Race, money, and perception were front and center during the Mount Clemens school bond election.

Each of those topics played a part in the voter defeat of a $91.8 million capital improvements bond requested May 6 by Mount Clemens Community Schools, according to school board members.

District officials said they had hoped to borrow the money to finance restoration of the 100-year-old high school building, along with a host of other enhancements to the district’s buildings.

Despite the defeat, Superintendent Julian Roper said the engagement with community members proved to be invaluable going forward.

“Although the bond initiative did not pass, it wasn’t a loss,” Roper said at a recent school board meeting. “We educated a lot of people on what the school district is doing and and now we have more work to do.”

The district held a variety of town hall-style meetings, online discussions, lawn signs, mailings and other forms of communication to urge Mount Clemens voters to support the bond, which officials said would come with a millage reduction.

School board members said for now, there are no immediate plans to try again as they continue to digest feedback they received from voters.

In the days leading up to the election, some residents said that the price tag simply was too high — despite the “no tax hike” promise.

Supporters of the bond plan had said its passage would have marked a transformational time in the district’s history and create a learning center they predict would lure additional students once it’s done. But critics say it was too expensive for a district with less than 1,000 pupils.

A key selling point was a millage reduction, which would see the district’s tax rate of 11.8 mills reduced to 10.8 mills. The reduction will still go in effect in a few years.

According to results compiled by the Macomb County Clerk’s Office, the bond program fell on a 66.9%-to-33.1% margin.

Prior to the election, residents raised questions about the bond’s financing as well as the district’s low academic test scores. Mount Clemens already has $24 million in outstanding bonds and another $7.3 million in qualified loans outstanding under the State School Bond Qualification and Loan Program.

Race was another obstacle, school officials asserted.

During the May 21 school board meeting, board member Sheila Cohoon said someone at an earlier work session a blunt observation about the election.

She said “there was a statement online that said people who wanted the bond to fail were white.” She did not identify the person who made the statement.

“If it is believed by the majority of this board or of the faculty — which I don’t believe that it is — the reason the bond failed is because white people don’t want to vote on the bond,” Cohoon said.

“Over 50% of the bonds in the state didn’t pass; is that because the people (in those communities) are white,” she said. “If people don’t want to vote for bonds because of the color of someone’s skin, then we will never see change in this city, this country, this world, and especially, this district.”

According to Colhoon, the issues facing Mount Clemens schools are largely due to failures from past administrators and not race.

“Of the hundreds of comments I read online, not once did the word ‘race’ come up. The amount of the bond was based on many years of bad leadership which has closed school buildings,” she said.

With about 1,500 residents, Mount Clemens is a racially diverse community that makes up the county seat. According to the 2020 Census, about 23% of the city’s residents are Black, the highest percentage among Macomb County communities.

Colhoon called the racial aspect in Mount Clemens the “elephant in the room” before talking about the racial aspect from online commentators indicated they were hoping bond’s defeat.

The implication is that white voters didn’t want to support a bond that would benefit a district where approximately 65.5% of the student population is Black, according to U.S. News & World Report.

Roper, the superintendent, said the district must figure out how to overcome a “disconnect” with community members “that is real.”

“The learning that came for me and for us as an organization was huge,” Roper said. “People spoke their minds and that gave me insight of some deeper rooted things that need to be addressed, and we all have to respect that.”

Colhoon said Mount Clemens has lost a “massive” amount of its students to neighboring districts through the schools of choice program or to home schooling. She blamed what she labeled the poor past leadership of the district.

As a result, several schools were closed over the years.

A once thriving school district, Mount Clemens experienced enormous losses in student population, experiencing double-digit percentage declines. The student count has plunged from 5,000 in the 1990s to around 800 in recent years.

The bond initiative’s loss “has absolutely nothing to do with race,” Colhoon said, adding the district needs to get back to academic excellence.

Board vice-president Dr. David McFadden said the months-long bond discussion was a success because it “stirred the conversation” among the school district’s residents.

“I don’t think it was failure no way, no how,” he said. “I’m glad the conversation started because it was a conversation that needed to be had.”

Earl Rickman III, the school board’s longtime president, said despite the negative perceptions some may have of Mount Clemens Community Schools, it doesn’t have many of the problems of some its larger competitors.

Without naming a district, Rickman said he hasn’t seen any recent newspaper articles detailing Mount Clemens wrestling with a budget deficit or having students carrying guns into the high school or any schools-of-choice students being arrested on suspicion of murder.

That seemed to a not-so-far veiled jab at neighboring L’Anse Creuse Public Schools, which, along with other school communities, has benefited over the years from the Mount Clemens school exodus.

“It’s all about your perceptions and your perceptions is your reality and it’s our job to chance that perception,” he said.

Rickman said he was disappointed that voters didn’t back the plan. He added the district will continue to move forward serving its current and future students and work with the challenges posed by physical deterioration of the school facilities.