School District of Beloit — WI

1. Snapshot

City-Small district in Rock County, on the WI-IL border south of Janesville. 4,958 students across 12 active schools (Memorial HS, two intermediates — Aldrich & Fran Fruzen, six elementaries, plus Beloit Learning Academy, Beloit Virtual, Beloit Early Learning, and previously Cunningham/McNeel intermediates which appear in NCES with no current enrollment). SAIPE poverty 20.8% — highest in your 7-district set. Demographics 37% Hispanic / 30% White / 22% Black / 11% Multiracial — the most racially diverse district on the list, and the only one where White is not the largest group. Per-pupil expenditure $17,406 (FY2020).

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

Beloit is a post-industrial Rust Belt small city — Rock County employment has stagnated for decades, the manufacturing base shifted, and the demographic profile is more urban than the surrounding rural-suburban WI counties. The 17.7% non-English household share is a campaign-execution issue (English-only Yes campaigns systematically under-perform in this voter base), and the 40% renter share means the property-tax incidence is partly on landlords passing through to renters — the populist opposition writes itself. A 50.8/49.2 margin three times in a row is not “this community hates schools”; it’s “this community is exactly split, and a clean 1% movement is what passes the next ask.”

3. Peer comparison

Top peers identified via MCP (enrollment 0.18, poverty 0.15, perPupilExp 0.15, locale 0.12, demographics 0.10, staffing 0.10, plantOps 0.20):

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

Unlike most failed-levy districts, Beloit’s plant-ops investment is above the national median. This is a staffing and climate under-investment story, not a buildings one.

• Plant operations spending: $1,509.20 / pupil vs national median $1,324 — 14% above the median. Beloit is investing in buildings. Peer median across the 6-district comparison: $1,524 — Beloit is exactly at peer median.
• Capital construction outlay (FY2020): $74,000 — near-zero. They’re maintaining what they have, not building new.
• Per-pupil instruction $8,731 — lowest in the peer comparison set (peer median $8,775; Bowling Green KY $7,652 lowest, but Beloit only slightly above). Instruction spending is the soft spot.
• Chronic absenteeism: 32.6% district-wide. Memorial HS 44.0%, Beloit Learning Academy 93.5%, Merrill ES 37.1%, Fran Fruzen Intermediate 41.8%. These are crisis-level numbers — more than 1 in 3 students chronically absent across the entire district, with two buildings above 40%.
• District suspension rate: 38.4% — the highest of any district in your 7-set or the pilot cohort. Memorial HS 68.0%, Aldrich Intermediate 63.5%, Fran Fruzen 68.2%, Beloit Learning Academy 64.7%. More than half of students at four buildings have been suspended at least once.
• Teacher Certified %: 97.4% — lowest in the peer set (peer median 99.9%). Several elementaries hover between 93–95% certified. Suggests teacher-shortage pressure that the referendum was meant to address (compensation was a stated use).
• 14 expulsions; 4 nurse FTE for 14 buildings — three buildings have no nurse.

5. Referendum history

• April 2023: Operations referendum, failed (1st of streak)
• April 2024: Operations referendum, failed (2nd)
• April 2025: $40M operations referendum, failed 50.8/49.2 — <150 votes
• District is now executing budget reductions: position eliminations, program cuts. Sean Winters (former operations head per spreadsheet) departed.

Three referenda failures in three consecutive years, with the third the closest. The trajectory is improving — 2025 was a coin-flip — which means the fourth attempt is the one to invest the campaign capital into.

6. What voters / opposition actually said

Coverage thin on opposition voices. The closeness of the 2025 margin (<150 votes) and the consistency of timing (April, not November) suggest the campaign isn’t being defeated by organized opposition — it’s being defeated by turnout asymmetry. April municipal-election turnout in WI skews older, whiter, more rural-leaning; the diverse-and-renter half of the Beloit electorate is under-mobilized. A move to November would meaningfully change the voter pool.

The district’s own materials (sdb.k12.wi.us referendum page) emphasize the revenue-limit math — $9.17M shortfall growing to $16.95M by 27-28 — which is true but doesn’t move marginal voters. What moves marginal voters in a 50/50 community is: specific names, specific schools, specific student stories, plus campaign-level investment in Spanish-language outreach and renter-targeted messaging.

7. What we could have told them

1. “Memorial High School: 44% chronic absenteeism, 68% suspension rate. Beloit Learning Academy: 93% chronic absenteeism. Without the referendum, the climate staff at these two buildings is the first cut — and the numbers go the wrong direction faster.” Specific, building-named, hard to ignore.
2. “We’re at 97.4% teacher certification — lowest in our peer comparison set. The referendum funds compensation. Without it, we lose more teachers in a market where Bloomington IL and St. Charles MO are paying more.” Direct labor-market framing.
3. “Plant ops spending: $1,509 per student. Top quartile nationally. The buildings aren’t the problem — we’ve taken care of them. What’s broken is staffing and climate.” Defuses the “you’ve wasted money” attack and pivots cleanly.
4. Move from April to November ballot. Three April losses in a row with a steadily improving margin. November turnout doubles, the electorate diversifies, and the campaign can be tied to school-year urgency.
5. Spanish-language campaign mailers, translated voter outreach. 17.7% of households are non-English. The Yes coalition can’t be built without them.

8. FMX outreach hook

Beloit is a non-standard FMX prospect: the under-investment story isn’t about buildings (they’re above national median plant ops), it’s about staffing, climate, and demographic-aware campaign execution. The FMX value isn’t “look how bad your buildings are”; it’s “show your above-average building investment as the foundation of trust for the operating ask.”

Contact unit: Dr. Willie Garrison II (Superintendent — verify currency), JoAnn Armstrong (Exec Director of Business, HR & Operations — broad scope, the right entry point). The departure of Sean Winters means there’s a vacant operations seat — which is either a hiring opportunity for FMX-fluent talent or a risk that institutional knowledge has walked out.

Lead with JoAnn Armstrong — her title (Business, HR, and Operations) means she’s the unified financial-operational decision maker, which is unusual and ideal for a multi-feature pitch.

Opener: “You’re 14% above the national median on plant operations spending — you’ve maintained your buildings. The 50.8/49.2 margin in April 2025 means you’re one campaign cycle away from passing. The variable isn’t the dollar amount — it’s the artifacts. Your 12 buildings, including three at 40%+ chronic absenteeism, need per-building condition data and a maintenance-investment narrative that proves the operating dollars are spent right. With Sean Winters out and the next referendum being the 4th attempt, you can’t afford institutional knowledge gaps. The redacted PA/WV peers in our matching engine are likely already running FMX. We can get your portfolio data infrastructure operational in 60 days, in time for the next referendum window.”

Note on Wisconsin-specific dynamics: WI operating referenda are very different from Ohio levies — they’re operating-limit exceedance asks under state revenue caps, not new property taxes per se. The political framing has to acknowledge this; the FMX pitch is the same.