Fact Sheet 22-8: 99.0% Passage Rate for School Budgets

• Download complete fact sheet.

Voters across the state approved 99.0% of school budgets - 668 passed and just 7 were defeated. Of the seven districts that experienced a budget defeat, two were attempting to pierce their Tax Levy Limit and therefore needed a super-majority (60 percent) for approval. Fourteen districts were successful in their Tax Levy Limit override attempt.

The seven districts that had their budget defeated may choose to have a revote. All revotes will occur on the third Tuesday in June (June 21, 2022). If a district has their budget revote defeated, they must adopt a contingency budget and they may not increase their tax levy above the previous year's levy—a 0 percent cap.

The 2022 total turnout of 642,491 is a 23% increase over the total turnout of 520,717 in 2021. Despite the high passage rate, there were over 900,000 fewer votes recorded in 2022 than in 2020. In 2020, because of the pandemic, all school budget voting was conducted by absentee ballot in June 2020 and school districts were required to mail all eligible voters a ballot.

The following chart provides a listing of those districts that had their budget defeated.

2022 Budget Defeats (by County) 

* District needed a super-majority 60% for approval. The number in parenthesis is the percentage of YES votes

TM/vp
May 2022
cwa1141