Mount Vernon City Schools — OH

1. Snapshot

Town-Distant district in Knox County, central Ohio (Mount Vernon is the county seat, about 50 miles NE of Columbus). 3,374 students across 8 schools — Mount Vernon HS, Mount Vernon MS, plus 6 elementaries (Twin Oak, Pleasant Street, Columbia, Dan Emmett, East, Wiggin Street). SAIPE poverty 13.8%. Demographics 89% White / 5.5% Multiracial / 3.0% Hispanic — homogeneous. Per-pupil expenditure $13,444 (FY2020) — modest for a district carrying a major capital ask.

Already an FMX customer (cohort flag isFmxCustomer: true) — outreach is expansion / campaign-data activation.

2. Community context (ACS)

A 1% EIT on a $65K household = $650/year, continuing in perpetuity (CPT structure). For a community where median home is $181K and 36% of households rent, the CPT structure compounds the burden over time without offering the renewal/sunset off-ramp voters expect. The 105-vote margin says voters split nearly evenly on whether the math works — meaning a small narrative shift moves this district from No to Yes.

3. Gap story — finance / staffing / school climate

• Plant operations spending: $973.92 / pupil vs national median $1,324 — 26% BELOW the national median. This is the cleanest under-investment number in the brief set after North College Hill, and it’s the signature stat for the next campaign.
• Capital construction outlay (FY2020): $2.88M — meaningful activity. Mount Vernon is actively investing — the bond is to scale up that investment for the high-school renovation + three new elementaries the campaign described.
• Per-pupil instruction: $7,208 — lowest in the Town-Distant peer set comparison (peer median $7,762-$8,192). Mount Vernon is underspending on instruction relative to similar peers — that’s not the campaign story they ran, but it’s a defensible one.
• Total revenue $50.5M with 48.5% local share — moderately locally-funded; 43.6% state.
• Chronic absenteeism: 20.7% district-wide. Dan Emmett Elementary: 40.6% — the single worst school-level number in the entire Mount Vernon profile. Mount Vernon HS 29.7%; Pleasant Street ES 21.6%; MS 17.3%; the rest 8-14%.
• Suspension rate: 6.6% district-wide. Pleasant Street ES 17.6%; MS 14.4%; HS only 0.5%. Suspension is concentrated in the lower grades and middle school.
• Counselor ratio: 223:1 — best in the brief set after Meigs Local (Meigs at 297:1). Counseling capacity is strong.
• Nurse coverage: 1.04 FTE across 8 schools — worst in the brief set on per-school basis. Effectively a single shared nurse for the entire district. This is the named, ballot-shaped gap.
• Total expulsions: 2 — clean.
• Security FTE: 1.0 — minimal.

FMX peer operational benchmarks (live)

Cadillac Area (MI) is the most useful operational peer — full snapshot (20 buildings, 572K sqft, 68.7-yr portfolio age, 96.5% resolution, 2.50 WO/1K sqft, 10.5% HVAC burden). 68.7-yr portfolio age is striking — that’s the kind of portfolio Mount Vernon’s bond was trying to renew. New Richmond (WI) shows the resolution-rate ceiling (97.7%). All three are Town-Distant peers at 95%+ similarity.

4. Levy history

• May 5, 2026: 1% EIT, CPT, building improvements — failed by 105 votes (2,735 / 2,840 — 49.06% Yes / 50.94% No)
• District must return to ballot within 16 months to preserve $40M in state matching funding (per Knox Pages coverage)
• Per district levy-information page (mt-vernon.k12.oh.us): the levy was framed around a ~$100M total capital project (3 new elementaries + HS renovations); the state match is the operative deadline

This is the most time-pressured situation in the brief set: $40M of free state money disappears if the next ballot fails, and the deadline is ~September 2027. November 2026 is the operative target.

