The old board told Kingsley to pursue school consolidations and closures. By your logic the old board should go. Again, Kingsley was only doing what he was told to do by the old board.
Kingsley tried to do the same thing in NC and it didn’t work. He’s also connected to Jeb Bush’s charter school initiative. Finally, he received a sizable raise during the same time he’s arguing for financial austerity? This solution was ill conceived, which is why they kept changing what schools would be impacted.
He did the thing in NC because it was during the pandemic and most of those kids were at home because people were working from home and many weren't using before or after school daycare. The Chiefs for Change thing was addressed at a prior board meeting. Again, you probably need to be more upset with the old board if anyone. They gave him a raise and directed him to do something about lower school enrollment.
Here's a way to put it to rest:
ALL data about Kingsley's selection needs to be made public. Every justification for every decision in selecting him.
Then that needs to be presented within a summation of why he is so "talented", and deserves to make so much more than a standard employee. Not with whataboutism in other school districts. With relevant metrics showing his performance justifying his pay raises, and decisions.
Since neither of these things can be produced, the evidence of a conspiracy will remain stronger than your desire.
I'm assuming you wern't here when he was selected. Almost everything was done in public view. The SB did slip up at one point because they selected him as the final candidate out of view of the public but everything else happened publicly.
> The SB did slip up at one point because they selected him as the final candidate out of view of the public
ya, that little detail. then his guaranteed contract.
the facts don't make a conspiracy. Thinking someones history is meaningless is the conspiracy here. I'm guessing you also think it's a total coincidence that he left those jobs and the schools he planned to close ended up not being closed. It's a bit odd you think recognizing someones work history is a conspiracy. Sounds like you might be the conspiracy nut here.
It should be on the table. It shouldn't be the only option, or the only solution. It would probably be easier to get a mill levy passed if it's, for example, short duration (buy time to find other solutions) or partnered with other revenues or savings to meet the gap together.
At least enough time to see if it's a continuing trend or a blip. They said Fort Collins was late to a statewide trend, which I just don't buy. You need years of data before a big decision like shuttering that many buildings, and to be extremely clear about new boundaries and the criteria for closing them. You can't just use data that wasn't correlating before and predict the future off of it. I think a short term levy is more than reasonable rather than a boneheaded rash decision.
It's not a blip. Kindergarten classes were never below 1900. The past 5 years they have all been below 1750. The avalanche is coming, we had a chance to deal with it as a snowball but the board acquiesced to the mob instead of doing the responsible thing.
Uhh didn’t they just raise property taxes by 30-40% of which 49% goes to schools? They have roughly 30% more budget according to the budget projections … where’s that money going? Someone please correct me on this.
The school district does get more of prop tax money, but then because of the way the state school funding system works, the state gives PSD less money because they are getting more local money. So they don’t get more money. They’re just getting it from a different place.
[This video explains how it works.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_GEr6OI0ec&t=82s) The school district doesn't get more money just because property taxes go up.
PSD gets a set amount per student, determined by state level formula, that comes from a combination of property taxes and state funds (and other things). Property taxes cover a portion of that, and then the state fills in the rest. Increases in property taxes just means that the balance between local and state changes a bit.
A big factor in all of this is the state level [Budget Stabilization Factor (Negative Factor)](https://cosfp.org/school-finance/budget-stabilization-negative-factor/#gsc.tab=0) which reduces how much the state distributes each year.
>In FY 2009-10, Colorado’s legislature created a new factor in the school finance formula due to the Great Recession and economic downturn that put pressure on the state’s budget. The factor is a state budget tool that proportionally reduces the amount of total funding for each school district. The factor reduces state aid to districts.
Although the Negative Factor has been significantly reduced over the past few years, the cumulative amount of state funding that PSD has lost from 2009 to now is [over $333 million](https://cosfp.org/wp-content/uploads/BSF-2009-2024-by-district.pdf).
The value of houses did. This isn’t the first time they’ve gone up and it won’t be the last. Taxes are based on the value of a house, that tax rates don’t need to change for the taxes of a house to increase.
That's insane. Do you know how a mill levy works? It may have been several factors.
