One year and more than $1 billion later, it’s still borderline impossible to build a new school in Idaho.

Voters in Middleton, Shelley and Filer overwhelmingly rejected $150.5 million in school bond issues Tuesday. And it wasn’t even close. The districts’ share from Idaho’s historic facilities bonding program didn’t appear to make a bit of difference.

Election blowouts like Tuesday’s raise some imponderable questions. Is the state’s method for building schools hopelessly out of date? So out of date that even a massive and unprecedented infusion of state money will not be able to fix it?

Idaho’s omnibus 2024 facilities law dedicated $1.5 billion for school buildings. The centerpiece was a $1 billion bonding plan, designed to offset local construction costs. It represented a large state investment and a shift in mindset — after state officials had generally spent years viewing aging and overcrowded community schools as somebody else’s problem.

The omnibus House Bill 521 did not change the rules for school bond elections. It couldn’t. The state’s two-thirds supermajority requirement for bond issues is written into the state’s Constitution, and that takes precedent over state law. Instead, HB 521 actually placed another restriction on school elections, eliminating an August election date for bonds and levies, and requiring schools to run ballot measures in May or November.

Which brings us back to Tuesday.

The failed bond issues in Middleton, Shelley and Filer fell right in line with a grim recent trendline. Since 2022, Idaho schools have run 38 bond issues. Only eight have passed, a 21% success rate.

Rich Bauscher knows, firsthand, that a school can pass a bond issue. He was two-for-two running bond issues in his 15 years as Middleton superintendent. After a fire gutted Middleton’s high school, the district ran a $51.1 million bond issue in 2008. It passed with 86% support.

Since retirement, Bauscher has gone into consulting, helping other school superintendents who are trying to run bond issues. Things are tougher now in Idaho, and in an interview Thursday, Bauscher listed several reasons.

The limited election options leave school districts vying for attention on a busy ballot. That even happened Tuesday, in an odd-numbered calendar year with no primary elections for governor, Congress or the Legislature. Middleton’s bond issue appeared alongside a pair of failed fire levies and a successful countywide ambulance levy.

Meanwhile, state law prohibits school officials from promoting ballot measures. This essentially leaves administrators on the sidelines and at a disadvantage. Opponents can pretty much say whatever they want, Bauscher says, while the campaign for a bond issue falls to advocates in the community.

HB 521 has actually done more harm than good, Bauscher said. The districts’ share ($18 million in Middleton, roughly $10.2 million in Shelley and roughly $6.1 million in Filer) isn’t enough to build a school. But HB 521’s lofty statewide pricetag makes it look like the state has solved the facilities issue — while providing one more rallying cry for bond issue opponents.

And Bauscher isn’t just worried about the bond issues that fail. He’s worried about the ones that never come before voters. Superintendents — or “supes,” as Bauscher calls them — don’t want a doomed and dead-on-arrival bond issue on their record.

“That takes a beating on the supes,” he said. “That’s a threat to their jobs.”

The debate over building schools in Idaho invariably circles back to the two-thirds supermajority threshold. Lower the supermajority, the argument goes, and schools would have a fighting chance to pass a bond issue. In 2024, Rep. Rod Furniss, R-Rigby, proposed a 55% supermajority requirement, if schools run their elections in conjunction with high-turnout primaries or general elections in even-numbered years.

But even if a reduced supermajority had been in place Tuesday, it would have been a nonfactor. Middleton mustered only 53% support. Shelley (38% support) and Filer (22% support) landed squarely in the superminority zone.

Bauscher sees the supermajority issue as a nonstarter. There’s no chance a constitutional amendment would get the two-thirds support needed to pass the House and Senate and go to the voters. As Bauscher tracks the 38 school bond issues proposed since 2022, he notes that only 26 received even a simple majority. Only 23 hit the 55% mark.

In other words, a lot of bond issues are losing, and badly.

And Idaho superintendents have no Plan B. It’s a bond issue or bust.

Kentucky, like Idaho, has a two-thirds supermajority requirement, and defenders of Idaho’s supermajority often point to Kentucky as a comparable. But Bauscher points out that Kentucky school trustees can avoid running bond issues. With a majority vote, boards can impose a property tax levy for school facilities — commonly known as a “nickel,” because it comes to 5 cents per $100 of property value. Local voters can recall a nickel tax — or, of course, the trustees that supported it. But the local nickel taxes qualify for state matching funds.

This kind of idea — like lowering the supermajority — would likely face robust resistance in the Idaho Statehouse. Idaho lawmakers have consistently made it more difficult for schools to raise taxes. It’s hard to envision these same legislators giving school trustees the roadmap to bypass the voters.

But what Idaho has now isn’t the answer, Bauscher says. “It’s outdated. It’s not working.”

Education leaders have spent several years debating about ways to change Idaho’s 31-year-old school funding formula, and they make a solid argument. They say Idaho needs to keep up with the times and make sure school dollars support the students, especially at-risk and high-needs students.

Meanwhile, it might also be time to start debating the way Idaho finances school construction — and an election process that goes back to 1890. If there were easy answers, there wouldn’t be need for much discussion.

Unless something else changes, the odds of passing a bond issue aren’t going to change either.

Kevin Richert writes a weekly analysis on education policy and education politics. Look for his stories each Thursday.