5. What voters / opposition said

Knox Pages coverage describes the result without surfacing organized opposition. Likely diagnostic factors:

• CPT structure on an EIT was the binding constraint. “Continuing” income tax in perpetuity is a tougher ask than a 5-year EIT or property-tax renewal. Voters who would have said yes to a sunset structure said no to perpetuity. Switching to a 5-year EIT (or a property levy with sunset) plausibly moves 53+ votes.
• $100M capital plan + $40M state match is good math — but it wasn’t presented as a structural argument. The campaign framing emphasized “build new elementaries” rather than “$40M of state money walks away in 16 months if we don’t pass this.”
• No organized opposition suggests soft No, not hard No. 105 votes out of 5,575 cast = 1.9% margin. The pool of persuadable voters is large.

6. What we could have told them

1. “We lost by 105 votes. Out of 5,575 cast. That’s 53 voters changing their minds. We have 16 months to win them back — or $40 million in state funding goes away. The next campaign is not about persuading the No voters; it’s about converting 53 soft Nos. Per-building data on what $40M actually buys is the conversion lever.” Lead-in for the entire next-campaign strategy.
2. “We spend $974/student on plant operations — 26% below the national median of $1,324. Our 95%-similarity peer Cadillac Area (MI) runs a 68.7-year-old portfolio at 96.5% work-order resolution inside FMX. That’s the operational profile our voters can see — and the bond renews the buildings driving that under-investment number.” Pairs the headline under-investment stat with the live FMX peer benchmark.
3. “Dan Emmett Elementary: 40.6% chronic absenteeism. The single worst attendance number in our 8-school portfolio. The bond replaces Dan Emmett with one of the three new elementaries. The link between that building and those students is the most concrete bond justification we have, and we didn’t lead with it.” Specific, building-level.
4. “1.04 nurses across 8 schools. One shared nurse for 3,374 students. Cadillac (MI) — our 95% peer — has a full operational data layer in FMX. We’ve been running on that platform — let’s publish what’s in it before the next ballot.” Names the FMX-customer status as an underused asset.
5. “Switch the structure: 5-year EIT or property levy instead of CPT. Drop the ‘continuing’ framing — that’s the part voters rejected. The dollar amount is right; the structure killed it.” Strategic recommendation, not data point — but it’s the most important takeaway for the campaign.

7. FMX outreach hook

Mount Vernon is the most leverage-positive outreach in the brief set: - 105-vote margin = converting 53 voters wins it - 16-month deadline to preserve $40M state match = urgency the district already acknowledges - Already an FMX customer = data layer is in place, just needs to be published - Cadillac Area MI as 95.2% peer with full operational snapshot = leave-behind material exists today

Lead with: “your data layer already exists; the next campaign needs to publish it.” Pull Mount Vernon’s own fmxFacilities snapshot pre-call, prepare the Mount-Vernon-vs-Cadillac side-by-side, and walk in with a draft of what the next campaign’s facilities page should look like. The 95.2% Cadillac similarity + Cadillac’s published 68.7-yr portfolio age is the strongest single peer-comparison artifact in the entire brief set.

Contact unit: Not published in OSBA — outreach team has account-team relationship on file. Lead with whoever owns the Mount Vernon FMX account; CFO/Treasurer is the secondary contact for campaign-narrative collaboration.

Opener: “You lost by 105 votes. You have 16 months to preserve $40 million in state matching funds. You’re already an FMX customer — Cadillac Area Schools in Michigan, your 95.2% peer, publishes 20 buildings at 96.5% resolution and 68.7-year portfolio age inside our system. You can publish the same depth of operational data on your portfolio inside 45 days. The campaign you just ran asked voters to trust a $100M plan; the November or 2027 campaign needs to show them per-building condition data tied to that $40M state match. We have the data layer; the next campaign needs to use it. 53 voters is the only gap that matters.”

This is the §8 lead case for the entire brief set: a winnable, time-pressured, already-on-platform district where the data-publishing intervention is the highest-confidence path to the next-campaign Yes.