So, your school district failed its bond or levy in February. Your administration, staff, and school board are probably feeling a lot of emotions right now – hurt, disappointment, maybe even anger.
Here are the WRONG questions to ask after you fail a measure:
- “Maybe the message wasn’t widespread enough?”
- “Maybe we just need to get more people to vote?”
- “Maybe our community doesn’t support their schools?”
This train of thought leads far too many school districts to make the same mistakes time-and-time again:
- Bad: The district runs the measure over-and-over again until it passes
- Worst: The district lowers the requested amount and runs it again.
You’re not going to build community support by beating your voters to death with your measure.
- At best, you’ll pass the next measure, but lower overall throughout the district, plus, if you lowered the measure amount, you’ll teach your voters that they can “negotiate” the price down on future measures by voting “no” the first time out.
- At worst, you’ll fail the next measure, lower community support for your schools in the future, and your voters will think your district didn’t actually need the things you were asking for since you’ll naturally have to continue operations without the funding asked for in the measure.
Here are the RIGHT questions to ask after you fail a measure:
- “Did we involve our community in the decision process?”
- “Did we perform enough community outreach to find out what our community would support?”
- “Does our community actually know the state of our schools?”
You failed your measure.
It’s an awful feeling.
We agree.
So, what do you do now?
Get in touch with edTactics.
edTactics knows how difficult running a school district can be because we’ve been there. We know what you’re going through, and, more importantly, we know how to help you.
We are seasoned veterans in education. We’re not fresh out of college or trying to apply business tactics to a field where they don’t work – we know education because we are educators.
edTactics wants all school districts to succeed. Successful school districts make successful students.
Call us at (360) 566-7616 for a free consultation or, if you prefer, you can also reach out to us via email.
We look forward to hearing from you!
Sincerely,
Art Edgerly & Eric Jacobson
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