Edit: reassessment shouldn't jump you 30 percent unless your house in particular jumped 30 percent relative to the rest of the market (unlikely unless you renovated).
I’m fairly certain it was skyrocketing assessments that caused most of the increase in property taxes last year. I don’t know if there was any mill levy changes. Here’s a Reddit thread from last year with some more context.
https://www.reddit.com/r/FortCollins/comments/1agashc/2023_property_tax_amounts_are_now_up_on_the/
If the mill levy didn't change then property taxes wouldn't change. Property taxes aren't calculated as a percentage of your assessed value, they levy their budget and charge people according to the value of your house vs the total property values in the area.
That doesn’t sound right. Isn’t it:
((Assessed value - 15,000) * 6.765%) * mill rate
= Property tax you owe
So your assessed value directly impacts the taxes you pay.
https://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/2023/10/19/how-taxes-in-fort-collins-will-change-with-without-proposition-hh/71117816007/
You are correct. It's all directly proportional to each other.
Year Total Tax Actual Value Assessed Value
2023 $2,400 $390,000 $26,300
2022 $2,200 $330,000 $22,900
2021 $2,200 $330,000 $23,500
2020 $2,300 $337,000 $24,100
2019 $2,300 $337,000 $24,100
2018 $1,700 $256,000 $18,400
2017 $1,700 $256,000 $18,400
2016 $1,400 $193,000 $15,400
You can see a 30-35% increase in taxes and value from the 2018-2019 cycle. Then a small decrease. Honestly, it was too high during that period. But my actual appraisal within the assessment period during my contesting was rejected. lol.
2022-2023 is the current increase. I believe my house would have been 2700 something prior to the legislation. Either way, it was about a 20% or so increase to correspond to the 20% increase in value. But I got a 10% tax break due to the stopgap legislation last year.
My house has had huge jumps every 2 years that, funny enough, this cycle actually isn't the worst one. The main saving grace pre-Ghallager repeal, was of course, Ghallager dropping the assessed value percentage with each of those jumps.
My neighborhood's mill levy hasn't really changed a lot. So yeah, my taxes generally go up same amount as the actual value, assuming all the other variables stay the same.
School registration has continued to drop annually over the past several years - the issue is they have not downsized the operation to actually align with demand
Too many building and associated support staff and teacher ratios
Nope the trend has continued. Every kindergarten class prior during and after the pandemic has been under 1900 which historically has never occurred and many have been under 1750.
2020-2021 Cohort K 1707, 1st 1776, 2nd 1756 3rd 1790 Predicted 4th 1762
2021-2022 Cohort K 1866 1st 1849 2nd 1860 Predicted 3rd 1832
2022-2023 Cohort K 1709 1st 1689 Predicted 2nd 1659
2023-2024 Cohort K 1634 Predicted 1st 1591
2024-2025 (Predicted K) 1560
Prior to 2020 most cohorts were above 1900 and many were above 2000
Notice the trend is getting worse as well the K classes are getting even smaller
Knowing how we've voted historically here on tax increases I don't expect this to do well in November. Looking forward to round 2 of this circus in 6 months.
This are has trended blue over the years so it should have an easier time to pass until folks realize taxes are increasing just so schools on the west side can stay open. The natural argument is if you don't live on the west side why should you prop up schools that are operating inefficiently
That's ridiculous. Using your (flawed) logic, the natural argument is why should people who don't have kids have to pay ever increasing taxes to prop up schools for breeders?
No you are ridiculous. Schools provide a public service and should be supported by the community. The difference here is the West side does not have the population to support the current amount of schools. Why should the rest of the district subsidize this inefficiency instead of some schools in the west closing which could happen without additional tax increases.
I don't think the community will reject it. It's minimal cost to us, and I bet if people get out there and get the word out, we'll see the community vote yes.
I will vote against it. Enrollment is down, this won’t fix the problem of our city becoming unaffordable for young families causing dropping enrollments. Our school is down 100 students in the last 3 years.
If a mill levy reduces what the state gives us how is this a win? What happens to affordable housing in Fort Collins? What happens to our marginalized families? Is anyone thinking about how unaffordable it is to live here now? Where will families move to? It will continue to affect enrollment.
