Frisco ISD — TX

1. Snapshot

Suburb-Large district, 65,289 students across 77 schools straddling Collin and Denton Counties — one of the fastest-growing districts in Texas over the past two decades, now the largest school district in the DFW northern suburbs. SAIPE poverty 3.56% (one of the lowest in the country at this enrollment scale). Demographics 44% Asian / 27% White / 13% Hispanic / 10% Black. Per-pupil expenditure $13,828 (FY2020). Superintendent Todd Fouche took over in 2023 after Mike Waldrip; this was the new administration’s first major ballot ask.

2. Why this was a hard sell — community context (ACS)

The conventional read is “Frisco is rich; the tax base can carry the ask.” That misses what actually killed this bond. With 65% bachelor’s+, Frisco voters are the most analytically literate cohort on the entire failed-bonds list — they read the fine print on a 30-year, $1.08B note. And on Aug 19, 2024, Community Impact flagged exactly what the analytical reader would seize on: even with no tax rate increase claimed on the bond side, the cumulative principal+interest on a 30-year package was projected at roughly $2.1B in lifetime debt service. That math, paired with a separate VATRE that was a tax hike (to plug a $30M operating deficit largely attributed to teacher raises and inflation), gave skeptics a frame: “we’re being asked to fund a deficit and the largest debt issuance in district history in the same election.” The double-ask was the trap — and 57.5% of voters declined to reward it.

3. Peer comparison

Top peers identified via MCP (default weights + plantOps emphasis):

4. The gap story (what the data would have shown voters)

Frisco’s strongest defensible bond justification was buried in plain sight:

• Plant operations: $744.92 / pupil vs national median $1,324 — Frisco spends 44% below the national median on facility upkeep. Elk Grove ($914), Douglas County ($901), and Leander ($805) all outspend Frisco on plant ops despite having broadly similar per-pupil totals. Forsyth County GA at $682 is the only peer that spends less — and Forsyth is famous for its low-cost suburban operations model.
• Per-pupil instruction $6,128.69 is the lowest of the peer comparison set (Forsyth $7,228, Cobb $7,949, Elk Grove $7,737, Douglas $6,205, Leander $6,060). With 20 schools >25 years old on the bond list, Frisco’s “we underinvest both inside and outside the classroom relative to peers” frame was the strongest possible case.
• Capital construction outlay (FY2020): $163.4M — already high in absolute terms, but spread across 77 schools that’s $2.1M/school/year. Reasonable, but voters were being asked to nearly triple that over the bond life.
• Staley Middle replacement was the most concrete line item — and the data backs it up: Staley MS has the highest FRL% (47.2%) of any Frisco middle school, with 19.1% suspension rate and the 6th-highest absenteeism of any school in the district. That single line item was the bond’s strongest standalone pitch.
• Frisco HS chronic absenteeism: 28.5% — the highest in the district despite being the flagship. Frisco HS is a 100-year-old institution; its absenteeism number is a building-condition story dressed up as a behavioral one.

5. Bond history (Ballotpedia + news)

• 2018: $695M bond, passed
• 2014: $775M bond, passed
• 2006: $798M bond, passed
• Nov 2024: $1.08B bond + VATRE, all 4 props failed (Prop B 52% No)

6-year gap between asks, but the cumulative trajectory tells the story: $798M (2006) → $775M (2014) → $695M (2018) → $1.08B (2024). The 2018 ask was a reduction; the 2024 ask was a 55% jump — at the same time district enrollment growth has flattened (from peak ~70K to current ~65K). Frisco’s bond rejection is the second $1B+ Texas bond ever to fail in the same election cycle that rejected Houston ISD’s $4.4B — making 2024 the historic inflection point where Texas voters first said no to billion-dollar school asks at scale.

6. What voters / opposition actually said

Coverage focused less on organized opposition (there wasn’t a strong “No” campaign group, unlike Houston) and more on the bond’s structural problem — that 4 separate ballot items asked voters to compound a yes-vote across an operating tax hike, $986M of facilities debt, $88M of tech debt, and a separate stadium item. Voters could split votes:

• KERA News: “Frisco ISD voters soundly rejected nearly $1.1 billion in bonds.” All 4 failed within ~5 percentage points of each other — meaning the same ~52-58% of voters said no to everything, not just to the most expensive item.
• The district’s official post-election message acknowledged the result but did not publish detailed root-cause analysis.
• Community Impact flagged the 30-year debt service total ($2.1B) before the election — a data point Frisco’s high-information voters absorbed.

The pattern across DFW (Frisco, Mansfield Props C/D/E in May 2024, Cleburne in May 2025, Bridgeport in May 2025) is consistent: Texas suburban voters in 2024-2025 are rejecting the “bond + VATRE same election” combination specifically because it makes the total ask transparent.

7. What we could have told them

For a district as data-literate as Frisco (65% bachelor’s+), generic bond marketing was always going to lose. The right pitch would have been forensic:

1. “Frisco spends $744/student keeping the lights on. Every peer city in our analysis except Forsyth County spends more — Douglas County spends $156/student more. We’ve under-invested $40M/year vs the national median for 10 straight years, and the deferred-maintenance bill on 20 schools >25 years old is now due.” Defensible, comparative, hard to argue with.
2. “Staley Middle School has the highest FRL% in our district (47%) and 19% suspension rate. The replacement isn’t a wish-list item; it’s the most urgent equity line in this bond.” Single-school, named, specific.
3. Decouple bond from VATRE. Frisco ran them simultaneously, which let opposition frame it as “they’re raising taxes and asking for $1B in debt.” A clean bond-only Nov 2025 ask with the VATRE re-run in May 2025 would have changed the analytical voter’s risk calculation.
4. Right-size to “essential” — explicitly drop Prop C tech and the tennis center. Voters rewarded the most facility-critical line items in other DFW districts (Mansfield A & B passed; C, D, E failed). Frisco’s bundling treated tennis, tech, and rebuilds as one yes-or-no — a structural mistake.
5. Publish a per-school facility condition dashboard before the next ask. With 20 buildings >25 years old, voters need to see which 20 and what’s wrong with each. FCI scores by building, public-facing, tied to specific dollar amounts.

8. FMX outreach hook

Frisco is the highest-revenue prospect on this entire failed-bonds list — large enough to be a strategic logo, with a documented under-spend on plant ops ($744 vs $1,324 national median) that makes the “you can’t even tell me what your facility condition is right now” entry point unusually clean. Lead with Brent Benningfield (Exec Director of Operations) and Kim Smith (CFO): Benningfield is the one who’ll be asked to defend the next bond’s facility line items; Smith is the one who’ll have to explain to the board why the bond didn’t pass. The cohort opener: “Forsyth County in Georgia is your closest peer in our benchmarking — same enrollment band, same per-pupil, similar income — and Cobb County is in our dataset too. We can show you per-square-foot operations data on both. With your next bond ask coming on a tighter timeline than the 2018 → 2024 gap, the 20 aging-schools list needs to ride on building-condition data the voters can verify.” The redacted Cobb County (GA) and VA peer entries are the proof points — if either is a current FMX customer, that’s the right peer to name in the meeting. Pricing: large-district FMX deal with 77 buildings, multi-product (work orders + capital planning + community access) — the AE conversation is “tier-1 logo” not transactional.