St. Joseph Public Schools — MI
1. Snapshot
Suburb-Small district on Lake Michigan in Berrien County (south of Benton Harbor, north of Niles), 2,930 students across 5 schools (St. Joseph HS, Upton MS, Brown/Clarke/Lincoln Elementaries). SAIPE poverty 4.4% — one of the lowest in the failed-bond cohort. Demographics 73% White / 8% Black / 8% Hispanic / 6% Asian / 6% Multiracial — the most diverse in this MI batch. Per-pupil expenditure $12,078 (FY2020) — at the bottom of the peer band.
2. Why this was a hard sell — community context (ACS)
| Metric | St. Joseph | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Median household income | $94,787 | Comfortable |
| Median home value | $260,200 | Above MI median |
| Bachelor’s+ | 49.1% | High — top quartile nationally |
| Graduate degree | 19.0% | High |
| Professional occupation | 56.1% | Majority white-collar — highest in this batch |
| Owner-occupied | 77.9% | Moderately high |
| Non-English household | 8.6% | Highest non-English in this MI batch |
| Gini index | 0.444 | Moderate |
This is a high-information, college-educated, professional-class community — a profile that should support school bonds. The fact that an organized opposition group (Vote No St. Joe) formed and the bond lost 58/42 in a community with 49% bachelor’s+ attainment is the diagnostic: in a sophisticated electorate, specifics matter more than enthusiasm. The bond lost on substance, not on tax fatigue.
3. Peer comparison
Top-10 peers via MCP (default weights + 0.20 plantOps emphasis). FMX-customer status now resolved against opted-in local benchmarking server.
| # | Peer | State | Enrollment | Per-pupil | SAIPE poverty | Similarity | FMX customer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Harper Creek Community Schools | MI | 2,778 | $12,403 | 11.1% | 0.955 | — |
| 2 | Yorktown Community Schools | IN | 2,793 | $10,979 | 9.5% | 0.940 | — |
| 3 | Bangor Township Schools | MI | 2,691 | $10,649 | 16.5% | 0.931 | — |
| 4 | Muscle Shoals City | AL | 2,979 | $12,469 | 14.2% | 0.921 | — |
| 5 | Templeton Unified | CA | 2,215 | $12,758 | 10.9% | 0.914 | — |
| 6 | Clarkston School District | WA | 2,495 | $13,669 | 17.7% | 0.910 | — |
| 7 | Harrison County | KY | 2,982 | $12,680 | 19.0% | 0.910 | — |
| 8 | Lakeshore School District (Berrien) | MI | 2,635 | $11,808 | 7.1% | 0.910 | — |
| 9 | Pendleton SD 16 | OR | 2,929 | $13,382 | 12.4% | 0.909 | — |
| 10 | Jasper City | AL | 2,950 | $12,284 | 22.5% | 0.909 | — |
Confirmed FMX customers in top 15 (1): Marysville Public Schools (MI).
4. The gap story (what the data would have shown voters)
St. Joseph’s facilities investment is near the peer median — and that’s the problem. The bond pitched a fix for “buckets under leaking ceilings” while the data showed the district was already spending in line with peers, just at the bottom of the band. The opposition spotted this and won the substance argument.
- Plant operations spending: $1,100.57 / pupil vs national median $1,324 — 17% below national median, but middle of its named peer set (peers $844–$1,172, median $1,047). St. Joseph is not underspending vs immediate peers — it’s slightly above median.
- Capital construction outlay (FY2020): $1.12M total district-wide. Low for a 5-building district. The “buckets under leaking ceilings” superintendent quote is consistent with the data — capital outlay is being deferred.
- Per-pupil instruction $6,712 — middle of peer band ($5,081–$7,557). Standard.
- 0 nurses across 5 schools. Yorktown IN (peer) has 4 nurses for 4 schools; Harper Creek has 1; Bangor Twp has 0. St. Joseph is tied for worst nurse staffing in its named peer set despite being in the wealthiest community of the group.
- Counselor ratio 324.6:1 — best in the peer set (peers 324–465, median 376). One specific area of strength.
- Chronic absenteeism 16.5% — middle of peer band (peer median 17.9%). St. Joseph HS at 21.5%, Upton MS at 17.7%. Notably better than Niles’ 24.1% and Bangor’s 24.5%.
- Suspension rate 2.0% — the lowest in the entire peer set (peers 7.1%–17.9%, median 9.2%). Climate is calm. This contradicts a “bond is about safety” framing.
- Total expulsions: 0. Zero expulsions across 5 schools — clean discipline record.
The peer data essentially says: St. Joseph is adequately resourced compared to nearby peers. That’s exactly what the “Vote No St. Joe” group used.
