Madison Local Schools (Richland County) — OH
1. Snapshot
Suburb-Small district immediately east of Mansfield in Richland County, central Ohio. 2,626 students across 6 schools — Madison HS, Madison MS (5-8, 761), Madison South ES (PK-4, 486), Mifflin ES (K-4, 256 — closing after 2025-26), Eastview ES (K-4, 218), Madison Early Childhood Learning Center (50). SAIPE poverty 17.3%. Demographics 82% White / 9% Multiracial / 5% Black / 4% Hispanic. Per-pupil expenditure $16,407 (FY2020).
2. Community context (ACS)
| Metric | Madison Local | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Median household income | $51,143 | Among the lowest in any Ohio failed-levy cohort |
| Median home value | $118,700 | Among the lowest; below state median by ~40% |
| Bachelor’s+ | 9.2% | The lowest college-attainment community on the May 2026 brief set — under half the OH rate |
| Owner-occupied | 68.9% | Mid-pack |
| Gini index | 0.390 | Low inequality |
| Non-English household | 3.5% | English-monolingual |
This community has the worst income-and-attainment profile of any of the 7 districts in this brief set. An EIT lands directly on the working-age cohort in a community where 1-in-11 adults has a bachelor’s. The 4-vote-cycle, 58% No outcome is the structurally-predictable result of repeating an EIT ask in this voter base.
3. Gap story (carried from prior brief — no fresh MCP pull this cycle)
- Plant operations spending: $1,167.03 / pupil vs national median $1,324 — 12% under. Peer median across the prior 6-district set: $1,148 — Madison is slightly above its peer median. Building under-investment is not the lead-in narrative here; the prior brief made this honest framing the centerpiece.
- Capital construction outlay (FY2020): $380K — modest.
- Per-pupil instruction $8,908 — highest in peer comparison set (peer median $8,615). Classroom investment is being protected even with the closure cycle.
- Chronic absenteeism: Madison HS 27.1%, MS 18.1%, South ES 25.1%, Eastview 21.1%, Mifflin 19.5% — every school above 18%. Universal, not concentrated.
- FRL %: South ES 79%, Eastview 75%, Mifflin 59%, MS 70%. Title-I saturation at the elementaries.
- Counselor ratio 495:1 — worse than the peer median of 419:1.
- 0 expulsions district-wide — staff is managing climate despite the poverty/absenteeism.
- 1 security FTE for 6 buildings — lowest in peer set.
FMX peer operational benchmarks (live)
No fresh fmx_profiles snapshot was captured for 3904945 in the May 2026 cohort pull (see disambiguation note above — cohort accidentally pulled 3904788 / Lake). The prior brief’s peer set surfaced 2 redacted OH/MI peers (likely FMX customers) plus Granville Exempted Village (OH, redacted, top match). Outreach team to re-run find_peer_districts against the correct NCES ID before the next conversation with Peterson/Stevens/Neron.
4. Levy / EIT history — 4th consecutive failed ATTEMPT
| Date | Measure | Result | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 2023 | 8-mill continuing operating levy | FAIL | 1,333 Yes / 1,821 No |
| Nov 2023 | 8-mill operating levy (re-submitted) | PASS | 3,612 / 3,601 — 11-vote margin (later under-generated: $2.94M/yr vs expected) |
| Spring 2025 | 1.5% EIT (new structure) | FAIL | First income-tax attempt — voters reject the structure |
| Nov 4, 2025 | 1.5% EIT | FAIL | 1,868 Yes / 2,312 No (55.3% No) |
| (Nov 19, 2025) | Board votes Mifflin closure, 37.5 FTE RIF, sell 7-acre Ashland Rd property ($420K), reinstate pay-to-participate | — | Demonstrating “seriousness” between asks |
| May 5, 2026 | 1.5% EIT | FAIL | 1,904 Yes / 2,660 No (58.28% No / 41.72% Yes / margin -756) |
The pattern: between Nov 2025 (55% No) and May 2026 (58% No), the district closed a building, cut 37.5 staff, reinstated pay-to-participate — and the No vote hardened by 3 percentage points. Visible cuts moved the wrong direction. This is the inverse of Wickliffe’s recovery pattern — every action between cycles deepened opposition.
5. What voters / opposition said
Coverage is thin on opposition voices — Richland Source’s post-mortems quote Peterson’s “we appreciate the levy committee” but don’t probe rationale. The implicit explanation is structural:
- Richland County demographics: ~10% population loss since 2000, aging in place. EIT hits the working-age minority of the electorate; retirees and small-business 1099 income earners dominate the active vote and find the structure either inapplicable-but-still-feels-unfair or unexpectedly applicable.
