The Yakima school district went 16 years without asking voters to pass a construction bond. This spring, it finally did, and the measure passed by a hair, just over Washington state’s 60 percent supermajority threshold for approving bonds.
“We live in a community that’s very high-poverty,” Superintendent Trevor Greene said, “and for a community to tax itself is a lot to ask.”
Now, the work the bond is paying for is visible: Crews have repaved parking lots and begun upgrading playgrounds, and the district of more than 15,000 students is choosing a contractor to replace two aging elementary schools, which will be the district’s first new elementary school buildings in a generation.
Yakima’s narrow win, which will allow it to borrow $200 million for construction and facility improvements, is emblematic of a national story appearing on ballots this November. Amid higher-profile races for Congress and governor, voters across the country will also decide on 373 bond issues that would enable school districts to borrow nearly $53 billion combined, according to a preliminary count from the Amos Group’s SchoolBondFinder database.
Districts are asking to borrow bigger sums than they did before the COVID-19 pandemic and securing voters’ approval a little less often, according to the SchoolBondFinder data. This year’s requests land at a moment defined by continued high inflation, the recent end of federal pandemic aid that allowed districts to embark on building improvements, and a political climate unsettled enough to make districts especially cautious about what they put before voters.
Why school districts rely on bonds
Because new schools and major building improvements are large expenses in a short time period, districts borrow against future taxes to pay for them through bonds and repay those bonds over decades.
The average U.S. school building is close to 50 years old, so school buildings across the country are ripe for improvements. But how much a community can borrow depends largely on its property tax base, meaning bonds are more feasible in some communities than others. Federal pandemic aid briefly helped more districts take on big projects, but that money has since expired.
The average size of successful bonds has grown over the past several election cycles, even after accounting for construction cost inflation that has made every project pricier, the SchoolBondFinder data—which cover even-numbered election years—show. That’s primarily for two reasons, said Mary Filardo, the executive director of the 21st Century School Fund, which advocates school infrastructure improvements.
“Districts are doing bigger, more comprehensive projects, and there is cost inflation,” she said, noting that bundling work into one comprehensive project is more cost-effective than paying for a string of small fixes, even though it takes more capital up front.
Over the same period in which school districts’ borrowing requests have grown, the share of successful bonds has fallen, from 82% in 2018 to 75% in 2024.
“It would not be surprising that bigger asks result in lower pass rates,” Filardo said, “because the impact of a bigger ask on local taxes will be higher.”
The number of school district bond proposals, and how ambitious they are, has tracked the flow of federal money, Filardo said. There was a surge of borrowing in 2022, for example, when districts could stack federal pandemic-relief funds—and, in some states, governors’ recovery dollars—on top of local money to carry out projects that would otherwise have been out of reach.
“It shows how bringing federal funds into the mix can increase the local effort,” she said.
What districts are paying for with bonds
One reason behind school district bond requests is becoming increasingly common.
The number of measures proposing safety and security investments roughly doubled from the 2018 to 2024 cycles.
The increase “unfortunately correlates with some of the horrible, horrific events that have happened,” said Chuck Amos, the CEO of the Amos Group, leaving districts “having to harden their schools.”
Measures proposing secure entrances alone climbed from about 60 bonds that passed in 2018 to 580 in 2024, the SchoolBondFinder data show.
Filardo adds that dedicated state and federal dollars earmarked for school security have let districts do more and that some districts may “frame their asks in terms of health and safety in order to win voter support.”
Bonds aren’t an option for all school districts
Bonds aren’t the only way for districts to fund major capital improvements, and they’re often not an option for the smallest districts.
In Easton, a rural district of about 80 students in central Washington state, leaders put a proposal for a modest capital levy on the February ballot to fix an aging gymnasium. Voters renewed a tax levy for operating expenses but turned down the capital one.
“The dollar amount wasn’t significant enough to really warrant running after a bond for us,” said Superintendent Aaron Kombol.
The district fixed the most dangerous problem out of savings, because “it really became a safety issue with our 60-year-old bleachers,” he said, and leaned on a state grant for the rest of the work.
“A small district like Easton,” Kombol said, “can’t raise enough with our property values to do really anything significant.”
Because local bonds ride on local property wealth, richer communities can borrow more while taxing themselves at a lower rate.
For Greene, the superintendent in Yakima, the stakes are clear.
When a district can’t pass a bond, he said, “we are eventually taking away from students directly in the classroom.”
Districts don’t spend bond proceeds immediately
A note of caution about the data on bonds on November 2026 ballots: This year’s figures are a moving snapshot, not a final tally.
The $53 billion aggregate value of the proposed bond issues is “a proxy and a good approximation,” Amos said, and will not be finalized until results are certified after November voting.
In addition, bonds can fund multiple kinds of projects, so a measure proposing school safety investments may not be exclusively about school safety.
And a bond’s passage means a school district has permission to borrow up to the designated amount.
“A bond is authority,” Filardo said. “That money doesn’t get spent right away.”
In Yakima, the district this fall expects to issue only about half of the $200 million in borrowing authority voters approved.
Filardo makes the case that a school is a long-term asset, paid for over decades, and a vote for a bond is a vote for people who will fill the building long after today’s taxpayers have moved on. The near-term sting of a tax increase, she argues, has to be weighed against a long-term payoff.
“We do owe it to generations to come,” she said.
