Education |

$50 million in budget woes hit two of Colorado’s largest school districts

Two of Colorado’s largest school districts are scrambling to manage their budgets and keep schools open in the face of dwindling enrollment, failed requests for more money from voters and an anticipated further reduction in financial assistance from the state.

In the case of Aurora Public Schools, the fifth-largest district in the state is looking at a potential cut to its $350 million budget of $31 million as enrollment this year dropped by about 600 students to just under 42,000 — its largest enrollment decline in decades. Student-body size is important because it directly affects per-pupil funding from the state.

The cuts could lead to elimination of full-day kindergarten, the addition of furlough days and the shrinking of middle school sports next year, according to a recent story from Chalkbeat. The belt-tightening moves come after the district announced in October that it would slash $3 million from its budget.

In 86,000-student Jefferson County Public Schools, leaders are considering whether to reallocate $20.4 million in the district’s $700 million budget to buttress teacher and staff salaries. The board of education held a special meeting Thursday evening to discuss the budget and what to do in the face of the financial crunch.

The tradeoff for reallocating that money in Colorado’s second-largest district: the possible closure of five elementary schools. They were listed Thursday night as Peck, Pennington, Pleasant View, Stober and Swanson. The youngest school on the list is Arvada’s Peck Elementary, at 51 years old. The oldest is Pleasant View in Golden, which is 67 years old.

Aside from suggested school closures, the district may be required to cut support staffers and discontinue special programs to make the budget work. No decisions were made regarding cuts Thursday.

“With dwindling resources, you have to make some very difficult decisions,” Dan McMinimee, Jefferson County Schools’ superintendent, said in an interview.

He pointed to the defeat by voters of Issue 3A and Issue 3B in November, which would have raised $568 million in the form of a bond issue and mill levy override, as a major factor in the tough financial decisions the district now faces. As the board of education made clear in recent weeks that it wants to remain competitive with other large districts in what it pays its teacher corps and support staff, McMinimee said, that has meant having to figure out where to reallocate existing funds to ensure “high-quality educators” in Jefferson County.

He said more than $12 million from projected mill levy override revenues had been slated to go toward staff compensation. But because the measure was defeated at the last election, those funds have to come from somewhere else in the budget.

“It’s a redirecting of the resources we have,” McMinimee said.

The other big squeeze school districts will feel statewide is a projected $170 million cut in 2018 — the result of a property tax rate reduction triggered by the Gallagher amendment, a 35-year-old law designed to prevent overly burdensome property taxes for Colorado homeowners. It goes into effect because home values in Colorado, which have been on a particular tear in the metro area, are expected to exceed 45 percent of the state’s overall assessed property value — the maximum percentage permitted by Gallagher before a property tax cut is mandated.

Matt Cook, director of public policy for the Colorado Association of School Boards, said school districts have received fewer dollars from the state every year as a budgetary maneuver known as the “negative factor” has allowed the state to pay school districts less than Colorado’s funding formula mandates.

“We have a state system that doesn’t fund public education in Colorado,” he said. “School districts have been in this environment of scarcity for a while.”

Greeley-Evans School District 6 is feeling the heat too. Not only did voters turn down a $12 million mill levy override in November, but the reduction in state funding compounds the problem. District spokeswoman Theresa Myers said the board will begin discussing possible cuts to transportation, not filling positions and increasing classroom sizes to balance the budget.

“Everybody is suffering,” Myers said. “Only districts that have gotten local support — the Boulders, the Denvers — are doing OK.”

Voters in the Boulder Valley School District in 2014 passed a $576.5 million capital construction bond issue, the largest K-12 bond in Colorado history. Last fall, Denver voters approved a $572 million bond issue, along with a $56 million mill levy override, to build new schools and improve the cooling systems in several others.

Mark Ferrandino, DPS’ chief financial officer, said Thursday that Colorado’s largest district is not expected to face cuts next year, although he expressed concerns about “the impact any increase in the negative factor will have on our ability to maintain our budget.”

Colorado School Finance Project executive director Tracey Rainey said the troubles being felt this week in Aurora and Jefferson County won’t be the end of the financial challenges besetting the state’s public school districts, as they grapple with ongoing funding issues at the state level coupled by the new Gallagher restrictions.

“Unfortunately, this is just the beginning of what you are going to see this year as districts start their budget processes,” she said.