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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
I think you need to look back at the history of APS over the past few decades to understand it. APS enrollment peaked in in the early 1960s around 26,500 students and then began a period of decline marked by enrollment increases for a year or two followed by several years of declining enrollment. During this time, APS closed several schools that simply weren't needed anymore and turned those parcels over to the county so that APS didn't have to carry the maintenance expense of buildings it wasn't using. School enrollment finally bottomed out in the 1980s, during which time it bounced up and down around 15,000, a decrease of over 10,000 students from its high 20 years earlier. There wasn't a single dedicated school bond referendum from 1974 to 1987 because there was no need for major construction projects.

Around 1990, school enrollment started to rise again, peaking at around 18,000 students in 2001/2002. During this period of increase, voters (especially those whose children had already aged out of APS) resisted the idea of putting too much money into expanding school capacity because history told them enrollment was just going to fall again and they didn't want a lot of tax money wasted on creating new school seats that wouldn't be needed in a few years. Therefore, the school board (who also couldn't be certain enrollment increases would continue) only planned and requested bond funding for more modest projects, because they didn't want to risk having a bond fail.

Sure enough, after 2001/02, school population started to fall again, confirming for those voters that we shouldn't be putting money into expanding capacity. As recently as 2006, the Yorktown renovation was very controversial because, among other reasons, people felt it was a waste of money to spending $115k expanding a high school when school enrollment was declining. That turned around the next year, though, and since 2007 we have seen enormous increases every year in enrollment. Voters initially still resisted the idea that we needed more school seats because history told them enrollment was just going to fall again so we should make due with trailers in the meantime. 
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The story that you are trying to tell about the voters being resistant to putting money into schools is not supported by the results of the school bond referendums.
Since 1998, school bonds have passes with an average of 81% voting yes. The lowest passed with 73% of the votes. I am not seeing the resistant that you are talking about. In contrast, during the 60's and 70's four bonds failed and the eight that passed only had an average of 60% voting yes.
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Like I said, because there was a resistance to investing significant sums in expanding capacity, the school board didn’t pursue big-ticket expansion projects that risked voters rejecting the bonds, they stuck with more modest projects (and substantially smaller bonds than we’ve seen in the last few referenda) that weren’t going to ruffle as many feathers and bring out anti-bond voters who otherwise weren’t motivated to show up at the polls (let’s not forget how dysmal Arlington’s voter turnout typically is).

Going back to the Yorktown example, in retrospect the degree of political whiplash around that project was amazing (and I was among the people who did the 180, I won’t pretend I was more enlightened than everyone else at the time). In 2006 there was so much heat from the public about the cost of the Yorktown renovation, in significant part because, as I said, enrollment had been declining for several years and it seemed like such a potential waste of taxpayer dollars. All kinds of letters to the editor in the various papers, WaPo covered it repeatedly, some civic associations got involved not just in advocating on the bond itself but also in the whole bonding framework, it was a big deal. But then as the phases were completed, the school was so quickly over capacity again that people started attacking the school board for its poor planning in not adding even more seats to the project (and for not doing the same at W-L as well).[/quote]

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