“February is the Most Successful” — Behind Lake Stevens School District’s Strategic Decision to Re-run the Failed November Bond

Next Tuesday, Lake Stevens voters will decide once again whether to support the district’s massively important construction bond, with major implications hanging on the success of the measure

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Editor’s Note: The Lake Stevens School District faces the imminent prospect of back-to-back bond failures unless Lake Stevens voters make an immediate community-wide effort to return their ballots. As of 5pm tonight, the LSSD bond measure is 4,668 votes short of VALIDATION. If the measure fails to validate, it won’t pass even if the 60% threshold is achieved. This matter is too important not to receive an up or down vote. So this isn’t a plea to vote yes or vote no. This is a plea to vote. At least participate and allow the measure to receive an up or down vote. As of tonight, the gap between the current 6,757 ballots received and the 11,425 figure required for the measure to validate appears almost too large to bridge without significant work. So get after it. MAIL YOUR BALLOT. - KTH

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LAKE STEVENS - After falling less than 500 votes short of passage in November LSSD doubled down & went to the ballots again, despite a coin-flip chance that the measure wouldn’t validate. Tuesday’s result awaits.

Despite earning over 15,000 yes votes comprising 58.3% of the vote, Lake Stevens School District’s November 2024 construction bond measure (Prop. 1) was voted down as a result of the state’s super-majority 60% passage requirement for bond measures.

It was the first time in over 40 years that the district failed to pass a bond measure.

By comparison, the 2016 bond earned 62% support… following the historic 2005 bond, which earned a landmark 72.4% yes vote.

When the Lake Stevens School District Board of Directors gathered for an election post-mortem last November 13, the numbers revealed the measure had come 438 votes short of passage, out of a total 25,966 votes cast. That part was clear. The murky part lay ahead.

With a large faction of citizens and administrators urging the board to run the measure again in February 2025, directors had very little time to consider why the measure fell short, and whether the district would be able to both win over the voters comprising the gap between 58.3 and 60%...while also satisfying qualification numbers required to validate a February election.

Strategically, it wasn’t the best spot for the district.

If they chose to run the bond again in February, they faced the prospect of two chances at failure: they’d have to overcome an artificially high validation number tied to the decision to run the bond against an historic presidential election just to qualify for an up or down result…and they faced the prospect of changing enough minds to bridge the gap between November’s 58.3% and the required 60% …all in a matter of weeks, with very few variables to shuffle in re-presenting the measure.

Revisiting the decision to run the initial measure against an historic Presidential election is a strategic decision that can be re-litigated at a later date, but it certainly created a tougher political environment for the board as they considered whether to re-run the bond in February.

Sidebar: Presidential elections are typically viewed as the most challenging time to run an education funding measure, because of the wide swath of the populace brought out by the major election. Conventional wisdom says the large turnout makes it tougher to pass tax increases. Further, should the bond fail, any ensuing attempts to pass the bond measures are complicated by the validation requirement, a legal provision requiring a bond measure to reach at least 40% of the turnout achieved in the last general election.

That’s why the validation number for Tuesday’s LSSD 2025 bond measure looms as just as much as a threat as the potential no vote. In order to pass, the bond must receive 40% turnout with respect to last November’s vote… AND 60% approval.

As the board worked through the November 13 election post-mortem , they knew an immediate decision loomed – ballot measure submissions were due to the County Auditor by December 13 for the February 2025 election.

Further, from a campaign point-of-view, with just one more board meeting in the calendar year and a lengthy holiday break ahead, the already short turnaround for a February ballot measure was more-or-less cut in half,