Bath Local Schools — OH

1. Snapshot

Suburb-Small district immediately north of Lima in Allen County. 1,588 students across 4 buildings — Bath Elementary (PK-5), Bath MS (6-8), Bath HS (9-12), Bath Digital Academy. SAIPE poverty 12.1% — middle of pack. Demographics 85% White / 4% Hispanic / 5% Multiracial / 3% Asian / 3% Black — fairly homogeneous. Per-pupil expenditure $12,046 (FY2020) — comparatively low for the locale.

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

This is a modest-income, very-high-homeownership, English-monolingual Allen County community, median HHI under $68K and median home value just over $150K. The bond at ~$200/year per $100K of home value on a 38-year term = ~$300/year per median household for nearly four decades. The total nominal commitment per household is ~$11,400 over the life of the bond — in a community with $67K median household income, that is 17% of one year’s household income committed across 38 years.

But the magnitude of rejection (26% Yes — single worst Yes share in this 7-district set) demands a sharper diagnosis than “expensive bond in modest community.” The 38-year term is the structural outlier: most Ohio school bonds are 28-30 years. A 38-year bond means the median voter who’s 45 today is 83 years old before this is paid off. That term length, on a first ask, in a community where 80.5% are homeowners (i.e., most voters carry the property tax themselves), explains the 549-to-1,548 wipeout better than any single line item could. Voters did not reject a new high school. They rejected the financing structure of this new high school.

Statewide context: May 5, 2026 saw only 4 OH school districts run bond issues. Bath, Independence, Ontario, Plain, Strongsville. Bath’s 26% Yes is the lowest of all five.

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

Bath’s data tells a “we’re a thin-funded district with a modest plant-ops profile” story — the bond rationale (new HS construction) is real, but the campaign never built the comparative case.

• Plant operations spending: $1,176 / pupil vs national median $1,324 — 11% below national median. Real under-investment, but not extreme. Peer comparables: St. Clairsville-Richland OH $1,219, Heath City OH $1,071, Shawnee Local OH $958, Essexville-Hampton MI $1,031, Loyalsock Township PA $1,288. Bath is mid-pack, not bottom.
• Capital construction outlay (FY2020): $181K — minimal for a 1,588-student district. This is the bond justification. $181K of capital spend in a district trying to build a $56M high school = the inflection-point argument.
• Per-pupil instruction: $6,605 — lowest in the peer comparison set among named OH peers. Below St. Clairsville-Richland ($7,022), Heath City ($7,440), Shawnee Local ($6,612). Classroom dollars are tight too.
• Utilities/energy spend: $394K — relatively low, consistent with a 4-building footprint.
• Chronic absenteeism: 14.4% district-wide. Bath Elementary 16.8%, Bath HS 9.8%, Bath MS 10.1%. Bath Digital Academy 314% — CRDC data anomaly (count > enrollment). Excluding the academy, district climate is good — well below state averages.
• Suspension: 4.8% district-wide. Bath HS 8.2%, Bath MS 9.1%, Bath ES 0.3%. Low-suspension district.
• 0 expulsions district-wide.
• Counselor ratio 395:1 — at national average. 4.0 counselor FTE district-wide.
• Nurse coverage: 3 of 3 buildings have one. 3.0 nurse FTE. Full coverage.

The data story for Bath is: the buildings are the thin part, not the classrooms or the kids. Climate is healthy, suspensions are low, nurse coverage is complete. The bond is genuinely a capital catch-up ask — but the campaign needed to prove the buildings are thin, and the data layer to prove it doesn’t exist yet.

FMX peer operational benchmarks (live)

Only one named FMX-customer peer in the top 15 — but a clean one. Essexville-Hampton is the same Suburb-Small profile, similar enrollment (1,523), similar per-pupil ($11,257). 97.3% work-order resolution across 1,496 work orders is the kind of operational baseline Bath’s next bond campaign should be benchmarking against — but doesn’t have the data layer to publish yet.

4. Bond/levy history

• 2025 (per LimaOhio coverage): District spent the prior year working on the building proposal; board unanimously voted in late 2025 to place the bond on the May 2026 ballot.
• May 5, 2026: $45.6M, 38-year bond defeated 26.2% Yes / margin −999 votes — a crushing first-ask defeat.
• No earlier failed-bond history surfaces in available coverage. This is a first-attempt failure of a fresh capital proposal.

