Twinsburg City Schools — OH

1. Snapshot

Suburb-Large district in northeast Summit County — Cleveland’s southeastern exurb, sandwiched between Solon and Aurora on the I-480 corridor. 3,854 students across 5 schools (HS, MS, intermediate, two elementaries). SAIPE poverty 6.1% — lowest in this batch except Wadsworth. Demographics 52% White / 25% Black / 11% Asian / 6% Multiracial / 4% Hispanic — the most demographically diverse district in the seven-district batch by a wide margin. Per-pupil expenditure $14,216 (FY2020). Student:teacher ratio 17.0:1.

This is the second Summit County CPT income-tax rejection on the same May 5 ballot — Twinsburg lost by 25.5 points; Wadsworth lost by 39 points; Tallmadge’s parallel CPT property levy lost by 9. Per Ideastream’s wrap-up: “just one of the 11 NE Ohio requests for new income taxes appeared to be approved” — Twinsburg was one of the 10 that lost. The bigger story: this was Twinsburg’s first-ever income-tax ask (they previously ran property levies). Switching to income tax in a continuing structure, in an affluent exurb during a property-tax-fatigue cycle, drew the harshest possible verdict — 62.73% No.

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

Twinsburg is the affluent, professional, racially-diverse Cleveland exurb profile — $98K HHI, 47% bachelor’s-plus, 18% graduate-degree share, 25% Black population (the latter unusual for a NE Ohio exurb and rooted in long-standing Twinsburg residential patterns). This is a community that can absorb a 1.25% income tax — the math works on the household balance sheet. The 62.73% No is not an affordability vote. It’s a structural rejection of continuing income tax in a year where Ohio voters statewide are signaling property-tax relief is non-negotiable.

Income tax on $98K HHI at 1.25% = ~$1,225/year — that’s more than the equivalent property-tax bite would have been on a typical Twinsburg home, and voters did the math. The campaign also has to clear a procedural-trust bar: “why are you asking for a different kind of tax this time?” That bar wasn’t cleared.

3. Peer comparison

Top peers via MCP (default weights + plantOps emphasis). FMX-customer status resolved against the local benchmarking server.

Confirmed FMX customers in top 15 (3): Loveland City (OH), Cuyahoga Falls City School District (OH — 14 miles away, same Summit County corridor), Northmont City (OH). All three same-state Ohio peers. Cuyahoga Falls at 14 miles is a hyper-local proof point — same county, same regional voter base, same FMX platform.

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

Twinsburg’s data position is good for a 5-year ask and was overplayed for a continuing ask:

• Plant operations spending: $876.55 / pupil vs national median $1,324 — Twinsburg spends 33.8% below the national median on facilities upkeep. In a 47%-bachelors-plus community, this is the headline number a campaign should have led with: “per student, we are $448/year below the national maintenance bar — the income tax doesn’t fund expansion, it funds operations we’ve been under-resourcing.”
• Per-pupil instruction: $8,472 — solidly above peer median.
• Capital construction outlay (FY2020): $805,000 — modest. Not a deferred-maintenance distress signal at the headline level, but constrained.
• Chronic absenteeism: 13.1%, suspension 17.1% (high for this affluence tier), total expulsions: 7 across 6 schools. The suspension rate is notable — 17% in an HHI-$98K district is materially elevated.
• Counselor ratio district-wide: 385:1 — peer-typical.
• Only 1 of 6 schools has a nurse. Total nurse FTE: 1.0. 5 schools have no nurse. In a 3,854-student district with a $14K/pupil budget and $98K median HHI, 5-of-6 schools without a nurse is a ballot-shaped staffing gap the campaign never named. This is the single most striking finding in Twinsburg’s data layer.
• Security FTE: 4.0 — comparatively high for the district size; the building-security investment is visible.

FMX peer operational benchmarks (live)

Pulled live from fmxFacilities for each confirmed FMX-customer peer. These are the actual operational profiles Twinsburg is being measured against — and what the next campaign can cite directly.

Loveland’s facilities snapshot is empty — newly-onboarded; FMX team should validate the data layer is mature enough to cite before outbound. Cuyahoga Falls is the load-bearing peer — 14 miles away, 88% work-order resolution, 5.3% HVAC burden, 852 work orders captured. Same county. Same regional voter base. Northmont (Dayton metro) is a strong comparable for HVAC burden in particular at 5.5%.