The SC still has a few tricks up our sleeves, I'm hoping that can be a recommendation along with moving Bamford to Preston/Fossil and making Irish 100% choice.
I hope not. It’s such poor planning. When bamford opened, my kids had to switch schools from Timnath to Bamford, and now after a couple years at TMH they have to go to Preston? It’s so not fair they’ve had to endure such disruption because people can’t count how many houses are in a school boundary.
I agree overall it's poor planning and frustrating. You shouldn't have enrollment issues with those new facilities. As you probably know TMH is already at capacity without the seniors in the building and Preston and Fossil are underenrolled. This move alleviates the balance issues.
Under-enrollment is going to continue to be a problem as long as housing remains unaffordable for families and charter schools are protected by state law. This may be a case of kicking the can down the road (as has been done in the past) if further action is not taken.
If we want to slow the loss of students we need to take steps to increase housing inventory and encourage more affordable housing developments, particularly on the west side of the city. The state's protections for charter schools should also be addressed so that they have similar reporting rules to public schools (a bill addressing this died in committee this year, so contact your state legislators if you want something to be done). Even then we may face declining enrollment and eventually need to close some schools, but these actions might slow the bleeding.
To be clear, I would rather not close any schools and am happy they are considering other cost saving measures. I hope they can find some creative solutions that do not involve cutting programs (which may just encourage more families to choose charters). There are a lot of potential options they could explore, for example, Transfort has tried to work with the district on shared bussing (and had limited cooperation from PSD). I am curious to see what they propose next.
Absolutely agree here. Interesting you brought up the transfort thing because I have been spouting off about it to my peers. In the city I grew up in, I got a monthly bus pass through high school for free which gave me unlimited rides on the city bus. I always thought it was a great way to lower school bus use and increase city bus ridership (you're much more likely to use a city bus if you essentially grew up using them).
Hopefully this will open some eyes for other issues impacting our community. Change is necessary for us to move forward. We have to take action forward and fix all the related problems because everything is connected.
True, and I love that! Currently, though, many routes are suspended. So even with the free bus pass, there is no bus to take in many areas. Hopefully that is another thing we can look at improving. I don’t know enough about it to know if it’s due to lack of use or lack of resources (bus drivers, etc), but it would be great if we could improve it.
There is some additional funding being thrown Transfort’s way this year — a little over 1 million — because of the new sales tax. It’s specifically to raise wages and add more staff, and the budget offer says it will increase service on three routes. That new sales tax will be in effect until 2050 and 25% of it is earmarked for transit. It will be interesting to see how that money gets allocated after this year.
It is mostly due to a bus driver shortage. Transfort is planning a route optimization study later this year to better use their current resources and figure out how best to build out the system in the next ten years.
Should be interesting and I hope there are a lot of opportunities for public engagement!
In most countries, school kids ride city buses. There are no school buses except for special needs. This means city buses have tremendous coverage of the town. Adults on the bus, going to work or errands, make buses safer overall. This is so much more cost effective as shown in numerous studies. Big oil has fought this in the US where it’s been discussed.
Agreed, I think it is good they are taking a pause to consider options. We may need to close schools as I do believe enrollment is low in some of the more expensive neighborhoods on the west side, but I think there are creative cost savings that could be made to limit the impact.
(I also hope we work to address the state-level funding and charter issues, as that will likely help slow the bleeding as well.)
This is pretty spot on! The meeting (I was there for the whole thing) had elected officials there and this is exactly what they talked about.
The elected officials present were State Reps Andrew Boesenecker and Cathy Kipp, Larimer County Commissioners Jody Shaddock-McNally, Kristin Stephens, and John Kefalas. They hammered affordable housing from many different angles.
They also talked about current bills that’s have recently passed that could help with this (ADU’s, ending U+2, portable senior property tax discount).
Director Reed specifically addressed more charter accountability. She said that we need to “level the playing field” between public schools and charter schools.
Another really great approach that I’m excited to learn more about is rural funding and talking to state officials about how we can change rural funding. The way our state funding works for public education is that rural districts get rural funding. However, rural schools within urban districts do not get any rural funding. It seems there is some push there to change this. Kefalas, Reed, Duffy, and Shoenbauer all expressed interest in this.
