BOULDER, Colo. — Boulder Valley School District will likely look different next school year. District leaders are proposing a plan that would affect 16 of the over 50 schools in the district, closing six of them and combining others.
BVSD’s school board met Tuesday night to hear the plan from leaders. After nearly a decade of declining enrollment, several Boulder Valley Schools are sitting below 50% capacity.
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While declining enrollment has been a problem for schools across the state according to the Colorado Department of Education, BVSD Assistant Superintendent Rob Price says their district is seeing fewer families move to the area due to high housing costs.
Since 2017, BVSD enrollment has dropped by 3,675 students while building numbers have remained the same. District leaders are expecting enrollment to keep dropping, losing another 1,700 by 2030.
The plan proposed at Tuesday’s meeting, called the “Resilient Schools Proposal,” focused on the Boulder, Broomfield and Louisville-Superior-area schools. District leaders said those schools had many grade levels with two or fewer classes.
The Resilient Schools Proposal is projected to bump the average class number per grade level up to 2.5 by 2030 and exude excess capacity in schools by 1,906 students.
Broomfield
The proposal suggests combining Birch Elementary School with Kohl Elementary school, putting both schools and the Birch ICAN specialized education program in the Kohl school building.
The two school are just over a mile and half from each other, and both are hovering around 50% of their max enrollment capacity. District officials say Birch Elementary has the lowest projected enrollment in the area over the next few years.
Other nearby schools, like Aspen Creek and Emerald Elementary Schools, aren’t facing the same dire enrollment issues according to BVSD leaders.
Louisville-Superior
For the Louisville and Superior areas, the proposed plan doesn’t include closing buildings, but it does switch up operations inside existing schools.
Monarch PK8 School in Louisville would shut down its elementary school, solely serving grades 6-8. Eldorado PK8 School would close their middle school, becoming a pre-k and elementary school.
Both schools would keep their specialized AIM programs.
Boulder
As a larger region in the district, Boulder-area schools have the most complicated path in the proposal, one that Assistant Superintendent Price said had multiple steps.
The proposal recommends closing Douglass Elementary, splitting those students into three nearby schools: Coal Creek Elementary, Eisenhower Elementary and Heatherwood Elementary.
High Peaks Elementary would then move into the open Douglass building, and Community Montessori Elementary would take over High Peak’s former building. The old Community Montessori building would close.
The proposal also closes Flatirons Elementary, diving those students into Foothill Elementary and Whittier Elementary.
Finally, Bear Creek Elementary and Mesa Elementary would combine, moving into the Bear Creek building, which is about a mile away.
All RISE special education programs would remain operational.
Next Steps
Multiple BVSD officials emphasized the difficulty of making these changes and the hours of community outreach work that went into the process, including over 60 hours meetings with BVSd schools’ faculty and staff, almost 20 hours of family and community engagement and several thousand survey responses.
BVSD officials and the board will meet again for public input on the plan Sept. 8. The board will vote to adopt or deny the plan during their Sept. 22 meeting.
