Wichita’s first school bond issue in 16 years appears to have failed by a narrow margin.
The unofficial count of in-person votes shows that the $450 million bond issue failed by about 250 votes. About 3,000 mail-in ballots remained to be counted, and the Sedgwick County Commission is set to certify the election results later this week.
This is despite attempts by one proponent group to tie the bond to school achievement.
“Yes for Wichita Kids” sent out a flyer — pictures of which were obtained by The Sentinel — claiming that bond opponents were lying about current achievement results in USD 259.
“The ads urging a no vote on our school district’s bond proposal are full of lies,” the flyer reads. “Probably the biggest is that achievement scores are down. They’re not — they’re up.(emphasis in original) So is the graduation rate.”
While it is true that the year-over-year proficiency level in “English Language Arts” in USD 259 improved by one percentage point from 19% to 20%, outcomes are much lower than they were several years ago.
As the accompanying table shows, scores have been trending drastically downward since 2015 and even with the uptick achievement scores are still abysmal.
In 2015, 20% of Wichita students were proficient in Math. Forty-three percent were at grade level but needing remedial training, and 36% were “below grade level.
In 2024, 56% were below grade level, 30 percent were at grade level, and a mere 14% were proficient.
In 2015, 35% of students were below grade level in ELA scores, 37% were at grade level (but needed remedial training), and 27% were proficient.
By 2024, the number of students below grade level had risen to 50%. Thirty percent of students are at grade level and need remedial training, and a mere 20% were considered proficient.
The flyer also claimed that the reason for the “lies” was “so our schools will fail and can be replaced with vouchers and charter schools.”
That is another deceptive statement, as charter schools are, by definition, public schools, but there are none in the Wichita area. Under Kansas law, charter schools must be approved by the local school district, allowing them to prevent that opportunity for students. The voucher statement is also consciously misleading because borrowing money to build new schools does not directly impact student outcomes.
The Sentinel contacted Bradley Dyer Jr., the chair of the “Yes for Wichita Kids” organization, to ask exactly what lies bond issue opponents were telling, but as of publication, it has received no response.
