A look at Iowa's 2025 school bond referendums
Of 43 bond votes statewide, 18 reached a supermajority and five fell the tiniest bit short
Forty-three Iowa school districts held bond referendums Tuesday. According to unofficial results from the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office, 18 passed, 15 had a majority in favor but not the required 60% supermajority, and 10 failed to reach 50%. The middle category has five districts of all sizes — Cedar Rapids, Easton Valley, Hinton, Independence, and Sergeant Bluff-Luton — receiving more than 58% but less than 60% support.
The 43 districts voted on a combined $1,435,950,000 in general obligation bonds. (That includes Atlantic’s $22.5 million bond for school construction, which passed, but not its $18.5 million sales tax revenue bond for a multipurpose facility, which failed.)
Gladbrook-Reinbeck’s third try in four years to pass a bond issue to replace the century-old school in Reinbeck succeeded by fewer than 20 votes Tuesday.
The $17.3 million bond issue will go toward construction of 15 classrooms, a media center, a family and consumer sciences room, secure entrances, and HVAC and electrical systems throughout the school complex in Reinbeck. It does not replace the auditorium or secondary gymnasium, which will remain in use.
Precinct-level returns starkly illustrate the continued schism in the district. In the Grundy and Black Hawk county portions, voters were about 9-to-1 in favor. In the Tama County precinct containing Gladbrook, voters were about 9-to-1 against. The vote in the northern tier of townships in Tama County, between Gladbrook and Reinbeck, was split exactly in half.
Overall, 1,934 votes were cast in G-R, with 1,177 in favor and 757 against. That total is about 500 votes fewer than last year.
Signs opposing the bond were plentiful throughout Gladbrook. Most were small. A few were big. Many were hand-written. Half a dozen were on the street connecting downtown with G-R’s football field. One particularly biting version had six big letters — VOTE NO — against the background of a photograph of the Gladbrook school building in mid-demolition in June 2022.
The Union school district of La Porte City and Dysart, trying a reduced version of a 2024 referendum that failed by six votes, did slightly worse this time around. The $18.5 million referendum was for HVAC improvements at the high school, classroom renovations, various infrastructure repairs at both the high school and middle school, and a bus barn.
Union had 1,954 votes cast overall, with 1,098 in favor and 856 against, which is about 56% in favor and 75 votes short of a supermajority. Turnout in the off-off-year election was drastically down from last year’s bond vote in a presidential election year.
Both East Marshall and West Marshall succeeded where last year’s referendums failed. East Marshall revised its proposal to include more definitive options for the Gilman site after students are relocated to Laurel and Le Grand. The century-old part of the Gilman school will be demolished. The section of West Marshall’s elementary in State Center that is also a century old will be replaced with a two-story structure. West Marshall will build a career and technical education addition at the grades 6-12 campus as well.
A western Iowa bond issue reflected a deep divide centered around loss of a building. The IKM-Manning district is trying, yet again, to facilitate construction of classrooms at the school in Manning that would result in tiny Irwin losing its PK-3 school. The easternmost part of the district — mostly Carroll County, where Manning is — carried the bond by a 9-to-1 margin. The western two-thirds — mostly the former Irwin-Kirkman-Manilla — rejected it nearly 3-to-1.
Multiple school bonds across the state included a component similar to Aplington-Parkersburg’s “secure front entry with pass-through visitor check-in.” This goes beyond simply relocating the main office to near the entrance or even buzzing someone in after seeing video. Visitors during the school day must enter the office and check in with a staff member in person before being granted access to the building.
For the fourth time in nine years, a district submitted the largest school bond referendum in Iowa history. Des Moines’ $265 million this year topped Cedar Rapids’ $220 million in 2023, Waukee’s $205 million in 2020 and Iowa City’s $191.5 million in 2017. All passed except Cedar Rapids’.
Cedar Rapids’ $117 million bond this year, substantially reduced from 2023, improved greatly in percentage of “yes” votes but fell short of a supermajority by 165 votes, less than 1%. Dubuque’s $70 million bond to build a replacement middle school failed as well, but the district says it will be closing Jefferson Middle School at some point anyway.
A variable introduced now that bond elections are restricted to November is the state volleyball tournament. Seven school districts with bond votes had teams in the tournament in Coralville. Three — Aplington-Parkersburg, Gladbrook-Reinbeck, and Hinton — played Tuesday.
It’s worth noting, then, that 141 absentee/early votes were cast in Grundy County on the G-R bond — 130 in favor, 11 against. (Absentee ballots by mail had to be requested by Oct. 20, but there was an in-person option at the courthouse in Grundy Center.) Hinton’s bond lost by 10 votes and wasn’t even the closest margin of the night. The Sergeant Bluff-Luton bond fell eight votes short of the 60% threshold, and Easton Valley, on the opposite side of the state, saw its bond fail by six votes.
This has been updated to correct the time span of largest bond issues.
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A very good reporting job likely surpassing any other Iowa news outlet.
I voted NO in Cedar Rapids.
My shaky retirement can't absorb higher taxes especially when SS & Medicare are quaking thanks to MAGA spite and irrationality. If I have a say, I'm gonna vote NO to defend whatever meager portion of my retirement $ as I can. The only thing I can be sure of is that I can only win a temporary reprieve before ANOTHER retooled bond issue is forced on me.
The State of Iowa has committed a substantial amount of taxpayer $ to support Catholic or other sectarian education, along with whatever flavor of "home schooling" any religious or separatist cultist is brazen enough to snout the trough for. I feel even less obligation to voluntarily absorb MORE tax burden for our public schools when these toxic "scholarship" $ are shamelessly poured down this rathole.