All three Nebraska rural school bond measures fail in August special elections

Voters struck down school bond propositions in three separate special elections held Tuesday.

In the northeastern Nebraska town of Pierce, voters overwhelmingly voted against a $29.5 million school bond that would have added a special property tax levy to pay for improvements The proposition received 1,114 "against" votes and 707 "for" votes.

The Pierce County School District sought to use the extra funding to renovate the district’s elementary and high school buildings and purchase updated furniture, security and technology, according to the proposition’s ballot text.

Pierce County School District Superintendent Kendall Steffensen said the district was hoping to add two classrooms to the elementary school and a gymnasium at the high school. With the plans voted down, Steffensen told Nebraska Public Media News the district, including the 30-member focus group implemented to craft the proposition, will have to reconsider its expansion goals.

“Our focus group will have to get back together and try to determine what piece of the pie was not palatable – whether that was a certain building aspect contained in the plans, whether that was a total cost, or whatever that may be – and then that community group will decide how we'll move forward,” Steffensen said.

McCook Public Schools lost its school bond as well, with nearly 2,000 voters rejecting the proposition and around 1,200 voters supporting it.

McCook Public Schools Superintendent Grant Norgaard said while he was disappointed with the outcome of the special election, he was happy with the voter turnout for it. He said over half of the community voted.

“We had a lot of folks come through our buildings, a lot of our patrons and community members,” Norgaard said. “We appreciate everyone who really wanted to know about the bond issue and had questions and engaged with us. I think that was a really positive experience for those folks and also for the school itself because through that process, we learned and developed a better understanding of what the community wants and what the community's priorities are.”

The district asked for $42 million in property tax levies to address “significant structural issues that cannot be adequately addressed by remodeling,” upgrade technical education spaces and implement more safety measures like controlled access points to the junior high school.

Norgaard said while there are structural concerns with the junior high building, it won’t fall over anytime soon.

”All buildings have a limited lifespan, so at some point, something's going to need to be done,” Norgaard said. “In the meantime, we're going to just invest in the facilities that we have and making the best learning environments we can for kids.”

This is the second time McCook voters have rejected the bond. The school shrunk its renovation plan after the initial bond failure, but costs still remained high in the second pitch to voters because “increased construction costs over the past year have offset some of the savings.”

Norgaard said the school doesn’t have plans for a third attempt to pass a school bond in the immediate future.

Similar results played out for the Cambridge Public Schools District, which saw its school bond fail with 482 "against" and 280 "for" the measure. According to the proposal, the district asked voters to approve a property tax levy that would fund $13.2 million in additions to the school such as classrooms, science labs, a consumer science lab, a multi-purpose room with a stage and administrative offices.

The defeats mark nine losses for school bond issues so far this year. Other school bond losses occurred earlier this year for the public school districts of Logan View, Freeman, Gering, Hemingford, South Sioux City and Tri-County.

Ten public school districts have won bond requests at the ballot box this year: Elkhorn Valley, Millard, Pleasanton, Ravenna, Bennington, Fillmore Central, Weeping Water, Louisville, Randolph and Centennial.

Nebraska Public Media's Jolie Peal contributed to this report.