North College Hill City Schools — OH

1. Snapshot

Suburb-Large district in the inner-ring northern suburbs of Cincinnati, Hamilton County. 1,428 students across 4 schools — North College Hill HS, North College Hill MS, North College Hill ES, Trojan Way Learning Center. SAIPE poverty 24.7% — second-highest in the brief set after Meigs. Demographics 77% Black / 11% Multiracial / 6% Hispanic / 6% White — the only majority-Black district in the brief set, and one of the most racially diverse in the entire May 2026 statewide cohort. Per-pupil expenditure $17,852 (FY2020) — highest in the brief set.

2. Community context (ACS)

A 1.25% EIT on a $52K household = $650/year — in a community with the lowest homeownership rate in the brief set (57.6%) and the second-lowest home value ($112K). The renter-heavy structure matters: renters don’t see property tax bills directly, but EITs hit renters and homeowners alike. The 56.63% No vote in a community that hadn’t been asked to support an operating levy in 20+ years says: “we don’t trust the ask” — not “we don’t have the money.”

3. Gap story — finance / staffing / school climate

• Plant operations spending: $806.98 / pupil vs national median $1,324 — 39% BELOW the national median. The deepest under-investment number in the brief set. This is the signature stat.
• Capital construction outlay (FY2020): $9,000 — essentially zero. The district has not done meaningful capital work in years.
• Per-pupil instruction: $9,208 — highest in the brief set, by a meaningful margin ($9,208 vs Meigs $8,192, New Richmond $9,079). NCH is spending heavily on instruction despite the under-investment in plant ops — that’s the classroom-protection story.
• Total revenue $22.7M with only 26% local share ($5.98M local of $22.7M). NCH is the most state/federal-dependent district in the brief set — 55% state, 19% federal. The “$6M lost from the state” per WCPO maps onto a district that was already 55% state-funded; that’s a ~30% revenue hit.
• Chronic absenteeism: 50.7% district-wide — the WORST in the brief set. Trojan Way Learning Center: 79.4% — 4 in 5 students chronically absent at this site. North College Hill ES 49.4%; MS 48.6%; HS 47.8%. Every traditional building is around 48%; the alternative-ed site is 79%.
• Suspension rate: 23.7% district-wide — worst in the brief set. NCH ES 30.7%; NCH MS 27.8%; HS 15.4%; Trojan Way 4.1%.
• Counselor ratio: 333:1 — better than peer median (419:1), reflecting protected counseling investment.
• Nurse coverage: 4 FTE across 4 schools — every school has a dedicated nurse. Strongest per-school nurse coverage in the brief set.
• Total expulsions: 1 — clean despite the suspension rate.
• Security FTE: 3.0 — solid for 4 schools.

This is a high-poverty, majority-Black, state-and-federal-dependent district that has been protecting classroom investment, counseling, nursing, and security while severely under-investing in facilities — and just lost $6M from the state. The under-investment story is the deepest in the brief set, and the climate metrics are the worst in the brief set. Every gap data point points the same direction.

FMX peer operational benchmarks (live)

South Lake Schools (MI) is the best operational comparison — full snapshot, 9 buildings, 424K sqft, 59.75-yr portfolio age, 92.35% resolution, $0.81/sqft (highest cost-per-sqft in any brief-set peer data, suggesting an older portfolio absorbing real maintenance dollar volume). South Allegheny (PA) at 96.8% resolution shows the operational ceiling. Coventry Local (OH) is on platform but data is sparse — same-state but minimal published metrics. Similarity scores are lower here (mid-80s vs 90%+ for other districts in the set) because NCH’s racial demographics, very low homeownership, and 24.7% poverty produce a less-common peer profile.

4. Levy history

• Per WCPO: the district had not put an operating levy on the ballot in over 20 years.
• May 5, 2026: 1.25% EIT, 5-year — failed 589 / 769 (43.37% Yes, margin -180)
• Within a week of the May 5 failure: district cut 22 positions (18 teachers + 5 staff per WCPO + Fox19 — slight count discrepancy in coverage but ~22 total), eliminated jazz band, set up soccer for cuts. $2.1M already cut from FY27 budget.
• Additional cuts for 2027-28 are already being planned per WCPO (“everything is on the table” framing, including extracurriculars)

The 20-year levy-free run made this district a novice campaign — no living institutional memory of how to run a contested operating-levy campaign in the current voter landscape. That’s a campaign-design problem the next attempt can directly address.

