North Summit School District — UT

1. Snapshot

Rural-Distant district covering Coalville and the small towns of the upper Weber River valley in northern Summit County, Utah — 1,073 students across 4 schools (1 each of HS, MS, Elem, PreK). The smallest district in this six-district brief set. SAIPE poverty 5.3% — among the lowest. Demographics 77% White / 21% Hispanic. Geographic context is critical: Summit County also contains Park City (Town-Distant, 4,269 students, $18,333/pupil, median home value ~$1M+) — but Park City is a separate district (Park City District 4900750). North Summit’s tax base is the rural, ranching/farming, working-class side of the county, while Park City’s tax base is the world-class ski resort. The two districts share a county border but live in different financial universes.

This bond has now failed TWICE (Nov 2024 56% No on $114M; Nov 2025 ~53% No on $121M), and in December 2025 the school board unilaterally approved a $125M lease-revenue bond that does not require voter approval — at higher interest rates than the rejected GO bond would have carried. That’s the most dramatic post-bond-failure escalation in this entire cohort.

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

The community looks tax-capable on paper — high homeownership, above-median income, high home values. But the 22.3% non-English household rate is high for a rural Utah district (reflects working immigrant Hispanic households in the Coalville agricultural/service economy), and the 0.49 Gini index indicates real inequality — there’s a meaningful gap between the Coalville/ranching homeowners and a service-class population. The bond ask of $114M divided by 1,073 students is $106K per student — vastly higher per-student than larger-district asks (Deer Valley is $325M/32,265 = $10K per student). At small enrollment, the math gets brutal: per the KPCW reporting, residential cost was $118/year per $100K assessed value (so $530/yr on a median $458,800 home) for 21 years. That’s a real number on a 1,000-student district.

3. Peer comparison

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

The peer set is notably consistent — all rural-distant, all ~1,000-1,200 students, all per-pupil in $12K–$15K range. North Summit slots right into the middle of the cohort. Notable: Little Axe OK is also on this same failed-bonds list — same enrollment band, same OK 60%-supermajority barrier, same dynamics.

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

North Summit’s data tells a the buildings are old, but the per-pupil math is hard story:

• Plant operations spending: $887.81 / pupil vs national median $1,324 — 33% below national median, and consistent with the peer set median ($918). North Summit is not an outlier on plant ops — they’re running this dimension like every other rural-distant 1,000-student district.
• Per-pupil expenditure: $14,070 — at the peer-set median ($13,790).
• Per-pupil instruction: $8,545 — the highest in the peer set ($5,577–$8,545). North Summit is investing more on instruction than peers, which weakens any “shortchanged students” argument.
• Capital construction outlay (FY2020): $70K — the lowest in the peer set by an order of magnitude. Same pattern as Central 13J — minimal capital reinvestment.
• District chronic absenteeism: 15.7% — middle of the peer pack. North Summit High specifically is at only 7.5% — the best in this entire six-district brief set. The HS is performing well despite being 47 years old.
• Suspensions: 0.3% district-wide — essentially zero. Discipline isn’t the story.
• Counselor ratio district-wide: 1:195 — better than the entire peer set. Health staffing is reasonable.
• All 4 schools have a nurse (2 FTE for 1,073 students = 1:537 — peer set median is 1.5 FTE).
• Total expulsions: 0 — peer median 1.

The fundamental problem the data exposes: North Summit High School is performing well, by every metric in the climate dataset, in a 47-year-old building. The bond’s narrative was “this building can’t last” — but the numbers show students are showing up and are succeeding in that building right now. The seismic/security/utility argument is real, but voters can see students doing fine in the current building. The “we have to” of replacement reads as “we want to” — and at $106K/student over 21 years, voters declined to pay for “want to.”

5. Bond history (Ballotpedia + news)

• Nov 2024: $114M bond, failed 44/56 (preliminary results; ~56% No after 1,400 votes counted)
• Nov 2025: $121M bond (re-attempt, ~6% larger than 2024 to account for construction-cost inflation), failed ~47/53 (~1,000 No / ~900 Yes)
• Dec 2025: Board unilaterally approved $125M lease-revenue bond that does not require voter approval, at higher interest rates than a GO bond would carry

This is the most aggressive post-rejection move in the entire failed-bond cohort. The board’s response to two voter rejections was not to redesign the campaign or shrink the ask — it was to bypass the voters entirely using a lease-revenue mechanism. That’s a legal pathway in Utah, but it is also exactly the kind of action that compounds civic-trust damage in a community that already declined to fund the same project twice.

