The Demographic Realities of School Tax Elections

Dave Webb knocked on doors with volunteers to engage with voters in the weeks leading up to a school-spending ballot issue. PHOTO COURTESY OF SOUTH ST. PAUL PUBLIC SCHOOLS

The fact that the old bear in Gary Brookins’ long-running “Pluggers” cartoon soon will be in the senior citizen majority does not bode well for public school leaders planning future tax elections.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the aging of baby boomers means that by 2030 there will be more folks over 65 years old (78 million) than the total number school-age children. (76.7 million) The challenge appears even more daunting when the demographic onion is peeled back to count parents of school-age children. In most cases, parents of students represent less than 25 percent of all registered voters living within the school district. And this is now — a full decade before we hit the tipping point forecast by the census.

These demographic realities — while challenging in their own rights — are further encumbered by local, state, national and inter-national events that also influence the psyche of voters when they cast their ballots for or against a school tax referendum. The persistent impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is one example of a contextual variable affecting voters on election day.

Fortunately, school system leaders now can harness powerful public and commercial databases and technology-driven solutions that can rise to the challenge. The South St. Paul Public Schools in Minnesota used two of these strategies — (1) building a voter file and target structure and (2) mapping identified “yes” voters to their rooftops — in executing its last school tax election.

Building a Voter File

The availability and acceptable use of voter data vary based on state law. In most locations, a registered voter file can be acquired for election planning from a county or state agency that oversees elections.

While obtaining this data from a government source traditionally has been the best option, significant differences exist in ease of access, cost and quality of these databases. More recently, school leaders have the option to access voter data from commercial sources. One such database available to school districts is L2, a commercial database providing basic information on registered voters and much more.

The L2 data files yield a wealth of expanded demographic information beyond registered voter history. L2’s demographic markers include voters’ age, gender, type of housing (rent vs. own), level of education attained, household income, where they live within the school district, race/ethnicity and parental status.

These demographic markers serve as a beginning, but they aren’t the complete solution for developing a voter file and target structure in advance of a school tax election. Adding predictive analytics propels voter file targeting to a new level, dissecting and analyzing dozens of lifestyle and consumer characteristics. Predictive databases help identify and quantify groups of registered voters that should be more likely to support the school tax proposal.

The predictive database used in the South St. Paul School District goes by VAN^©. VAN’s methodology assigns each registered voter within the school district a numerical score of 1-100. The higher the score, the more likely a voter will support a progressive proposal. In South St. Paul, the focus was on registered voters with VAN scores of 70 or higher. A scientific, random-sample survey conducted as part of the planning process confirmed that residents with 70+ VAN scores were more supportive when compared to all voters. 

Building a Target Structure

A Voter File

Data from demographic and predictive databases provide the school district and the campaign committee with the ability to build a target structure for a future school tax election. In this context, Target A would be populated with registered voters identified as most likely to support the district’s tax election as well as most likely to show up and cast a ballot based on past voting patterns.

All registered voters (including parents) would be populated into this target structure, typically organized in six concentric categories (Target A through Target F). Each subsequent target group after Target A would be a comparatively weaker target for the tax election based on both expected level of support and turnout potential.

Mapping Voters

In his book Reflections, author Idries Shah reflects on the state of information and data overload. “People today are in danger of drowning in information,” Shah laments, “but because they have been taught that information is useful, they are more willing to drown than they need be. If they could handle information, they would not have to drown at all.”

A second powerful tool to mitigate data overload and the demographic challenge of scarcity is to map the campaign’s target structure. An effective GIS platform allows school leaders to see and understand the meaning and implications of the data relevant to the future tax election — all mapped to the voters’ rooftops. The GIS platform connects myriad data sources into an interactive map, helping a school district better utilize voter data and manage the campaign.