5. What voters / opposition said

WCPO post-vote coverage emphasized district cuts (22 positions, jazz band, soccer) without surfacing organized opposition. Implicit explanations:

• 20-year gap = no campaign muscle memory. The team running the campaign hadn’t run one before. Mistakes that experienced levy committees avoid (door-knock saturation, trusted-voice coalitions, demographic-specific messaging) were likely made by default.
• “$6M lost from the state” framing read as someone else’s problem. Voters in a 55%-state-funded district hear “the state cut us” as a state-level political grievance, not a local responsibility. The campaign needed to translate “state cut” into “your specific kid’s specific teacher gets RIF’d” — which it did after the vote (the 22-position cut announcement) but not before.
• Majority-Black, renter-leaning community is a campaign-design context the prior 20 years of district leadership had no practice in. Black-voter turnout in odd-year May primaries is structurally lower than presidential cycles; the campaign didn’t build a turnout infrastructure that addressed that.

6. What we could have told them

1. “We spend $807 per student on plant operations — 39% below the national median of $1,324. The deepest under-investment number in the entire May 2026 failed-levy cohort. South Lake Schools (MI), our 88% peer, runs a 9-building, 60-year-old portfolio at 92% work-order resolution and $0.81/sqft inside FMX. Our portfolio is older, smaller, and unmeasured — voters were asked to trust efficiency we hadn’t proven.”
2. “Trojan Way Learning Center: 79% chronic absenteeism. North College Hill Elementary: 49%. Middle School: 49%. High School: 48%. Every traditional building has roughly half its students chronically absent. The 22 positions cut after the levy failure include exactly the support staff who keep these students engaged. This is a vote about whether 48% becomes 60%, not whether you pay $650/year.”
3. “Per-student instruction $9,208 — the highest in our peer set. We have been protecting classroom investment. We have not been padding administration. We have not been wasting on facilities (the opposite — we’ve under-invested by 39%). The ‘cut administrative bloat first’ narrative does not apply to NCH and the campaign should have led with that data.”
4. “55% state-funded. 19% federal. 26% local. The state cut $6M — that’s the structural revenue hit, and it’s structural because we built around a state-aid formula that the state then changed. The next ask has to be framed not as ‘tax for new spending’ but as ‘tax for state-aid resilience after the cut — protect what’s left, because the state cut what was there.’”
5. “This is the first operating levy in over 20 years. The campaign apparatus has 20 years of atrophy. The next campaign needs a 90-day infrastructure build: trusted-voice coalition (clergy, alumni, business owners), turnout operation tied to the demographic profile (majority-Black, renter-leaning), per-building data published as the credibility artifact. The dollar amount is secondary; the campaign structure is the binding constraint.”

7. FMX outreach hook

North College Hill is the deepest-under-investment district in the brief set + has the worst school-climate metrics + lost the most state revenue + is operating without recent campaign muscle memory. The FMX pitch has the strongest operational case in the brief set, but the campaign-design problem dominates the data problem. Pitch accordingly:

Lead with: “the data case is overwhelming and the campaign that just ran didn’t use any of it.” $807/pupil plant ops vs $1,324 national median is the number — 39% below, deepest in cohort. The South Lake Schools (MI) FMX peer profile (9 buildings, 60-yr portfolio age, $0.81/sqft, 92% resolution) is the comparison artifact — and crucially, the high cost-per-sqft at South Lake validates that managing an old portfolio costs money, which is exactly what the under-investment data implies NCH has been not spending.

Contact unit: Not published in OSBA — Superintendent and Treasurer/CFO via nchcityschools.org. Outreach team to identify named contacts via district website / Hamilton County OSBA chapter.

Opener: “You just cut 22 positions a week after losing the levy by 180 votes — the first operating-levy attempt in over 20 years. The data case voters didn’t see: you spend $807 per student on plant operations, 39% below the national median, the deepest under-investment number in any Ohio May 2026 failed-levy district. Your 88%-similarity peer South Lake Schools (MI) publishes 9 buildings, 60-year portfolio age, $0.81-per-sqft maintenance cost inside FMX — that’s what running an old portfolio looks like when it’s managed and measured. You’re running an older portfolio with less spending and no published data layer. The next campaign needs to publish per-building condition data 90 days before the ballot, framed as ‘we have been protecting classrooms by underinvesting in buildings, and the state cut $6M from the formula that supported that choice — here is what the buildings actually look like.’ We can have your 4-building portfolio benchmarked in 45 days, and the South Lake comparison is publishable on day one. The cuts you just made are evidence the next campaign can cite — but only if the operational data is in voters’ hands before the ballot is filed.”