School Finance Elections: A Comprehensive Planning Model for Success

Whether it is requests for bricks and mortar or more operating money, each election type and context is unique with no guarantee that a set of campaign strategies-successful in one district-will not fail in another community. If successful campaigns were not such a delicate balance of science and art, the key to success would have long since been discovered, resulting in significantly more school districts winning at the ballot box.

As members of the baby-boom generation collectively watch their last child receive a diploma from our nation's public schools, passing school finance elections is going to be even more difficult, promising tougher battles with the electorate and tighter margins between success and failure. School Finance Elections represents a marriage of research and successful practice, presenting a comprehensive planning model for school leaders preparing for and conducting school finance elections. Information presented emphasizes systems and strategies rather than specific campaign tactics. Avoiding a myopic focus on tactics allows school leaders to elevate their thinking to a more comprehensive and long-range vision of election planning. Each of the chapters elaborates on one of the ten elements in the authors' comprehensive planning model. Use of this model has reaped success in all types of school districts from New Jersey to California, and the authors aim to bring readers success at the ballot box as well.

This second edition builds on the first with expanded sections about the attitudes of voters whose children have grown and graduated, research into the nature of organized opposition, and new material highlighting the Internet in campaigns. The authors provide school leaders with important resources to guide their planning and execution of school finance referenda.

Don Lifto is senior vice president and director of the Public Education Group at Springsted Incorporated, a public finance and consulting firm based in St. Paul. Previously, he was as a school superintendent in Minnesota for twenty-five years serving in rural, suburban, and intermediate districts.
J. Bradford Senden has twenty years of experience working with school districts that must win voter approval for school finance proposals both for construction, renovation and modernization, and operation. Much of Senden's experience with survey research, voter file preparation, and campaign planning involves tax proposals requiring supermajority approval.