5. Bond/levy history (web search)

• Prior cycles: Twinsburg has historically run property-tax operating levies — the district’s peer_groups-equivalent comp set treats them as a property-tax district.
• May 5, 2026: 1.25% earned income tax CPT, failed 37.27% Yes — first-ever income tax ask, first failure on the structural switch
• District will move forward with $2M in planned cuts post-defeat (per Cleveland Jewish News), with more reductions possible.

6. What voters / opposition actually said

Per Cleveland Jewish News: “Twinsburg voters failed to pass a 1.25% earned income tax levy for Twinsburg City Schools in the May 5 primary election, with 3,888 votes against, or 62.73%, and 2,310 for, or 37.27%.” No organized opposition committee surfaces in coverage. Ideastream’s framing: NE Ohio voters rejected 10 of 11 new income-tax asks on the same ballot — Twinsburg is one data point in a regional verdict, not an isolated case.

The political signal worth weighing: the structural switch from property tax to income tax was the campaign’s biggest unforced error. In a year where Ohio legislators are pushing property-tax relief, a district that already runs on property taxes attempting to swap in a new income tax (instead of replacing an existing property levy) reads as a tax increase, not a tax-base change. Twinsburg’s math is correct but the political read was wrong.

7. What we could have told them

1. “This is the second Summit County CPT income-tax rejection of the night — Twinsburg lost by 25.5 points, Wadsworth by 39, Tallmadge’s parallel CPT property levy by 9. Ten of 11 NE Ohio income-tax asks failed on the same ballot (per Ideastream). The community didn’t reject Twinsburg schools; the region rejected the structure (continuing, additional, untied to a sunsetting equivalent).” Regional context first.
2. “We spend $877 per student on plant operations. The national median is $1,324. In a community where median household income is $98K and 47% have bachelor’s degrees, voters can do the math: we’re 34% below the national bar on the line item they associate with waste. The income tax doesn’t fund expansion; it funds operations we’ve been under-resourcing.”
3. “5 of 6 schools have no nurse. Total district nurse FTE: 1.0. That’s the most ballot-shaped staffing line in the district’s profile, and the May campaign never named it.” Specific, verifiable, sentence-long.
4. “Cuyahoga Falls City Schools — 14 miles away, same Summit County voter base — publishes 88.3% work-order resolution rate on the FMX platform. Northmont (Dayton metro) publishes 95.4%. The next campaign needs a dashboard voters in a 47%-bachelors community can audit between elections, not just a yard sign in October.”
5. “For the next ask: drop CPT. Run 5-year additional, or convert an existing property mill to income-tax-equivalent (a net-zero substitution voters can read on a single ballot). The 62.73% No is the structure, not the dollar.”

8. FMX outreach hook

Twinsburg has 3 confirmed FMX-customer peers in the top 15 set — all Ohio. This is the strongest same-state peer cluster in the seven-district batch:

• Loveland City (OH, 206 mi, 94.4% similarity) (lovelandschools.gofmx.com): 9 buildings tracked. Operational data layer not yet populated — verify with FMX team before citing publicly.
• Cuyahoga Falls City School District (OH, 14 mi, 93.5% similarity) (silverfalls.gofmx.com): 21 buildings; 88.3% work-order resolution; 5.3% HVAC burden; 852 work orders captured. Same Summit County voter base — the most powerful proof point in the package.
• Northmont City (OH, 181 mi, 93.2% similarity) (northmontschools.gofmx.com): 16 buildings; 95.4% work-order resolution; 5.5% HVAC burden; 2,038 work orders captured.

Opener for the call: “You lost 62-38 on the first-ever income tax ask in a $98K-median-household-income district — that’s the structure, not the schools. Your closest FMX peer is Cuyahoga Falls City SD — same county, 14 miles away — publishing 88% work-order resolution on FMX today. We can have your facilities portfolio benchmarked against them and your Loveland/Northmont peers inside 60 days, in time to back a re-structured November or next-May ask.”

Lead with Supt. Kathryn Powers as the named decision-maker. The Twinsburg engagement framing is “12-18 month build for the next ask, not the post-mortem on this one” — the community has rejected the structure of this ballot, and the data layer is what lets a re-structured 2027 ask actually clear. The same-county Cuyahoga Falls peer is the conversation-opener. Validate the named FMX peers above against the internal customer list before outbound — these were resolved via the local benchmarking server’s fmx_profiles join.