- The Mifflin closure read as leverage, not necessity. Closing a school between asks signals “we’ll close another if you vote No again,” which voters in this community register as coercion. The 3-point shift toward No is the response.
- No “trusted-voice” intervention surfaces in coverage — no business community, no clergy, no county officials publicly backing the ask. The campaign has been run by the levy committee alone.
6. What we could have told them — and why the next attempt needs a different structure, not just different messaging
The prior brief’s 5 data points still stand — classroom protection ($8,908 PP instruction is highest in peer set), honest framing on the modest plant-ops gap, the universal-absenteeism story, the case for switching tax structure, and the demand for transparent post-Mifflin math. What changes for Attempt #5:
- Stop running the EIT. Four consecutive failures (May 2023, Spring 2025, Nov 2025, May 2026) at three different tax structures is sufficient evidence that messaging is not the variable. The 3-point hardening between Nov 2025 and May 2026 — despite visible cuts — closes the door on the “we just need a better campaign” thesis.
- The next ask needs to be structurally different — most plausibly an emergency property-tax renewal-plus, framed as “protect what’s left after Mifflin” rather than “let us grow back what we lost.” Homeowner-majority + low-college-attainment + Richland-County context all push toward property structure over income tax.
- Publish the post-Mifflin math, by line item, before the next ballot is filed. “We closed Mifflin and saved $X. We RIF’d 37.5 FTE and saved $Y. We’re still $Z short. Here is the per-student cost of the remaining 5-building portfolio.” Voters need to see the closure as insufficient, not as leverage.
- Bring in a trusted-voice coalition — Mansfield-area business leadership, the Madison Township trustees, and at least one Madison HS alumni cohort. The levy committee running solo is a four-cycle failed model.
- Concede the structural problem publicly. Peterson saying “we heard the community — the EIT structure isn’t right for Madison Township; here’s what we’re putting on the November ballot instead” is the only path back to trust. The next attempt has to acknowledge the four prior failures in its core framing.
7. FMX outreach hook
Madison Local Richland is at the inflection point where data is no longer the campaign problem — they have a structural-credibility problem after 4 failed attempts. FMX’s pitch shifts accordingly:
They don’t need better data — they need a different campaign structure entirely, and FMX is the data backbone for whatever that new structure becomes. Specifically:
- The Ashland Rd property sale + Mifflin closure + 5-building remaining portfolio = a real-time portfolio-management problem. A district shrinking its asset base mid-fiscal-crisis needs per-building condition scores, a 5-year capital plan tied to the remaining footprint, and credible “what happens to the remaining 5 buildings without operating revenue” projections. FMX is the only sane place to assemble that operational narrative.
- The November 2025 → May 2026 hardening (55% No → 58% No despite visible cuts) is a signal that voters distrust the narrative, not the numbers. FMX-grade per-building, per-system, peer-comparable operational data is the rebuild material for narrative credibility — but only if it’s published before the next ballot is filed, not as part of the next campaign.
Contact unit (unchanged from prior brief): - John Neron, Operations Supervisor — lead with him. Closed-building + property-sale district = immediate portfolio-management data need. - Bradd Stevens, Treasurer — financial-narrative owner for whatever the structurally-different November/2027 ask becomes. - Rob Peterson, Superintendent — has now run four consecutive losing campaigns; his bandwidth for a “let me show you a tool” pitch is limited. Loop him in only after Neron/Stevens are bought in.
Opener for the call: “You’re now four asks deep — May 2023, Spring 2025, November 2025, May 2026 — and the No vote hardened between the last two despite closing Mifflin and cutting 37.5 FTE. That tells us voters aren’t rejecting the dollar amount or the structure; they’re rejecting the narrative. The variable that hasn’t been tried is per-building, peer-comparable operational data — published before the next ballot is filed, so it’s evidence rather than campaign material. FMX can have your remaining 5-building portfolio benchmarked against your closest OH Suburb-Small peers in 45 days, with the Ashland Rd sale and the post-Mifflin footprint already factored in. We’re not pitching this as ‘better campaign data’ — we’re pitching it as the operational backbone for whatever campaign structure you build after acknowledging the four-cycle pattern publicly.”
Cross-reference: prior brief OH-madison-local-richland.md for the full pre-May-2026 context. Keep both files — this one supersedes only §5 (history) and §7 (outreach hook).