FMX peer operational benchmarks (live)
Pulled live from fmxFacilities for each confirmed FMX-customer peer above. These are the actual operational profiles St. Joseph is being measured against — and what the next campaign can cite directly.
| FMX peer | Bldgs | Total sqft | Portfolio age | Resolution rate | Cost/sqft | WO/1K sqft | HVAC % of WOs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marysville Public Schools (MI, 90% similarity) | 8 | — | — | 91.7% | — | — | 16.2% |
Most peers above have partial snapshots — they’re FMX customers but several operational fields (sqft, cost-per-sqft, portfolio age) haven’t been backfilled yet. The presence of FMX-customer peers at high similarity is still the load-bearing outreach signal: comparable districts are on the platform; the FMX team should validate whether their data layer is mature enough to cite.
5. Bond history (Ballotpedia + news)
- 2010, 2014, 2016: prior bonds passed (opposition leader Teresa Espino: “Right now, I’m paying a bond from 2010, 2014, and 2016, so we are already paying” — district was servicing debt through ~2035)
- May 2024: $98.5M bond (this one), failed 3,464 No / 2,554 Yes (58/42)
- Nov 2025: ~$60M follow-up bond, “without raising the millage rate” (Superintendent Kristen Bawks — leadership change since failure)
The 3-prior-bond stack is the structural issue: a community already servicing debt from three approved bonds is the opposite of Lake Fenton or Saginaw Twp (no current school debt). Stacked-bond fatigue is real and was the opposition’s strongest argument.
6. What voters / opposition actually said
This is the strongest, most-named opposition in this entire batch:
- Vote No St. Joe — organized committee with named leadership (Teresa Espino, head)
- Espino: “Right now, I’m paying a bond from 2010, 2014, and 2016, so we are already paying” — quantified the stacked-debt argument
- Espino on the early childhood center: “They want to buy a new building for a preschool… but they want the taxpayers to actually build the building” — flagged the $11.7M Gard Street acquisition as taxpayer-subsidizing a tuition-funded program. This was the single most damaging line item in the bond.
- Espino on amenities: “Adding counseling rooms and gyms and new playgrounds is just a big ask” — separated needs-from-wants
- Vote No St. Joe explicitly acknowledged genuine needs (Upton MS roof, flooring, heating) — credibility move that made the opposition harder to dismiss
- Superintendent Jenny Fee: “We will be regrouping because there’s things in the district that need to be addressed… we were putting buckets under our ceilings that were leaking in school buildings” — strong roof-condition imagery but came after the loss, not in the campaign
Espino’s “needs vs wants” framing is the textbook how-to-defeat-a-bond playbook. The district had no counter-narrative grounded in per-building condition data.
7. What we could have told them
- “Upton Middle School roof, flooring, heating — even the opposition agrees these are real. The bond was 100% these things plus $11.7M for a preschool building. If we’d split the ballot — Upton + roofs as Question 1, Gard Street ECC as Question 2 — Question 1 would have passed and the opposition would have lost their strongest argument.” Single most important strategic finding for the Nov 2025 follow-up.
- “Our plant ops spend is $1,101/pupil — middle of our peer set. The bond isn’t ‘catch up to peers,’ it’s ‘replace systems that have hit end of life.’ That’s a building-specific argument — and we needed building-specific data to make it.” Diagnose the campaign framing.
- “0 nurses across 5 schools. Yorktown IN, a 2,793-student same-locale peer, has 4. Of the 4 nearby MI districts most like us, we tie with Bangor Township for the worst nurse staffing.” Concrete, peer-named.
- “Suspension rate 2.0% — the lowest of any district in our peer set. Expulsions: 0. The ‘safety’ framing of the bond didn’t match our climate data, and voters could feel the disconnect. The next ask needs to be about building condition, not ‘school safety.’” Calibrate the messaging.
- For the Nov 2025 $60M follow-up: Espino’s “needs vs wants” frame is still live. The follow-up bond should explicitly publish the needs/wants ratio: e.g., “$45M roofs/boilers/HVAC, $10M security, $5M classroom modernization, $0 new construction.” Pre-empt the opposition’s strongest argument by adopting their language.
8. FMX outreach hook
St. Joseph now has 1 confirmed FMX-customer peers in the top 15 peer set. The outreach team has live proof points — these are not “likely customers, validate later,” they are named, opted-in, and their operational data is queryable today:
- Marysville Public Schools (MI, 213 mi, enrollment 2,671, 90% similarity) (
marysvillepublicschools.gofmx.com): work-order resolution 91.7%; HVAC is 16.2% of work orders; 8 buildings tracked.
Opener for the call: “Your top-similarity peers include Marysville Public Schools (MI) — both already running FMX. They publish work-order resolution rates, HVAC burden, and per-building cost data your bond campaign couldn’t cite. We can have your portfolio benchmarked against them inside 60 days, in time for your next ballot ask.”
Lead the call against the contact named in the spreadsheet (Director of Operations / CFO / Superintendent as applicable). Validate the named FMX peers above against the internal customer list before outbound — these were resolved via the MCP unredacted endpoint on the local server.