Lost in the chaos of the contentious presidential election this week was a slew of consequential proposals that touched on funding for many of the nation’s 13,000 public school districts—most notably, for spending billions of dollars to upgrade and modernize buildings.
The biggest of all those proposals turned out to be a dud. The Houston school district put forward two ballot measures totaling $4.4 billion in bonds—$3.96 billion for school construction and maintenance, and another $440 million for technology and equipment for classrooms. But roughly 58 percent of voters rejected both proposals for the nation’s eighth-largest school district, which enrolls 190,000 students.