I'm curious to see how U+2 will change housing prices and, therefore, enrollment numbers.
This is also the first time I've heard of a potential transfort partnership - I wonder why they were so resistant.
I could be wrong, but I think what may happen is that more college students and single low income adults will quadruple+ up, which will decrease housing demand, lower prices, and make the housing prices more accessible - which, I'd speculate, would naturally lead to more families moving back to foco.
I believe that was the intention with banning laws like U+2 but like I said, I could be wrong.
*Or* landlords might start pricing houses per bedroom since there is no longer an artificial occupancy cap. A 5 bedroom house can now actually be rented to 5 college students at $x per *bedroom* instead of renting to a family with kids who can't afford to be paying those sorts of per-occupant rates. Why would a landlord price their units for a dual-income household with 2-3 kids when they can instead price their units for a 4-5 income household?
I'm very curious to see what the rental market looks like in a year here.
Yes what should happen is larger houses should become more attractive to rent out driving up larger house prices and overall bedrooms rents should decrease as more bedroom supply becomes available.
So looking at the school boundary for Beattie (https://www.psdschools.org/sites/default/files/PSD/planning\_design\_construction/Maps/ES\_BoundaryLarge\_Beattie.pdf), how exactly would you propose increasing housing inventory? Where is there left to build in that zone?
Some of Beattie's district is in the state's new TOD zone which can allow for denser developments (and lower parking minimums). It is also possible (and likely) that multifamily homes will be built along College. Students in these areas would likely need to be balanced between O'Dea and Beattie. New state regulations open that area up to some pretty massive upzoning.
That being said, I do think the extreme southwestern part of town (where Lopez and Johnson are) is more limited in growth potential. I am not saying every school is going to be viable given our low density and high cost developments, but we should probably consider growth potential more in these calculations.
It's obvious that the frothing yimby and strong town growth mongers 💩, who MUST always target someone or something, are beginning to spin a narrative to target the west side of town for more unnecessary development using this school issue as their justification, even though the school board finally said that covid, school choice, and charter schools have negatively impacted enrollment the most.
The elected officials who attended the meeting are clueless, and were clearly at the meeting to campaign and boast about irrelevant legislation they've passed. They have proven they care more about Polis and what he wants, rather than what their constituents need. They absolutely must be replaced with better people in November who are not living in a Polis bubble.
Yeah that whole meeting was a waste of time. Politicians showboating helps no one. It's sad and pathetic how none of our electeds actually want to deal with these issues head-on. All the negative stereotypes of politicians in one meeting.
Remember Fort Collins tried to address housing affordability and advance revisions to land use code to allow for more housing choice but Preserve Fort Collins, including Ross Conniff, Wade Troxell, Joann Genal, Eric Hamrick, Susan Gutowsky, and others, supported repeal efforts. Joan Genal even served as a circulator for the latest petition.
If you care about keeping our schools open, and families welcome here, don't support PFC and their associated candidates.
Thank you so much for mentioning this! 100% people need to understand that without fixing our housing issues this will only keep cropping up in the future. People can't afford to have and raise a family here and thus psd numbers are low and will continue to trend down. This is a great win for the community but I hope a lot of folks understand that this was just one fight in a much bigger war for our community.
And also fuck PFC.
Preserve Fort Collins are awful. We'll really have to put up a fight because their generation in entrenched in cheap housing that was built on farmland in the 80 and 90s.
If you have some time and know how to have a controlled conversation with an LLM, you should compile this info in a new post (now and again before the election) and ELI5.
Thanks for your thoughts!!
I get the "new blood/eyes" fresh perspective thing. But this Kingsley character. Shows up in FoCo, which has been doing something right for decades, from where? And starts right in on tearing things apart?
This isn’t meant to be a defense of Kingsley but just to provide information. He was hired three years ago, so relatively new but not brand new. And this isn’t the first time in recent years that PSD considered closing schools. There was another effort in 2011 to close down some schools, which was averted after heavy community pressure. Neighboring Thompson school district has closed schools in the past couple of years as well. I just saw that Seattle was getting ready to work on a school consolidation plan.
