Eastmont School District — WA

1. Snapshot

City-Small district in East Wenatchee on the Columbia River, Douglas County. 5,930 students across 12 schools. SAIPE poverty 13.0%. Demographics 42% White / 55% Hispanic (the highest Hispanic share in the WA cohort by far) / 2% Multiracial. Per-pupil expenditure $17,485 — at the WA median. Median household income $85,849, median home value $394,300 — solidly middle-class. 24.3% non-English households — second highest in the WA cohort.

The single most striking data point in the entire 56-district failed-bond cohort: Eastmont missed Washington’s 60% supermajority by 0.51 percentage points. 41 votes. This isn’t a campaign-design failure. This isn’t an opposition story. This is the rules eating a bond the community said yes to.

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

This is a mixed-income, working-Hispanic-majority community with reasonable tax capacity. 59.49% Yes on a $117M bond is the strongest pro-bond turnout in the WA cohort, full stop. There is no “the community walked away” diagnosis here. The diagnosis is: The rules didn’t fit the result.

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.

Confirmed FMX customers in top 15 (2): Forest Grove SD 15 (OR), Murray District (UT).

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

The Eastmont data tells the story that would have closed the 0.51-point gap:

• Plant operations spending: $919.42 / pupil vs national median $1,324 — Eastmont spends 31% below the national median on facilities upkeep. Wenatchee (its 2-mile peer across the river): $1,078. Mount Vernon (its WA Hispanic-majority peer): $1,206. Eastmont is the lowest-plant-ops district in its WA peer cluster, and the lowest in its top-5 peer national set.
• Capital construction outlay (FY2020): $19.17M — material capital activity already, distinguishing Eastmont from East Valley ($633K) or Adams 12’s tier.
• Per-pupil instruction $8,519 — at peer median, classroom protected.
• Chronic absenteeism: 32.9% district-wide — second-highest in the WA cohort. Eastmont Junior High: 47.2%. Sterling Junior High: 47.8%. The two junior highs have nearly half the students chronically absent. Per Cascade PBS, the bond would have done safety improvements and updates to four elementary schools averaging 60 years old — but the schools with the worst attendance are the junior highs. The bond materials and the attendance crisis were not aligned.
• Total nurse FTE: 3.5 across 12 schools — peer median 6.79. Mount Vernon WA: 6.2 nurses across 14 schools. Grants Pass OR: 24 nurses across 11 schools.
• 3 of 12 schools have no nurse; 9 do.
• Total expulsions: 38 across 12 schools — middle of pack.
• Eastmont Junior High suspension rate: 29.1% — extremely high; the building condition (60-year-old elementaries feed into these junior highs) suggests environment is part of the story.

FMX peer operational benchmarks (live)

Pulled live from fmxFacilities for each confirmed FMX-customer peer above. These are the actual operational profiles Eastmont is being measured against — and what the next campaign can cite directly.

Some peers above have full snapshots (sqft + cost-per-sqft + portfolio age); others are partial — newly-onboarded customers whose data layer is still backfilling. Either way: these are real districts at peer-similarity ≥ 92% to the anchor, publishing this data inside FMX today.

5. Bond history (Cascade PBS + Ballotpedia + Columbian)

• Nov 2022: $185M bond, failed — original ask
• Feb 13, 2024: $117M bond (scaled down, athletic fields + transportation building removed), 59.49% Yes / 41-vote miss — second attempt
• Apr 23, 2024: $117M bond, re-submitted, 59.04% Yes (5,130 Yes vs needed 5,213) — third attempt, same band, failed by 83 votes

Per Superintendent Becky Berg (predecessor of current Supt. Taylor): “We have really dramatically reduced the ask…after interacting with about 900 community members. Looking for change in the couch cushions.” The transportation facility still has dirt floors. They cut the ask 37% and the result moved by 0.45 percentage points. The conversion of community support to vote share is at the ceiling.

6. What voters / opposition actually said

No organized opposition messaging in coverage. The Cascade PBS framing was the policy-analyst framing: 52% of WA school bonds got majority support in Feb 2024 and failed; 91% of operating levies passed. Eastmont is the cleanest case in WA’s 2024 cycle of “WA’s supermajority is the binding constraint, not voter sentiment.” Blaine SD ($70M bond) got 54.81% — also failed. Eastmont got 59.49% — also failed. Same outcome, very different campaign dynamics.

7. What we could have told them

1. “You missed the 60% threshold by 0.51 percentage points. 41 votes. You ran the bond again in April. You got 59.04%. You’d already cut the ask 37%. There is no design change that converts the bond’s 0.5-point gap into 1.0+ points — the conversion ceiling is the campaign’s data story, not the bond’s dollar amount.” Sets up the entire next attempt as a data-narrative problem, not a financial-scale problem.
2. “$919 per student goes to keeping these 60-year-old elementaries standing — 31% below the national median. Wenatchee across the river spends $1,078. Mount Vernon spends $1,206. We’re under-spending on maintenance by $405 per student per year compared to the national median — and the buildings are showing it.” Specific peer comparison voters can verify.
3. “Eastmont Junior High: 47% chronic absenteeism. Sterling Junior High: 48%. Half the students at our two junior highs are chronically absent. The bond is repairing the elementaries that feed those junior highs — connecting the building condition to the kids who aren’t showing up is the story we haven’t been telling.”
4. “$19M in capital construction in FY2020 alone — we’re actively investing where we can. The bond isn’t starting capital work; it’s catching up on the work that exceeds operating-budget capacity. The bond materials should have shown those two numbers side by side.”
5. “Mount Vernon WA — 6,326 students, 55% Hispanic, City-Small locale, 118 miles north of us — same district profile, same demographic mix. They have 6.2 nurses across 14 schools; we have 3.5 across 12. Our peer-of-peers in our own state has roughly double our nurse staffing. That’s a tangible bond benefit voters can name.”

8. FMX outreach hook

Eastmont now has 2 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:

• Forest Grove SD 15 (OR, 188 mi, enrollment 5,712, 90% similarity) (fgsd.gofmx.com): work-order resolution 94.3%; 54.1-year average portfolio age; HVAC is 6.3% of work orders; 18 buildings tracked; $0.9168/sqft.
• Murray District (UT, 625 mi, enrollment 5,678, 90% similarity) (murrayschools.gofmx.com): work-order resolution 81.2%; HVAC is 6.2% of work orders; 18 buildings tracked.

Opener for the call: “Your top-similarity peers include Forest Grove SD 15 (OR) and Murray District (UT) — 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.