In my "conservative" town, I have never seen a school budget fail. The budget meetings may have some people asking pointed questions, but once the budget is out, it ALWAYS gets approved by significant margins.
One recently was a $6 million upgrade to the football field, a new beautiful scoreboard, etc.. - for a sport which directly serves maybe 30 boys (and now has a tough time recruiting enough players to join) and 15 girls as cheerleaders.
As you say "its for the kids" and parents seem to automatically vote YES to anything that's proposed.
In my town they have ONE polling place, it's on the school campus, they get a few thousand yes votes from the teachers who due to proximity vote at near 100% turnout levels. That's near impossible to overcome.
I live in a town of 12,000 people in Oklahoma. The city passed an $85 million bond with only 1600 people voting. 900 for the affirmative. That would pretty much amount to the school, staff administration and their families. Unbelievable. Of course, it was for parking lot improvements, new gymnasium, etc. Our property taxes were scheduled to go down approximately $300 a year and of course that did not happen. What I love is that a bunch of people were bitching about their property taxes, yet they did not vote. We have to live with the consequences of stupidity and indifference. That is at the local level and also the national level.