GuideK12 was the mapping solution of choice in South St. Paul’s tax election in November 2017. The district’s voter file and target structure were loaded into the mapping tool, which provided the capability to sort voters based on the target structure and geographically plan key aspects of the campaign. For example, within identified walking zones, the district was able to map specific registered voters who were targeted for a door knock. These targets also can be uploaded into a district’s au-to-dialer platform for get out the vote reminders.

Mapping voters by target structure — with each dot indicating a registered voter — is depicted on the graphic above. The ability to visualize the location of registered voters, parents in the district or other likely supporters has become a game-changing approach for school tax elections.

Dave Webb, superintendent in South St. Paul, Minn., checks data with fellow educators on the opening day of the school year. PHOTO COURTESY OF SOUTH ST. PAUL PUBLIC SCHOOLS

A Winning Campaign

South St. Paul Public Schools’ grassroots campaign began by merging its voter file and target structure with the GuideK12 mapping platform to determine where voters live, how likely different voters were to cast a ballot based on past voting history and which voters were most likely to support the district’s two ballot questions.

GuideK12 provided a map of every resident who voted in a previous election, their demographic makeup and whether students in South St. Paul public schools lived within the household. The combined data were overlaid onto the district map, which then was divided into 50 regions. These neighborhood maps were distributed to volunteers to guide their door-to-door visits.

Thanks to the volunteer team’s successful fundraising of $12,000, the Vote Yes Committee hired a communications consultant to produce quality informational material for the door knockers. The consultant guided the district on the many do’s and don’ts in delivering its election-related messages to the community.

The district was advised that the highest rate of return for campaign communications would be door knocking, enabling volunteers to engage face-to-face with potential voters. The Vote Yes Committee scheduled three Saturday mornings for this effort. On the first weekend of door-to-door campaigning, it was pouring rain. The Vote Yes Committee considered canceling, but decided to continue, which was a powerful message as people opened their doors in the rain to campaign volunteers under umbrellas and saw how much they cared about students and the school district’s success.

As the campaign advanced, the campaign workers focused their attention on the characteristics of two key demographic groups: voters who had shown moderate or strong support based on VAN and survey data and voters with past voting patterns suggesting they were likely to cast a ballot on Election Day. Campaign volunteers used this voter target structure, based on neighborhood zones, to map voters to their rooftops for engagement and get out the vote promotions.

In the end, harnessing the power of demographic and predictive databases inside the mapping platform to target voters paid off with a big win for South St. Paul, its staff and most importantly the district’s 3,700 students.

Approval of the first ballot question, with 66 percent of the 2,800 votes cast, increased funding for teaching and learning by $1.3 million per year for 10 years beginning with the 2018-19 school year. The additional funding enables the district to maintain support for struggling students; maintain current class sizes, programs and services; and minimize the need for future budget reductions. It marked the district’s first levy increase in eight years.

Passage of the second ballot question, with 71 percent approval, yielded nearly $700,000 per year for 10 years for technology staffing, personal computer devices for students and investments in technology infrastructure and wireless networks.

Don Lifto

Research to Practice

Planning and executing successful school tax elections in the future is going to be even more difficult. Compounding the demographic realities of an aging population are other contextual challenges like the current impact of COVID-19 and its collateral damage to school districts’ finances and state budgets that fund them.

These realities of the new normal present a daunting but surmountable challenge if school leaders use available strategies to garner supporting votes. Building voter files enhanced with both demographic and predictive databases is an indispensable resource. A second opportunity is harnessing the power of geovisual mapping technology to support the campaign’s canvassing, communications and get out the vote efforts.

South St. Paul Public Schools effectively implemented both strategies and was rewarded with big wins on election day.

DON LIFTO, a former superintendent for 25 years, is a director with Baker Tilly Virchow Krause in St. Paul, Minn. Twitter: @LiftoDon. DAVID WEBB is superintendent in South St. Paul, Minn. Twitter: @SSP_Super. This article is drawn partly from School Tax Elections: Planning for Success in the New Normal (3rd edition) by Lifto and Barbara Nicol (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).