New Philadelphia City Schools — OH

1. Snapshot

Town-Distant district in Tuscarawas County, east-central Ohio (about 75 mi south of Cleveland, 100 mi NE of Columbus). 2,826 students across 9 schools — New Philadelphia HS, Joseph Welty MS, 5 elementaries (South, East, York, West, Central), plus preschool centers at the Quaker Dome. SAIPE poverty 15.8%. Demographics 74% White / 22.5% Hispanic — unusually high Hispanic share for a Town-Distant Tuscarawas district. Per-pupil expenditure $12,811 (FY2020) — modest for the cohort.

2. Community context (ACS)

A 1.5% EIT on a $57,293 household = $859/year, continuing in perpetuity. In a district whose voters have already rejected three bond issues over two years plus a related income-tax attempt, the May 2026 result is the next data point in a pattern, not an anomaly. The 38.72% Yes is closer to the floor than the ceiling — voters have heard the ask in multiple structures and consistently said no.

3. Gap story — finance / staffing / school climate

• Plant operations spending: $996.10 / pupil vs national median $1,324 — 25% BELOW the national median. Strong under-investment number — the kind FMX pitches usually lead with.
• Capital construction outlay (FY2020): $237K — effectively zero. New Philadelphia has been not investing in capital at the operating level, which is precisely why the $80M state match matters: it’s the only realistic path to capital renewal without local bond capacity.
• Per-pupil instruction: $7,763 — mid-pack for Town-Distant peers.
• Total revenue $37.8M with 48.6% local share — slightly below half local-funded, similar to Mount Vernon.
• Chronic absenteeism: 21.4% district-wide. New Philadelphia HS 24.1%; Welty MS 21.7%; East ES 28.8%; York ES 21.1%; South 15.9%; West 19.7%; Central 15.9%. Universal — every reporting building above 15%.
• Suspension rate: 7.1% district-wide. Concentrated at MS (9.6%) and HS (6.0%).
• Counselor ratio: 472:1 — worse than peer median (419:1).
• Nurse coverage: 2 FTE across 9 schools — 2 buildings without a nurse. Thin coverage.
• Total expulsions: 1 — clean.
• Security FTE: 1.0 — minimal.

FMX peer operational benchmarks (live)

Single live FMX-customer peer, but it’s a full snapshot — 15 buildings, 619K sqft, 72.8-year average portfolio age (oldest in the brief set’s peer data), 94.85% resolution rate, 17.81% HVAC burden (highest in the brief set). Sturgis is the operational profile of exactly the district New Philadelphia is becoming if the $80M state match expires: an aged-portfolio, HVAC-heavy work-order base. The narrative line writes itself: “this is what 72-year-old buildings look like in FMX — Sturgis runs that portfolio, and they have the data to manage it; we don’t.”

4. Levy / bond history — 5th defeat in cycle

• 3 separate bond issues defeated over the prior 2 years to build new schools (per Your Ohio News May 2026 coverage)
• An income-tax attempt prior to May 2026 also failed (per Your Ohio News’ “schools seek income tax after bond defeats” — pre-May coverage indicates at least one prior EIT attempt; outreach team to confirm exact dates)
• May 5, 2026: 1.5% EIT, CPT — failed 2,087 / 3,303 (margin -1,216, 61.28% No)
• $80M state matching offer expires end of 2026 — same structural deadline as Mount Vernon, but with a longer failure history backing into it

New Philadelphia is the worst pre-existing-pattern situation in the brief set: 5 defeats in 2 years across two tax structures, with state money set to expire and no obvious next-attempt structure that hasn’t already failed.

5. What voters / opposition said

Your Ohio News framed the May 5 defeat in the context of repeated failures — “school board going back to the drawing board.” Ideastream’s Jan 2026 piece (pre-vote) framed the broader pattern: NE-Ohio districts “wary of property taxes” trying income tax as the workaround, and the income tax also failing. No organized opposition committee surfaces in coverage. Implicit explanations:

• Five-attempt pattern fatigue. Voters have been asked four times before and said no every time. The fifth attempt at a fifth structure (or repeat structure) generates either No-by-default or non-participation.
• $2.75M land purchase contingent on passage read as the district pre-committing capital before voter approval. The campaign framing made the land deal the driver rather than the consequence of a Yes vote — and voters resented being committed to a deal before they’d voted on funding it.
• 22% Hispanic, 10% non-English household is the highest in the brief set — and the campaign-communications reach into that population is not visible in English-language press coverage. A campaign that doesn’t materially address a 22% demographic doesn’t generate the marginal turnout needed for a flip.

