The winning strategy for a bond referendum is to include necessary projects that touch a wide range of constituencies. Though the $2 billion state bond referendum on the March 15 ballot does not include construction funds for K-12 schools, it does help Rowan County in the area of education with funds for Rowan-Cabarrus Community College — which is just as important.

The package also includes improvements that could touch the thousands of local students enrolled in the University of North Carolina system each year and anyone who visits state parks.

The state’s school superintendents lobbied the legislature in early 2015 for a bond referendum to help districts accommodate their growing student populations. N.C. voters have approved statewide school construction bonds five times since 1949, most recently in 1996 for $1.8 billion, according to the N.C. School Boards Association. As of 2011, school systems across the state said they had $8 billion in building needs. It didn’t help when lawmakers cut the amount of lottery proceeds going to school construction from 40 percent in 2005 to 17 percent today. How large would a package that also addressed 115 school districts’ needs have been? Too big for this General Assembly to stomach.

If school board members want K-12 schools to be a high priority in the legislature, they should work to elect different senators and representatives. As a whole, the current crew is not very sympathetic toward traditional public schools. They’re leaving those building needs for county commissioners to fund with property taxes.

Local lawmakers did support Gov. Pat McCrory’s call for the bond to include funds for the construction, improvement and relocation of highways, roads, bridges and related infrastructure. But transportation also failed to get enough support from lawmakers to win a place in the package.

There still is a lot to like about the proposal that eventually emerged, however. It includes more than $1.3 billion for the University of North Carolina and community college systems. Rowan-Cabarrus Community College would receive $7.2 million, most of which would go to the north campus in Salisbury.

The package includes $309.5 million for water and sewer loans and grants, something in which Rowan is also interested, along with money for parks, the North Carolina Zoo, the National Guard and the state Department of Agriculture.

All this could be for naught if, as some predict, conservatives turn out in force for the March 15 presidential primary and reject the bond package. Then no one will win a funding boost. And everyone loses.