6. What voters / opposition actually said

KPCW’s Nov 2024 coverage is the cleanest signal:

• Resident Keith Rickett: “I think what you’re looking for in a bond of over 100 million is frankly disproportionate to the population that is here now.”
• Superintendent Jerre Holmes (pre-vote): emphasized “safer and more efficient” facilities and cited the 47-year-old school’s aging infrastructure, vulnerable security layout, deteriorating utilities.
• Board member Waylon Bond (post-vote): “We know it’s needed, so our options are either wait and do it again next fall, or—I don’t know exactly what the next course of action would be.”

The Rickett quote is the most diagnostic — voters explicitly framed the per-student dollar amount as disproportionate. At $106K/student, this is the math: a community willing to fund a high school but not willing to fund this high school at this price. The board’s December 2025 lease-revenue bypass essentially admitted that argument never went away.

7. What we could have told them

1. “Our high school has the lowest chronic absenteeism (7.5%) of any school in this peer comparison — and in our entire six-district peer brief. The building is 47 years old; the students are showing up. The case for replacement is real but is structural (seismic, security, utility-age), not educational. Lead with the structural numbers, not the educational ones.” Honest reframing — the original campaign over-promised educational outcomes the existing building is already delivering.
2. “At $106K per student over 21 years, this is the highest per-student ask in our peer comparison. Park City — the other district in our same county — runs the highest property-tax base in Utah and they still wouldn’t fund a $114M bond on 1,073 students. Match the ask to the per-student affordability ceiling our peers actually use. A $60-70M school + phased aquatic, not $114M all-in, fits the math voters are doing in their heads.” Direct same-county comparison.
3. “$70K in capital construction outlay last year, across 4 schools and 1,073 students. Compare to Roland-Story IA ($1.5M+ on similar enrollment). The reinvestment gap is real and it compounds; the bond closes that gap — but only if voters can see the year-over-year capital trend, not just the one-time $114M number.” Show the deferred-maintenance accumulation curve.
4. “21% Hispanic / 22% non-English household — and the bond materials need to reflect that. Year-round bilingual outreach by ranching-corridor and Coalville-corridor differently. Park City’s well-funded campaign machinery is not North Summit’s playbook.” Demographic + outreach observation.
5. The lease-revenue bond is now reality. The next conversation isn’t “how do we win the next vote” — it’s “how do we rebuild trust with voters whose two No votes were just overridden.” That’s a longer arc than this brief, but it’s the right strategic frame for any FMX engagement.

8. FMX outreach hook

North Summit is a high-difficulty, post-decision prospect. The board has already moved to a lease-revenue bond — the procurement and construction decision is largely locked in for the next ~3 years. That changes the natural pitch from “help you win the next bond” to “help you manage the new building’s operations + show voters their dollars are being used responsibly to rebuild trust”.

Best contact angle: Marci Sargent (Business Administrator) as the operations entry — North Summit is small enough (156 total staff FTE) that the BA is the practical decision-maker for any facilities-management tooling. Opener: “You have a new HS coming through lease-revenue financing in a community that just voted No twice. The operational story over the next 3 years — work-order response, square-foot cost, energy usage vs the 1977 building — is the trust-rebuilding case for your next ask. Roland-Story IA and your same-state Park City neighbor both run their portfolio in [comparable FMX customer]; we can give you the operational dashboard before the new HS opens, plus per-school benchmarking against the rural-distant peer set.”

Smaller direct-cash budget than Deer Valley or Gilbert, but higher leverage per dollar because of the small scale. The two redacted “Peer District” entries (OH + OR) and the consistent peer cohort give plenty of proof points. The strategic difference vs Three Rivers: North Summit’s voters didn’t lose trust — the board overrode them. The win is providing the transparency layer that lets the board reckon with that.