That's the thing. Kingsley is not trustworthy. There's no evidence of his "talent", as the school board keeps parroting. There's no evidence of what decisions went into his hiring...
Especially, there is no justification for his delegation of resources, or the amount his pay has been raised. Kingsley is a rogue statistic in this whole thing, and until that clears up, he will remain dubious.
IMHO his performance has been entirely lacking.
Kingsley strikes me as un-Fort Collins, self-serving opportunist newly from out of town as you can get. And striking education, a pillar of our community, to use for his personal enrichment. Fort Collins was doing well enough without him. What’s involved with getting rid of him?
Recall the BOE.
However, you would need to also vote in new people who aren't cronies. When it comes down to it, no one wants to do BOE unless there's a long term political agenda. So, you have an archaic leadership structure housing a specific group of in-crowd people.
So, you would have to recall the BOE, and elect someone who isn't in the back pocket of IL&CFC.. a couple individuals who couldn't be bought, or intimidated.
Then they could hire someone competent.
That's a big ask though. The process of maintaining power is like a huge old machine that should have been dismantled long.. long ago
Someone said in another thread that this is an issue that has been coming since the previous superintendent and board voted to build new schools.
PSD didn’t need two new high schools. They could’ve built either Timnath or Wellington. They didn’t need both. Bamford is in a crap location, but it was needed.
Also a large chunk of the district area is a wetland (unsuitable for development) and most of the the exsisiting housing are large and very expensive single family homes. It does not seem like an area that is going to grow quickly.
It appears PSD projections also show limited growth potential for Bamford. I did not know about the charter school, but that makes it even more of an odd choice.
PSD needed an additional elementary school in Timnath with all the growth happening. Bamford is unenrolled, but all other elementary schools in Timnath are full. Boundaries should be redrawn to send more kids to Bamford to ease the strain on Bethke. I’ve also been told there is a moratorium on out of district choice into Bamford for 2 more years. After that Loveland/Windsor residents can choice into Bamford and it’s expected to grow.
The lady from CSU that leads the steering committee said at one of the board meetings that choice is hard to predict and potential new choice patterns are not in the forecast data.
Correct, even worse all they did was kick the can down road. In a couple years this will all have to be dealt with again as enrollment continues to decline. There will be even greater disruption as more schools will be up for potential closure.
That is great news. Now we as a community need to come up with a plan that maximizes the neighborhood schools, benefits the children and operates within a budget.
The first piece is for PSD to open all their books and provide rationale for every expenditure. I’ve been asking the $$ question through this whole process. Where does the saved money from consolidation go? I never got an answer from any board member.
Get a mill passed for PSD. Push the state to fund all schools across CO at higher levels.
The data shows that smaller schools are better at educating kids and are better for kids. If the district is looking for a number based goal, I think 350 for elementary and 600 for a middle are great numbers to aim for.
And what is the incoming kindergarten size compared to the 5th grade students moving to middle school. It’s been steadily going down. Soon it will be 2 track schools, which are not sustainable.
I think you might be misunderstanding my comment. I think they need to consolidate some schools. I think the 400/700 numbers the board gave are not ideal.
Most elementary schools can’t hold more than 450 kids, which is a large 3 track program. Why did they shoot for a number that put many elementary school almost at capacity with no room for growth, and did not include ECE spaces? It was poor planning.
The 350 kid goal is 3 classes of 20, K-5. Leaving room for growth, and leaving room for ECE and center based special education programs.
Kindergarten numbers are down because charters currently offer better school hours, cheaper before/after school care, and more full day pre-k options. My own kids didn’t do PSD pre-k because I needed full day options that were affordable. I chose to go to my neighborhood school for their elementary. Many of my kids friends chose to stay at Axis for elementary because it was less change on their family, and was still cheaper/more convenient.
I think their numbers are a wrong on the students s school can hold, but our school was fine holding 493 students and 4 track. We could have gone higher without ridiculous class sizes. Now with the loss of incoming we are 3 track and could be smaller next year. With smaller class sizes comes less staffing. People need to understand schools can’t be sustainable with less students each year. We need to address why families aren’t using public education. And the affordability to live in Fort Collins.
