quick discussion break.
For those of you whose bonds failed, what do you plan to do differently next time around, whether based on anything we just said or based on things that you've already thought of on your own?
Again, feel free to either talk in the chat or out loud, whatever you prefer. Go ahead, Valerie.
Go ahead.
Valerie: Awesome. So our bond failed miserably. But I think I was actually in a misconception that I couldn't do a lot of campaigning as the district. So we very much just did, like, this kind of fax thing that I probably wasn't very well received.
But I'm getting the vibe that I can probably do more than I did.
That's, that's, obviously checking with lawyers.
Yeah, it's a good point.
Melissa Hite: Well, you can't. So as the district, typically, in most states, you can't ask people to vote yes. You can ask people to vote, you can give them all the information, but you can ask people to vote yes. And that is really difficult and an uphill battle for a lot of school districts.
We can get some articles in the chat on this. Something that tends to be really key is working with an outside advocacy group made up of parents or, other community advocates, because those people can tell people to vote yes. You know, you can funnel all of that information to those people, and then they, because they're not using public funds, can one hundred percent go out and tell people to vote yes. So having advocates that are on your side that don't work for the school district is super key in bond elections.
And I'm so glad you mentioned that because that is a great point because it is, it can be very difficult to campaign when you can't actually ask people to vote yes. You just have to ask them to vote and kind of, you know, give them any information and get them to make the connection on their own. So having those advocates is super key.
Valerie: Yeah. And we went in thinking we had that advocacy group, but it never really took off.
Melissa Hite: Yeah. It's tough.
Tyler Vawser: Other thing I'll add from the Dale Scott podcast, which I really encourage you to listen to, is he talked about how you might have like a super advocate. Right. So maybe it's a parent or a community member that just absolutely loves your schools and they are the type of person that you need to engage. But that person can still only vote once.
Right. And so it doesn't matter if you have a really, really passionate group of one hundred voters. Right. What you need is those voters to go engage and have those conversations. And so just like Melissa said, where you have those people, even if it's a small group, don't kind of bank on their passion for the votes instead bank on their passion to help educate other people in that process.
Melissa Hite: That's a great point. I really like Kevin's comment too in the chat. Kevin, I'm so sorry that your bond didn't pass, but I love the idea of, you know, building that coalition of local influencers, you know, that that is also key if you get people, you know, whether they're faith leaders or, you know, other other figures that have a lot of respect in your local community, if you can get them kind of on your side and advocating for your bond, especially if they have any kind of a local platform, that's gonna be really helpful as well.
Well, we can get into the second part, which is a little bit more fun, more upbeat, what to do if your bond passed.
So as we get started, we can get a little discussion going in the chat too. I don't want to take up too much time on that. But if your bond passed, what do you think that you did right? And do you have any advice for those who are less fortunate?
And we can kind of start, we can go back and hit those as we get going in the rest of the presentation.
So our first piece of advice is if your bond passed, you need to get started on your bond projects as soon as you possibly can.
Any construction projects take a while to complete, so it's not like you're going to be able to snap your fingers and just suddenly there's a new school building. And depending on the size of your district and your bond package, you might have several buildings on the docket or not just buildings, other improvement projects. But the sooner you can get started on those projects and finish them, the better off you'll be. And there are a few reasons for that.
First, the sooner you get those projects finished, the sooner kids will be able to enjoy them, obviously. But that means that more of your parents who voted yes on this bond will get to see their own kids reaping the benefits, right? Let's say I have an eighth grader and one of your bond projects is to build a new high school. You know, if that project isn't going to be done for five or six years, my kid is going to be out of school by the time that high school opens, so they won't get to enjoy it. But if you work on a more aggressive schedule, parents will be able to see those new facilities or that improved HVAC system or whatever it is firsthand because their kids will actually get to enjoy those schools.
And that's going to build their trust in your district.
Second, the quicker you can get projects done, the less likely it is that inflation will drive up costs. You know, we talked a little bit about how inflation is changing school bond campaigns, and this is one of those effects. If you have a bond schedule that goes out ten years, in ten years, that construction project might cost way more than it did when you got your initial budget approved, which can cause all kinds of problems. You might have to go out for a bond again to ask for more money, which can, you know, damage people's trust in your district. And it might jeopardize the project getting done at all. So the faster you can get stuff done, the less likely it is that you're going to have those problems with inflation.
