Houston ISD — TX

1. Snapshot

City-Large district, 176,727 students across 274 schools — largest in Texas, 8th-largest in the country. SAIPE poverty 27.0%. Demographics: 62% Hispanic / 21% Black / 10% White / 5% Asian. Per-pupil expenditure $13,304 (FY2020). HISD has been under state takeover since 2023; Mike Miles is the state-appointed superintendent.

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

The most distinctive number is 43.7% owner-occupied. A majority of HISD households rent — they don’t pay property tax directly, they have weaker engagement with bond mechanics, and they tend to under-vote in bond elections. Compound that with 46.8% non-English-primary households (campaign messaging reach problem) and 0.55 Gini (deeply unequal community where “shared sacrifice” is contested) — and the demographic deck was stacked against any large bond. The 2012 bond ($1.89B) passed 2/3 in a less-polarized environment; the 2024 ask was 2.3× larger in a much harder political climate.

3. Peer comparison

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

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

The bond’s biggest data vulnerability was that HISD already looks under-resourced compared to peers — but voters weren’t being asked to fix that; they were being asked to trust a state-appointed leader with $4.4B to spend.

• Per-pupil instruction: $5,998 — the lowest of every peer in the comparison set (Dallas $6,771, Palm Beach $7,346, Orange $6,198, Gwinnett $7,007). A bond pitch built on “we’re spending less on kids than every peer city” is a good pitch — but only with a board the community trusts.
• Plant operations: $1,135.53 / pupil vs national median $1,324 — 14% below. Dallas spends $1,467/pp (29% more). The under-investment pattern is real.
• Capital construction outlay (FY2020): $70.8M — across 274 schools and 23,960 staff. That works out to ~$258K/school/year of capital — well below what’s needed to maintain buildings on a normal lifecycle.
• 33 of 274 schools have no nurse. Counselor ratio averages 517 students/counselor (highest in the peer set). These are line items a bond can address.
• District-wide 25.9% chronic absenteeism with school-level outliers north of 33% (Westside HS) — pairs with the rebuild list.
• Houston’s utility/energy spend alone is $45.4M/yr — bigger than the entire annual revenue of half the districts on the failed-bond list. Operational efficiency story is large in absolute dollars.

5. Bond history (Ballotpedia + news)

• 2012: $1.89B bond, passed 2/3 — primarily high school upgrades. No bond since.
• Nov 2024: $4.4B (Prop A $3.96B + Prop B $440M), ~58% No on both. First $1B+ Texas school bond in history to fail — the previous 23 had all passed.

12-year gap between asks. The 2012 bond was passed by an elected board the community had partly chosen; the 2024 bond was sold by a state-appointed leadership the community largely did not.

6. What voters / opposition actually said

This is the clearest case in the pilot of political reality dominating data:

• Rallying slogan: “No trust, no bond.”
• Voter Steve McHenry: “I don’t like the superintendent and I don’t like the state running (HISD).”
• Jackie Anderson, Houston Federation of Teachers: “We hope that this sends a resounding message to them that we’re not going away.”
• Superintendent Mike Miles: “In this instance, the politics of adults beat out the needs of our children.”
• Cary Wright, Good Reason Houston (Yes-side advocate): “This outcome means we must continue to work within the current insufficient infrastructure.”

The vote was widely framed as an unofficial referendum on state takeover, not on facilities.

7. What we could have told them

For HISD, the honest assessment is that better data could not have saved this bond — the trust deficit was structural. But the data would have helped frame the post-loss conversation:

1. “HISD spends less per student on instruction than every other major Texas urban district. The bond was about catching up.” Underused frame during the campaign.
2. “33 of our 274 schools have no nurse. 31 have counselor ratios over 700:1. These are conditions, not asks.” Specific, school-level, hard to argue with.
3. “At $258K of capital outlay per school per year, we’re funding maintenance, not modernization. Every other peer city is funding both.” Numeric, comparative.
4. Pre-build a trust-recovery campaign before the next bond: publish monthly facilities-condition dashboards by school (CRDC + plant ops + work-order data). Make the next bond ask follow the data, not lead it.
5. De-couple the bond from the leadership question — split into smaller, school-by-school asks tied to specific principal-led capital projects. $4.4B is one ballot question voters can reject; 30 building-specific propositions each at $100M force a per-school yes/no.

8. FMX outreach hook

Houston ISD is the highest-stakes prospect on this list — and the worst one to lead with cold outreach right now. The trust dynamic means any vendor pitch will be politically risky for whoever takes the meeting. The natural play: a 12–18 month engagement on operational transparency, not a sales motion. If FMX can publish per-school facilities dashboards as a public good (similar to existing FMX customer benchmarks), HISD becomes inbound by the next bond cycle. Direct outreach should go through facilities operations (not the superintendent’s office) and emphasize measurement and reporting over efficiency and savings — those are the words the political environment can tolerate. The 2 redacted “Peer District” entries (NM and TX) are the proof points; if either is a current customer, that’s the right cover for the conversation.