Our district’s most recent bond campaign was, on paper, the hardest one to pass. There was no new school to unveil or gleaming gymnasium to tour on opening night.
The $83.5 million ask was for deferred maintenance: aging HVAC systems, failing infrastructure, and the growing gap between our renovated campuses and buildings where students had started the school year without air conditioning or power.
A new Texas law compounded the challenge. The ballot was required to include the phrase “this is a property tax increase,” even though the bond carried no actual tax rate increase.
The law had only gone into effect in 2024, making us one of the first districts in the state to navigate the mandate. On Election Day, all three propositions passed with 57% to 59% voter approval.
Communication made the difference. Here are five strategies that worked for us, and that any district can apply to a bond campaign.
1. Build your audience before you need it
By the time our bond campaign launched, we already had active community groups on our districtwide whose members were not parents, students, or staff. They were grandparents following fine arts events, community members interested in athletics, and families with children not yet old enough to enroll.
We had invested years in building those groups, and when we needed to communicate about the bond, the audiences were already there. Districts that wait until a bond is on the calendar to start building community relationships are already behind.
2. Research your voters, then match the message
One message does not fit all voters. Our community of roughly 36,000 voters includes young parents with graduate degrees, retirees on fixed incomes, and longtime residents with no children in the district. The ballot language alone required three to four distinct messaging approaches.
For data-driven voters, we used myth-versus-fact formats with charts and technical breakdowns. For residents aged 65 and older, we used mailers, community presentations at churches and civic organizations, and clear messaging that their tax rate would not change. For younger families, the messaging led with equity between campuses, especially as school choice options continue to expand across Texas.
Targeted community groups made this manageable. We could deliver the right message to the right audience without flooding a single channel.
3. Let your community carry the message for you
One of the most effective moments of our campaign was unplanned. Parents began sharing our posts in neighborhood Facebook groups to answer questions from residents who had no connection to the school district. We had made bond-related posts public so anyone could view them, and community members started sharing direct links.
That organic amplification reached voters we could not have contacted through traditional channels. The lesson: create content worth sharing, make it publicly accessible, and trust your community to distribute it.
4. Reach the families you do not have yet
Your student information system holds more contacts than you might realize, but it does not hold everyone. We created dedicated community groups for incoming pre-K and kindergarten families who were not yet in our system. Parents self-enrolled through our website or at registration events, and once their children enrolled, they automatically rolled into standard communication.
We also pulled every contact already in the SIS, including designated contacts and authorized pickup persons, and invited each one to join a community group for ongoing updates. Both tactics converted one-time contacts into lasting communication channels.
5. Do not flood social media. Use it strategically
Bond campaigns generate a high volume of content: fact sheets, FAQs, project lists, and community meeting recaps. Pushing all of that through social media risks overwhelming followers and diluting your most important messages.
We used our community groups to carry the detailed content and reserved social media for high-level updates and calls to action. That kept our public channels focused and gave engaged community members a place to go deeper.
Start with the infrastructure, not the bond campaign
These strategies worked because we had already built the communication infrastructure before the bond was ever announced. Over the past two years, we increased our platform by training staff, launching a monthly “Parent Hack” video series for families, and setting a clear expectation that all school communication would flow through a single unified platform.
By the time the bond campaign started, 94% of our teachers were already using direct messaging with families.
A bond campaign is not the time to introduce a new tool. It is the time to leverage the one your community already knows and trusts.