And then finally getting started as soon as possible shows your community you're making good on the promise of your bond. You know, if people can see that, wow, they're already, you know, they've already got bulldozers out there, or they're already, you know, if people can see that you're working, that builds trust that will help you pass the next bond that you need to pass, you know.
So a great example of this is Blue Valley Schools in Kansas. Their last two bond elections, one was in twenty twenty and the other was in twenty twenty three, both passed with more than seventy percent support, which is a pretty large margin.
And they attribute that success partially to their aggressive bond schedule. So projects from the twenty twenty bond wrapped up in twenty twenty three, and they hope to have all the projects from their twenty twenty three bond finished in twenty twenty six. So we're talking like three year cycles. And these aren't small projects either. You know, in the twenty twenty bond, they were working on three new high school gyms and a performing arts space, among other things.
In the twenty twenty three bond, they're working on a brand new middle school. So, I mean, these are big construction projects, and it's tough to get all that work done on such a compressed schedule, but for them, it's worth it. When I talked to them, their Deputy Superintendent, his name's Kyle Hayden, he told me when people see results, they're going to be positive when it comes to the next referendum. So it's like we said a minute ago, getting started early builds that trust for the next bond that you need to pass.
The next thing you should do after your bond passes is make your website a hub for information about your bond and its progress. So you probably already have a page on your site dedicated to your bond campaign, But it might be tempting to think that now that the boat is over, you just don't need to update that page anymore, and that's not the case. You want to make that page the go to place for updates about construction and anything else related to your bond. Okay?
So Blue Valley is also a great example of this. They have, a great Bond twenty twenty three page up right now, where you can find detailed information about all of their upcoming projects. And something that I think is really smart is they've broken it out by school. You can find these branded PDFs that I have up on the screen, for each campus that explains the particular projects for those specific schools, as well as the schools that they feed into. So you can see there, you know, the elementary school one also has the middle school that elementary school feeds into. So that allows families to easily see exactly how the bond will impact their own children, not just right now at the schools that they go to now, but where they'll go the next three years, the next five years, all of that. And their bond page also offers links to board presentations about the bond, budgetary information, just all kinds of information about the bond and its progress.
Outside of Blue Valley, also have, Long Beach Unified School District in California, has passed three bonds in the last ten years, worth four point four million dollars dollars. So, you know, we're talking big money. And on their bond page, they have this great, interactive timeline where you can see completed in progress or scheduled progress at each of their eighty four schools. And, you know, those little boxes that you can see on the actual page, you can click on them and it gives you photos and artist renderings and descriptions and construction start dates and projected completion dates. If it's a project that's already finished, you have photos of the finished project.
So you and you can see upcoming projects by school year and if construction timeline stretching all the way to two thousand and thirty. So with just a few clicks, any member of the school community can easily find what's coming for their campus. So again, this is all about building that trust so that people see that you are making good on what you're doing.
And finally, you want to provide frequent updates about your project progress as much as possible.
It's great and even essential to have all of that info on your website, but not everyone is going to go to your website looking for updates. Really involved people are, or maybe especially critical people are. But a lot of people are going to need you to push that information out in front of them for them to see it. You know, getting started on your bond projects early and making good on those promises only matters if your community actually knows that you're doing that. So you have to communicate, communicate, communicate in lots of different ways.
At Blue Valley, Kyle Hayden, that deputy superintendent I talked to, frequently updates the district's board advisory committees at monthly meetings, with photos of the finished work, of the construction, all of that. So that is a good touch point with people in the community, just, you know, keeping it top of mind, keeping it in front of people once a month, showing people where they are. Those presentations are often linked on that bond page I mentioned as well. So going back to keeping that website updated and a hub for information.
They also have a great quarterly magazine, which I love quarterly magazines, called Blue Valley Today, and they highlight progress in that publication as well. So you can see an example on the slide, a write up of the opening of a new school with great pictures of kids actually using this building.
And the great thing about this is that this magazine doesn't only go out to families, they mail it out to the district's entire community. So even people without a direct connection to the district are staying updated on where their tax dollars are going.
And then, at Barrington School District two twenty in Illinois, they're using great photos both on their website and on social media, among other things. They have a lot of great strategies.
