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This is the first story of a series
Colorado school districts are looking at more red ink this fall than a D+ student at mid-terms.
In many cases, school districts are slashing millions from their budgets to cope with funding shortfalls caused by declining enrollments.
From the long-suffering St. Vrain Valley School District in Longmont – where budgetary crisis is all too familiar – to the normally flush Douglas County, the realities of school finance law in Colorado are hitting and hitting hard. Many districts are pondering whether the time is right to go to voters – already stung by rising gas and food prices – to seek mill levy overrides.
And in a number of districts, some teachers and other staff members simply won’t be coming back to school this fall. Their jobs were eliminated in the need to balance budgets. Even if voters approve school tax hikes in November, those lost positions won’t be filled during the 2008-09 academic year. They’ll have to wait.
In many cases, declining enrollment and other demographic realities are forcing the cuts. For District 11 in Colorado Springs, charter schools and suburban flight have taken a big toll. Statistics from the Colorado Department of Education show that last year, 903 students residing in the district chose to attend school in nearby Academy District 20 instead.
Moving north, the Cherry Creek School District snagged 821 students from Aurora Public Schools.
But changing demographics are also at play. Roughly 75 percent of residents in the neighborhoods served by Adams County District 50 don’t have school-age children. Englewood is facing a similar problem. The district, which has seen its enrollment drop from 4,581 to 3,427 over the last decade, is expected to fall below 3,000 students by 2010.
To compete, districts with declining enrollments are launching a bevy of new programs – from full-day kindergarten to single subject-focused magnet schools. Adams County District 50 is preparing to implement a new standards-based education system that will specifically outline what students need to know and allow them to move at a more personalized pace.
Colorado Springs District 11 is focused on student achievement initiatives as well, but is also providing financial incentives for schools that use innovative measures to attract new students.
Aurora is launching a pilot school program - modeled after a similar effort that proved successful in Boston – to provide schools with more autonomy.
Here’s a look at the situation in some large districts:
In Colorado Springs District 11, “it just gets tougher and tougher,” said Glenn Gustafson, chief financial officer for District 11, which lost 621 students during the last school year and is projected to be down by 369 more this year. The district has cut $1.25 million from its budget as a result.
The steady migration from the district’s traditional neighborhood schools has added up to a loss of almost 4,000 students over the last decade, causing total enrollment to fall from 31,550 to an estimated 27,696 this school year.
“That’s equivalent to 12 medium-sized elementary schools or two big high schools,” said Gustafson of the losses.
In St. Vrain Valley, officials laid off 85 employees in the spring, mostly teachers, to cover a projected $4 million budget shortfall. That means that come fall, every classroom in the district will have, on average, an extra 1.75 students in them than they had in the past school year.
Some programs were hit harder than others in the district. Students at Heritage Middle School won’t be able to study French. There will be no more choir at the middle and senior high school in Lyons. Arts classes were also cut.
“We’ve been through this before,” said school district spokesman John Poynton, recalling the 48 teacher positions that were eliminated just three years ago in the 24,000-student district. “And if we don’t pass this mill levy override, we’ll go through it again.”
St. Vrain, the state’s 10th-largest school district, is one of just two large Front Range school districts that has never approved a mill levy override. It will be up to the school board to decide whether to ask voters for help, but officials are pondering a request in the neighbhorhood of $16.5 million, in addition to seeking a $190 million bond issue to pay for the construction of three new schools.
“My sense of the district, its administrators and teachers and classified staff, is that the district is going to win to this support from the community,” Poynton said. “Some years ago this community went through a financial crisis, and it has since won back the confidence of taxpayers by reducing costs in all areas and tightening its belt. And we’ve enjoyed rising test scores. I think people believe that this time we’re going to be successful.”
In Adams 12 Five Star Schools, officials are looking at ways to trim $5 million from the current school year budget and are looking at cuts of about $16 million over the next three years.
As students return to class this month, most middle and high schoolers will find at least one teacher missing from their school. Thirteen secondary teaching positions were cut. There likely will be fewer media teachers to help student's in the library, fewer school safety staff. Cutbacks in the information technology department mean the districts ability to communicate quickly and easily with parents will be curtailed. Support for special needs students is also likely to be impacted, school officials say.
In Adams County District 50, enrollment declined by 811 students last year to just under 10,000, costing the district $5.6 million in local and state funding.
The district’s student population has decreased by nearly 13 percent from 1997, when it boasted 11,453 students. To minimize the impact, District 50 leaders closed two elementary schools and one middle school at the end of the 2006 school year. The consolidation of two more elementary schools in January should provide additional savings.
In rapidly-growing Douglas County, which is expecting an additional 2,300 to 2,500 more students than it served last year, officials had to carve $21 million off last year’s $472 million budget.
The district avoided laying off teaching staff, but custodial and security staff was not so lucky. Hoped-for new hires in the central office were put off, and overtime is being eliminated. And the activities buses, which provided a ride home for students involved in after-school activities, were eliminated.
“We’ve done a lot with utilities, too,” said Shelley Becker, director of the budget for the school district. “We’ve worked on an aggressive energy conservation program, which has been effective. Districtwide, we’ve been shutting off lights and computers to save money.”
Douglas County school board members will decide this month whether to ask voters for a mill levy override, in hopes of raising $17 to $19 million, Becker said.
The Cherry Creek schools shaved $3.2 million from the budget for the coming year and are eyeing an additional $12 million in cuts in the year to come if voters turn down a proposed $18 million mill levy override. In addition, the district is seeking a $203 million bond issue to renovate 18 older schools, upgrade safety and environmental systems in 50 other schools, construct three new elementary schools and build a math, science and technology center to serve Prairie Middle School and Overland High School.
“We would seek to make those cuts outside the classroom,” said district spokeswoman Tustin Amole. “But with that amount we would probably have to look at cost-cutting measures in the classroom too.”
No layoffs were required to balance the budget this year. The district covered the shortfall through curtailing purchases of some supplies, and letting certain unfilled administrative positions remain unfilled.
Because of the way the district’s debt load is structured, the new bonds, if approved, won’t add anything to the average homeowner’s tax burden. The mill levy override, if approved, would cost the average homeowner about $5 a month on a $325,000 home, Amole said. “As I like to say, that’s the equivalent of one Happy Meal,” she said.
Jefferson County school officials will decide late this month whether to ask voters to approve both a $350 million bond issue and a $32 to $36 million mill levy override.
The district already cut $1.5 million out of its $987 million budget for the coming school year, and officials are projecting up to $35 million in cuts will be necessary over the next three years if voters fail to approve the mill levy override.
Jeffco experienced a relatively modest 2 percent decline in enrollment from 1997 to 2007 (dropping from 88,006 students to 86,182 )
The Aurora Public Schools is dealing with a $10 million budget shortfall, which school officials attribute to declining enrollment – the district lost 3,768 students last year, and now enrolls 31,643 -- and some onetime spending on the district’s strategic VISTA 2010 plan.
Likely to go are some 60 teaching positions in the coming school year, as well as administrative cuts.
The school board is expected to approve (on August 5) a $14.7 million mill levy override request on the November ballot, along with a $215 million bond issue.
“The bond will be offered at no tax rate increase to the citizens,” said district superintendent John Barry. “The reason we can do that is because we have such a good credit rating. The mill levy override would create a slight tax increase, about $5 per month on a $100,000 home. One of the things we have not asked of the population in Aurora is a mill levy override since 1990. That’s 18 years. We’ve effectively not had a school tax increase in 18 years. We have tremendous momentum going now, but we can’t do this alone. We need help.”
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