Predictably, do-nothing Representative Al Novstrup (R-3/Aberdeen) failed to push Senator Sue Peterson’s (R-13/Sioux Falls) Senate Bill 223 through the House Thursday. While I am pleased to see this inconsistent and thinly-veiled swipe at public education fall before the unified opposition of every major public education lobbying group in the state, SB 223 did draw one interesting amendment and one laughable expression of support for democracy from elitist Al Novstrup.
Novstrup and Peterson sought to make it easier for the anti-public-school radicals to whom Novstrup and Peterson pander to strangle the budgets of their local schools. As originally filed, SB 223 would have given residents who want to refer school board opt-outs from property tax limits twice as much time to refer those opt-outs to a public vote—40 days instead of the current 20—and lowered the number of signatures they have to gather on their referendum petitions from 5% of registered voters in the school district to 50. In Spearfish and all larger school districts, 50 voters is less than half a percent of the electorate. In Sioux Falls, 50 voters is 0.04% of the electorate. I’m a passionate defender of direct democracy, but even I recognize that those are ridiculously small percentages to invoke the power of referendum.
In its February 9 hearing, Senate State Affairs amended SB 223’s signature threshold to 50 voters or “at least five percent of the voters who cast a vote in the most recent regular school district election… whichever is greater.” Traditionally low voter turnout for school board elections would still make that signature threshold remarkably low in most school districts. Only 2,958 of the 126,334 registered voters in the Sioux Falls school district cast ballots in the 2025 school board election, so 5% of that 2.33% turnout would be 148 signatures to refer an opt-out rather than the 6,318 required under current law.
Pegging the signature requirement to active voters rather than registered voters would at least have aligned opt-out referendum law with the law for statewide initiative and referendum petitions and nominating petitions. The signature thresholds for placing questions and candidates on the statewide ballot are based on how many people voted in the last gubernatorial election. If voter turnout is a more reasonable standard than voter registration for statewide petitions (and Senate State Affairs thinks it is, since they rejected SB 33, which would have changed the basis for candidate petitions to the number of registered voters), then it should be a more reasonable standard for school district petitions.
The House took the practical fact of low voter participation in local elections over the principle of consistent petition policy and killed SB 223 on Thursday:
Opponents said the measure lowers the bar too far and turns low turnout into a policy problem for school districts. He noted that taxpayers in larger communities need to be more involved with their school boards it they want more impact on the budget.
“Lack of civic engagement doesn’t necessitate an emergency on my part,” said Rep. John Shubeck, R-Beresford.
Shubeck also argued that the change would produce very different standards depending on district size.
“For Sioux Falls, it drops to 1.4 something percent,” he said. “That is a very low bar” [Todd Epp, “School Opt-Out Petition Window Extension Fails in House; Reconsideration Filed,” KOTA-TV, 2026.02.27].
Rep. Shubeck was just appointed to his District 16 seat last September, so we may forgive him for not remembering that the 2025 Legislature tried to address the problem of low local turnout by forcing school districts and other local governments to hold their elections on the same days in even-numbered years as the statewide primary and general elections. But that measure, 2025 HB 1130, would create a weird see-saw effect on school opt-out referendum petition requirements based on turnout. We should expect that in even-numbered years, when school board elections piggyback on gubernatorial and Presidential elections, turnout will be high, which would make SB 223’s turnout-based signature thresholds higher. In odd-numbered years, when local elections would stand alone, turnout would probably drop toward traditional levels, dramatically lowering turnout-based signature thresholds. In Sioux Falls, for instance, a 2026 election that matches 2024’s 70% turnout would raise the opt-out referendum signature threshold to over 4,400. But the next year, if turnout for a standalone school board election dropped back to a humdrum 2.33%, citizens could trigger an opt-out referendum with a mere 150 signatures.
SB 223 would thus have created wildly pogo-ing signature thresholds for referendum petitions, and erratic standards for democratic participation are bad policy. SB 223 also would have incentivized school boards to pass opt-outs following high-turnout even-numbered-year elections to insulate their tax hikes from popular rebellion.
On the bright side, SB 223 at least got Al Novstrup to say that the Legislature should make it easier to put measures on the ballot:
Rep. Al Novstrup, R-Aberdeen, said the bill would make referrals possible in places where he believes they are not realistic today. He said this was Sioux Falls, Rapid City, and Aberdeen.
“There are school districts in our state that it is impossible to refer an opt-out,” Novstrup said. “All we’re trying to do is take the impossible and make it possible” [Epp, 2026.02.27].
This from a man who, in a rare instance of Legislative productivity in 2021, worked to require petitions be printed in 14-point font and who last year voted for every measure that came before him to make putting questions on the ballot less possible.
SB 223 was obviously inconsistent from the start. The committee amendment tried to address one portion of that inconsistency, but tying petition signature thresholds to voter turnout figures that will likely vary wildly from year to year would have created more inconsistency in school board tax decisions. But at least before it dies, SB 223 helped put on the record the gross inconsistency of Al Novstrup and its other sponsors.
There were a lot of kooky ideas about how to screw with South Dakota’s constitutional school system this session. I really don’t understand why some legislators are so against constitutional schools. It’s kind of a good thing that they come with these utterly ridiculous proposals. Some of the folks who scream the loudest about about shutting down “direct democracy” at the state level bring these extreme liberal proposals to open up every public school board decision to automatic votes.
There is one thing I agreed with these folks on, though. The window for collecting the signatures on opt outs was far too small. At 20 days that small window makes opt outs referrals virtually impossible. So, I supported the simple exansion of that window to 40 days. I think the bill originally was for 45 days, but got compromised down to 30 days. That will be enough time for citizesn to collect signatures.