But I wanted to highlight these photos in particular that they've put on their social media and on their website, highlighting new spaces once they're finished and in use. So on the left there, you've got Barrington High School's new culinary arts lab. And on the right, you've got their new dance studio. And something I love about these photos is how active they are.
You know, it's one thing to see an impressive new space, and see how beautiful and shiny and new it is. But it's totally another to see students actually using those spaces. And I think that's so effective. It really drives home that this was a good investment for this community and that kids are benefiting from it.
And this is something that I don't have on a slide, but I was just talking to a superintendent the other day who made a great point about keeping communities up to date about what's going on inside those school buildings as they're finishing being built. You know, a lot of times the outside of a school building is going to get finished before the inside is ready for anybody to move in. And so from the outside to your community, that can look like, Well, that school's done, so why aren't we moving in? What's the delay?
So he, a couple of times a month, will post updates on his social media of him just walking through a construction zone inside one of those schools that looks finished from the outside, showing what's going on on the inside, all the construction that's still taking place so that to your community, it doesn't look like, you know, you're just stalling or things are done and you're not letting people in yet. You know, and that's another great way to let people into the process and see that you are making good on those promises. You are hard at work. It's just not quite ready for people to move in yet.
Tyler Vawser: I think this is such a good example of, like, good marketing. Right? Like, photo without the students in them is just a space, and it could be anywhere. Right?
But when you have the students wearing the the school colors and they're actively using it, and if you have the ability to do video, right, which anyone does with an iPhone, it's even better if you can turn a photo like this into some kind of video that can be shared and people can really see the space and see themselves there. And then, of course, where you can invite people into those spaces. Right? If you've completed a bond and you've completed the building, it's really important to get people into those spaces so that they can experience that themselves.
I've had the chance to go to a few districts where very small districts, but they had a new gym that had been built and some new facilities. And it was one thing to see the photos on the website, and it's something completely else to be in that space and seeing a basketball game or seeing it be used the way that it was intended to. So where you can, invite the community into your doors so that they can experience that firsthand.
And one thing I'll add to that too is that sounds nice if you've, you've completed the building. But for those of you that your bond hasn't been successful or the building's not done yet, I've talked to some superintendents where they've actually brought the community into the buildings that need to be rebuilt or that need serious repairs to help them understand just how serious the situation is. And I can't remember the name of the superintendent, but there was a district in Montana that held their bond information campaigns in one of the newer buildings, and then they would walk them for the meal afterwards to one of the older buildings, where they could see just the difference between something new and something old.
And that's really what helped them pass their bonds and realize the community realized that, hey. You know what? Like, we don't wanna walk in the middle of the winter from building a to building b, and we can see how much this needs to be replaced. And that's what won them over, which is totally different than reading about it on a website.
Right? So where you can show people and even better is get people to be involved and walk into the buildings, whether it's old or new.
Melissa Hite: That's a great point, Tyler.
So when I talked to Doctor. Tanya Merrigan, who's the superintendent of Blue Valley, who we've used as example a few times throughout this presentation, she summed it up really well, I think. She says, communication is key. You want the community to be as excited as you are. So talk about it all the time in whatever ways you can.
This has so many benefits, and not only builds excitement in your community for those bond projects that you're working on, but more importantly, like we've been talking about, it builds trust.
And that just starts a virtuous cycle that will hopefully keep you passing bonds over and over and over again, because your community sees that you're good stewards of that money.
So we'll have time for one more discussion break. For those of you whose bonds passed, what are your next steps? And we can also bring in some of that discussion from before about what advice do you have, if any, for people whose bonds didn't pass.
And same deal, you can raise your hand or talk in the chat, whatever you prefer.
Yeah, Valonia?
Valonia: So right now, I will tell you that there are lots of meetings that I'm in.
For Bond, actually have one the rest of my afternoon after this meeting is all about Bond.
We will be starting construction soon on our athletic stadium renovations. And so I would just say that my next steps are to continue communicating as we did about our needs for the bond, but showcasing that work, showcasing the meetings that we're having with principals, athletic director, band director, that we are working. I think it's really hard at this part of the bond because you can't see schematic design just yet, right? We don't want to promise our community like a first draft of what a building is going to look like. And so working through that and sharing things that are more open, like meeting, we're talking about it, when the trailer moves in to set up for our new early childhood, getting photos of that and sharing that. We'll also be sending out a newsletter to our community and sharing that with our on social media about all of the updates and projects. So that will be my focus over the next three, four years.
