Ok, so a school district does the following:

1. tries to get money from a bond vote
2. gets it approved
3. Starts the years long process of upgrades and maintenance
4. still sees attendance decline
5. votes to cut losses instead of subscribe to sunk cost
6. gets complaints that they spent money back on step 3, 2 years ago

How is this news?

Not directed at you OP, but something smells like this is just school vouchers support in the journalism. Government contracts always take years, funds get allocated and spent, the public landscape changes and then we blame them that they didn’t predict the future. This shit happens for public road works too. And in general, I don’t support heavy investment here. Though, at least I don’t give them too much shit when “one more lane” doesn’t solve the systemic congestion problem.