6. What we could have told them

1. “You’ve been turned down five times. The variable that hasn’t been tried is not the tax structure — you’ve tested bonds and income tax. The variable that hasn’t been tried is published, peer-comparable, per-building operational data. Sturgis Public Schools (MI) — our 94% peer — runs a 72.8-year-old portfolio at 95% work-order resolution inside FMX. That’s the operational evidence base voters in your district have never seen.”
2. “$996/student on plant ops — 25% below the national median. $237K total capital outlay in FY2020. The under-investment is real, documented, and worse than peer median. The $80M state match expiring at end of 2026 is the only realistic catalyst for closing that gap, and that’s the campaign frame — not ‘new schools,’ but ‘last chance for the state to subsidize the renewal we can’t afford alone.’“
3. “Every reporting school is above 15% chronic absenteeism. East Elementary is 29%. The buildings the bond replaces are the buildings with the worst attendance. The connection between physical condition and student presence is the through-line voters haven’t been shown — and Sturgis’s FMX data is the comparison artifact that makes it credible.”
4. “22% of your district is Hispanic. 10% of households are non-English. Your campaign communications are not visibly bilingual. A 5-attempt pattern with a 22% demographic effectively unaddressed is a structural turnout problem the next campaign has to fix before the dollar amount or tax structure matters.” Not a data point but a campaign-design observation.
5. “Pull the $2.75M land purchase contingency. Make the next ask ‘the operating funds to maintain the buildings we have’ — first, on its own merits — and put the new-construction question on a subsequent ballot. The 5-defeat pattern says voters won’t approve construction without first trusting operations. FMX data is the trust-rebuild artifact for the operations ask.”

7. FMX outreach hook

New Philadelphia is the highest-degree-of-difficulty outreach in the brief set — 5 defeats, 2 tax structures already failed, $80M state-match deadline at year-end, and the campaign has been running the same play (new schools + tax structure du jour) without changing the underlying narrative. The FMX pitch can’t lead with “better data wins the next campaign” — that’s been implicit and hasn’t worked. The pitch has to lead with “FMX is the data backbone for whatever fundamentally different ask you put on the next ballot — and you cannot win without a fundamentally different ask.”

Lead with the Sturgis Public Schools (MI) operational profile: 15 buildings, 72.8-yr portfolio age, 94.85% resolution, 17.8% HVAC burden. Sturgis is older than New Philadelphia’s portfolio likely is, and yet has a published data layer that supports operational confidence. The frame: “Sturgis runs a worse portfolio with better data — and that’s the difference between a community that trusts the operations and one that doesn’t.”

Contact unit: Not published in OSBA — outreach team to identify Superintendent and Treasurer/CFO via npschools.org and Tuscarawas-area OSBA contacts.

Opener: “Five defeats in two years across bonds and income tax. The state match expires at year-end. You’re not going to win the sixth attempt with the same play. Sturgis Public Schools in Michigan — your 94% similarity peer — runs a 72.8-year-old portfolio at 94.85% work-order resolution inside FMX, with the full data layer published. Your next ask has to be operationally credible before it’s structurally creative — and the only way to get there is to publish per-building data 90 days before the next ballot is filed. We can have your 9-building portfolio benchmarked against Sturgis’s inside 60 days. Whether the next ask is a separated operations levy, a downsized capital bond, or a structurally different EIT — FMX is the data backbone, not the campaign tactic.”

Note: do not lead with optimism. The 5-defeat pattern means the Superintendent has heard “we just need better data” before. The honest framing — “you need a different play, and we are infrastructure for that play, not the play itself” — is what gets credibility.