Melissa Hite: Yeah.
I think that's a great point, you know, because no matter how fast you get started, you can't just snap your fingers and suddenly there's a bulldozer there, know, like that that's just not how it works. When I talked to Blue Valley, one of the things that they mentioned, I mean, it's it's it's a little less sexy. It's a little less photogenic, but they even update the community on things like when the bonds go to bid, what rates they came in at, you know, who bought the bonds, all of that.
The fiscal side of things, you know, that's not super exciting, but it's still something that you can share that shows people that you're, you know, you're working on it and you're being good stewards of taxpayer money. That, you know, that's another thing that you can start communicating before you even, you know, get construction equipment on the ground.
Anybody else want to share?
Well, we can move on. That's about all that I've got for you for this presentation. But like I mentioned, there are so many resources both inside SchoolCEO and beyond that can be helpful to you in this. Like I mentioned, we have kind of that bond bundle of three issues in the magazine that are all about school bonds that we would be happy to send to you.
Feel free to drop in the chat again if you would like one of those, if you haven't already. Like Tyler mentioned, that episode of our podcast, An Insider's Guide to School Bonds with Dale Scott is a great resource. Something that we drew heavily on in SchoolCEO and in this presentation is the book School Tax Elections by Doctor. Don Litho and, Barbara Nickel, who's an APR.
It's just a really great in-depth research. If you had any questions about like the technical, like, well, how exactly do I get a voter file? Or how exactly do I, you know, run a geographic analysis? Some of those more in the weeds things than we had time to talk about today, that's an awesome resource.
And then, you know, we have a lot of articles on schoolceo.com that are related to bonds, but weren't necessarily in one of those bond issues. Know, in our most recent issue, we about how to connect your schools with older adults, you know, and senior citizens more because they are critical to bond success, you know? So you want to, even if you're not running a bond campaign, you want to be building those relationships so that in the future when you are running a bond campaign, you know, those relationships are already there and older adults who might not otherwise have a direct connection to your schools do have those connections. So you can find those on schoolceo.com/bonds.
And we'll send out a link to this PowerPoint with all of these links in there so you can, find those easily too. But thank you so much for your time. Thank you for bearing with the technical difficulties.
And Tyler is going to tell us a little bit about our next webinar.
Tyler Vawser: Yeah. One thing to think about, too, with bonds is use it as a way to force yourself to do the right thing, even when there isn't a bond. So what Melissa was just saying about even if you're not going to run a bond for another ten years, there's still a reason why you need to engage the sixty five year old in your community. Right?
Or the young couple that doesn't have kids yet but is expecting to. Right? So the question really is like, can the bond help you build the right habits to tell the great stories that are happening in your school districts all the time, not just capital improvement projects, not just when, you know, a million dollar plus bond gets passed, but how do you think about those everyday moments and that those get shared? If you do that well, right, which is a challenge, but if you do that well, it makes it easier for bonds.
But in general, any initiative that you want to pass that needs community support, anytime you need to call on the community, they're more likely to do that.
Melissa Hite: Yeah, that's a great point, Tyler. Like, want the only time that your community, especially your community that doesn't have kids in your schools yet, you don't want the only time that they hear from you is when you're asking them for money. Know, like that doesn't feel good to them. They're less likely to vote yes if that's the case. So you want to be, you know, a consistent positive presence presence in your community, not just for your parents and families, but for your entire community and kind of build up that bank of trust that you can then cash out on later.
Tyler Vawser: We have another webinar next week on Wednesday, and it's all about enrollment. And we actually have a client that's going be joining us and talk about how they've been approaching enrollment and getting the attention of their community. And so if this is something that you're thinking about, we're here in Little Rock, Arkansas. Arkansas's rules and laws on school choice have changed dramatically in the last few years.
And so you might be in a similar state or you might just be facing general competition, from other districts nearby or private schools or even homeschools. So we'd love for you to join us on that. That'll be next Wednesday, an hour earlier, ten AM central next time. Thank you so much for joining.
We hope you have a great week.
Melissa Hite: Thanks, everyone.