The 26% Yes share is so low that “scale-down + re-run” is not by itself a strategy. The bond was rejected on structure (38-year term), not just dollar amount. A 28-year term at $45.6M, or a 38-year at $35M, are two materially different structural pivots — both worth modeling before the next ballot.

5. What voters / opposition said

Coverage was thin — Hometown Stations and LimaOhio covered the board decision to go to ballot, not the campaign or the result narrative. No organized opposition coverage surfaces. The 999-vote margin in a 2,097-vote turnout means roughly 3-of-4 ballots cast were No — that is not a contested community where a campaign tactical change shifts the result. That is a community that doesn’t yet believe the buildings need this.

Likely contributing factors (per the available pre-vote coverage): - The proposed new HS site is “north of Bible Road, across from the current middle school” — a re-siting of the high school, not an in-place rebuild. Re-siting bonds carry higher politcal-energy costs because they trigger “why this site” debates. - Occupancy not expected until August 2029 — a 3+ year gap between paying and using is hard to sell. - The 38-year term is the structural red flag.

6. What we could have told them

1. “Bath Local spent $181,000 on capital construction last year, total. Across a 4-building, 1,588-student district. The high school project budget is $56M. We are $54.8M behind where the buildings need us to be — and we get there in increments of $181K/year, or we get there with a bond.” Single most defensible bond-justifying arithmetic.
2. “Per-student instruction: $6,605 — lower than every named peer in Ohio. We’re not over-investing on the classroom side; we’re under-investing on both classroom and capital simultaneously.” Counters “schools are wasteful.”
3. “Restructure the bond as 28 years at $35M, scaled to in-place renovation rather than re-siting the high school across Bible Road.” Three structural changes the data and political read both support: shorter term, smaller dollar, in-place rebuild. Any single one likely moves Yes share 5+ points; together they’re the path to the 50%+1 needed in OH.
4. “Essexville-Hampton Michigan — same Suburb-Small profile, 1,523 students, 6 buildings — publishes 97% work-order resolution inside FMX. Their HVAC burden is 3.8% of work orders. We don’t publish those numbers today. The next bond will need them.” Names the FMX-customer peer specifically.
5. “Plant ops $1,176 vs national median $1,324 — we’re 11% below. That’s the real maintenance under-investment number; we’re not crisis-level on plant ops but we’re consistently below the line.” Sets up the operational-transparency argument for an eventual re-run.

7. FMX outreach hook

Bath is a single-named-peer FMX engagement — but the engagement is well-shaped because the data gap is the strategic gap. The bond lost 26% Yes on first attempt because the campaign couldn’t show voters what they were buying. The FMX value proposition here is the most bond-direct of any district in this 7-set: condition scores, per-building maintenance cost, deferred-maintenance backlog — all are the exact data voters needed to see and didn’t.

• Essexville-Hampton Public Schools (MI, 196 mi, enrollment 1,523, 94% similarity, e-hps.gofmx.com): 6 buildings, 97.3% resolution across 1,496 WOs, 3.8% HVAC burden, similar per-pupil and poverty profile.

Opener for the call: “You just lost a $45.6M bond at 26% Yes on a first attempt — the worst Yes share of any of the five Ohio bond asks in the May 2026 cycle. Voters didn’t reject the high school; they rejected a 38-year term in a community where 80% are homeowners and median HHI is $67K. The next ballot has to be structurally redesigned — shorter term, smaller dollar, or in-place rebuild — and backed by per-building condition data that proves the $181K/year capital outlay isn’t sustainable. Essexville-Hampton Michigan, 94% similarity at 1,523 students and 6 buildings, publishes 97% work-order resolution and 3.8% HVAC burden inside FMX. We can have your 4-building portfolio benchmarked against them inside 60 days, with the data layer the next campaign needs.”

Lead with Superintendent + Treasurer/CFO + Operations/Facilities head (names not in OSBA data — source via bathwildcats.org). The bond campaign timeline likely points at November 2026 or May 2027; either way, a 60-day onboarding leaves real campaign-prep time.