Spring ISD — TX

1. Snapshot

Suburb-Large district north of Houston in Harris County, 33,590 students across 41 schools. SAIPE poverty 26.4% — the highest poverty rate in our TX failed-bonds cohort, in the same range as Houston ISD (27.0%). Demographics 54% Hispanic / 36% Black / 4% White — a majority-minority urban-suburban district. Per-pupil expenditure $13,792 (FY2020). This is the only TX failure on the list that was a VATRE-only ask: no bond, no capital component — Spring asked voters to raise the operating tax rate to plug a $13M deficit and fund teacher raises, full stop.

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

Spring ISD has the highest non-English-household share in our TX cohort outside of community-specific outliers (41% vs HISD’s 47%). It also has the lowest owner-occupied share in our TX cohort at 53.8% — meaning nearly half of Spring households rent, paying property tax through landlords rather than directly. Renters under-vote in tax elections and feel the policy lever more weakly than owners. Combine that with $66.7K median household income (below national median), $194.5K median home value (below national median), and you have a community that cannot afford additional tax without immediate, visible offsetting benefit. The VATRE pitch — “fund a budget deficit and a 2% teacher raise” — gave them neither. The post-mortem coverage from Houston Landing explicitly cited “skeptical voters, mixed messages, and a shadowy mailer” as drivers of the 26-point loss.

3. Peer comparison

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

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

Spring’s data is unusual in the failed-bonds cohort because the ask wasn’t capital — it was operating. So the traditional “plant ops underspend” pitch doesn’t apply the same way. The relevant story instead:

• Plant operations: $1,131.53 / pupil vs national median $1,324 — 15% below, but higher than every peer except Adams 12. Spring isn’t an under-investor in facilities by peer standards.
• Capital construction outlay (FY2020): $32.6M — substantial; comparable to Willis ISD. Spring has been spending capital.
• Per-pupil instruction $6,726.40 — middle of the peer pack ($5,863 Mansfield to $9,944 SD U-46). Not the lowest, not the highest.
• Chronic absenteeism 35.6% district-wide — high, but consistent with peer urban-suburban districts. Spring HS chronic absenteeism: 63.5%, the highest non-disciplinary-school absenteeism in our entire TX failed-bonds dataset. Westfield HS: 71.6%. These are crisis numbers.
• 28 of 42 schools (67%) have NO nurse. Spring is the only TX district in our cohort with this acute a nurse-coverage gap.
• Suspensions: 18.4% district-wide, with several middle schools >49% suspension rate (Wells MS 71.9%, Twin Creeks MS 49.8%, Bammel MS 49.7%). These are not normal numbers for a Suburb-Large district.

Spring’s VATRE pitch was “we need to retain teachers.” The data supports that — but the visible problems voters see daily (absenteeism, suspensions, no nurses, building condition) are operational outcomes a tax increase wouldn’t directly address inside a campaign cycle. The future-capital-risk story is real (today’s operating shortfall becomes tomorrow’s deferred maintenance becomes the next bond ask), but no one made that argument visibly.

5. Bond / VATRE history (Ballotpedia + news)

• 2007: $246M bond, passed
• 2016: $330M bond, passed
• 2020: $375M bond, passed (Trustees Stephen Foster era — strong history of passing capital asks)
• Nov 2024: $0.05 VATRE (operating only — first standalone operating ask in district memory), failed 63.3% No

Spring has a good bond history. Voters have funded three consecutive large bonds. What they wouldn’t fund was operating-only — they couldn’t see the deliverable. This is the key TX-context lesson the Spring brief captures: VATRE failures are about visibility of return, not affordability. The mailer attack flagged by Houston Landing (“shadowy mailer”) accused the district of mismanagement; the district couldn’t immediately rebut because the deliverable of the VATRE wasn’t tied to a specific physical project voters could verify.

6. What voters / opposition actually said

The Houston Landing post-mortem is the most useful primary source in this cohort:

• Title: “Skeptical voters, mixed messages and a shadowy mailer: inside Spring ISD’s tax election failure.”
• Key dynamic: “Spring’s measure received the lowest support among Houston-area districts” — 36.7% Yes, worse than every comparable TX VATRE that cycle.
• Anti-VATRE mailers (origin not fully attributed) framed the ask as supporting district mismanagement; the district lacked rapid-response infrastructure to counter.
• District response post-loss (Community Impact, Nov 13, 2024): trustees pivoted to “district optimization efforts” — code for consolidations, cuts, and program reductions. The $20.2M decrease in general fund revenue (Community Impact figure) became the actual budget reality.

7. What we could have told them

Spring’s VATRE loss is framed as an operating-side problem — but the long-term implication is capital. With a $20M operating revenue cut, deferred maintenance grows; the next capital ask will need to address conditions that visibly deteriorate between 2024 and 2027:

1. “The VATRE isn’t a teacher raise — it’s the prevention of next year’s $20M cut to the classroom. Here’s what the cut looks like by school.” Frame the no outcome, not the yes benefit.
2. “Spring HS has 63.5% chronic absenteeism. Westfield HS 71.6%. These aren’t student-behavior problems — they’re building, programmatic, and staffing problems that compound when budgets get cut.” Tie the operating ask to building-level outcome data voters can verify.
3. “28 of 42 schools have no nurse. Mansfield ISD next door has 46 nurses across 47 schools. This is the visible quality-of-life difference that a VATRE preserves.” Specific, peer-comparative, hard to argue with.
4. Run a parallel “what the no-vote means” campaign with quantified line items: closure of X programs, reduction of Y staff, deferral of Z maintenance. Voters who reject increases respond to specific consequences better than to abstract deficits.
5. For the next ask, decouple the bond and operating questions across separate cycles and lead with capital first. Spring will need a bond by 2026-2028; running it under conditions of operating-side austerity makes the case for the bond more concrete (“the cuts we made absorbed everything we could; now the buildings need help”).

8. FMX outreach hook

Spring’s VATRE failure is the cohort’s clearest future-capital-risk prospect: the district just lost $20M in projected operating revenue, deferred maintenance will compound over 2025-2027, and the next bond ask (likely 2026 or 2027) will land in a community that just told the district no by 26 points. The path to that next ask runs through demonstrably better operational data. Lead with Mark Miranda (Chief Operations Officer) — not the CFO. Miranda is the operations executive whose data will frame the next capital pitch, and he doesn’t have the portfolio-level tooling right now to publish “here’s our facility condition” the way the next campaign will need. Opener: “Spring’s closest peer in our benchmarking is Mansfield ISD, also in DFW — same enrollment, same locale, similar finance profile. Mansfield passed two bond props in May 2024 and lost three (the athletic-coded ones), and now they’re running with the credibility of partial-passage data. Spring’s next ask is more constrained: 26-point VATRE loss means the next bond will need to lead with airtight building-condition data. The Jefferson Parish redacted peer in our dataset is likely a current FMX customer with similar urban-suburban dynamics — that’s the right peer story to anchor on. FMX gives Mark a 12-month path to per-building operations data he can publish before the bond hits the calendar.” This is a longer-cycle deal than ECISD or Willis — pitch as 12-month implementation timed to the 2026-2027 bond, with the operations-savings story carrying the value during the deficit-mitigation interim. Pricing: large-district FMX deal, 41 buildings, multi-product including capital planning.