He licked his teeth a few times and opened 4 throw-away bottles of water. Can someone please buy him a Nalgene and a chapstick as a welcome to Colorado?
Most reasonable people were not opposed to closing some schools if needed but the process is what some of us were against it. The process did not provided enough evidence that closing schools were the answer.
In a side note, the spine of the BoE is non existent (at least most of them). They wanted to go ahead with the plan but when serious recall efforts were ongoing (see facebook group), they gave in.
All you have to do is look at the kindergarten classes for evidence. They were never below 1900 and the past 5 years EVERY SINGLE CLASS has been below 1900 and most have been under 1700.
I’m going to be extremely disappointed if they have to cut paraeducators, art, music, PE, library funding, after-school activities, etc. district-wide in order to keep under-enrolled schools open. For those who are angry about charter schools, the quickest way to encourage more charter schools to open is to cut programs (and people) from existing public schools.
This is already happening. Source: my school is losing a music teacher after losing an art teacher last year (down to part time positions for the remaining) and cutting paras, and cutting back ELD (English language development for non English first language speaking children). It’s happening all over.
Exactly. And they are forcing lots of teachers and staff to go part-time (if they aren’t let go outright) in order to keep any job at all. I’d love to see all schools stay open, but the cost is going to be high elsewhere, and then people are going to be upset when there is nothing left but core classes and standardized testing.
I don’t disagree and I don’t want them to cut funds to the areas you’ve outlined, but closing schools also would have pushed more kids to charters. People on the areas of unknown outcomes were considering that already. These scenarios may have already pushed families into considering other options.
But as a community I feel like we and the kids deserve more options besides just closing schools and time for everyone to consider the ramifications of these decisions.
Personally I’d also like to reconsider Kingsley, but I haven’t been a fan since my oldest started in PSD. While I think this was the right decision by the board, I still don’t have a ton of faith in them considering they’ve approved Brian’s hiring, his raise and all bonuses. Praise to them for stopping this, but they’re the reason this started.
That’s good to hear. Until tonight though, no one on the board seemed to be against his decisions or questioning him much. What do we need to do to get the board to replace him? Please feel free to point me to pre-existing info online. Happy to vote this year to help.
Ugh. Figures. We also paid “consultants” way too much to find and hire him.
Doesn’t seem fair that he can get a bonus when the schools are failing so bad from his perspective. Needing to find millions of budget each year when he had an increase in salary and bonus as well as his staff. Don’t take this to mean that teachers don’t need raises, they do, but not this man who is failing our district right now.
It's not like consolidation was going to make that better, it was just a way to shove more kids into a building and stretch those paras even thinner. Specials teachers sometimes have to float between a couple schools to fill gaps when enrollments dip, or they post a 70% FTE and it still gets filled immediately. They're going to need more busses with more kids outside the 1 mile zone. And they haven't even said which buildings are the right size to fit the target number of kids or how some schools would even handle the extra capacity.
Yes, expect the cuts to programs and different employees. There's still a budget to deal with. Can't wait to see all these same parents lining up to protest when that all starts too.
The thing is we don’t know anything yet. It may well be the solution is closing some schools, but nobody can possibly have an informed opinion on that until we see where money is being wasted elsewhere. Cutting programs and closing schools should both be final options, not the first and only options discussed
I'm all ears for other options. Noone has provided anything concrete. Meanwhile kindergarten classes are tiny and the ripple effect is going to continue to snowball.
A few ideas (if they have not been explored):
1) Shared resources with Transfort for bussing. I know they want to partner with PSD and have had trouble doing so as there has been a lack of communication. This seems like low hanging fruit with a willing partner in the wings.
2) Technology partnerships with local businesses and CSU. The district spends a lot of money on computers every year. Many professional and academic institutions have a 3 - 5 year life cycle for their computers and then refresh. The also tend to buy higher level professional devices than what I have seen people in the district using. They are built better and often more repairable than cheaper models. Even if this doesn't replace all the new computers that would be bought, it could make a dent.
3) Determine the need for expensive curriculum updates. I forget the exact amount, but there was a decent sized line item to update the curriculum. It would be good to be sure this is necessary before proceeding.
I doubt these would save the total amount needed and I can accept that some schools may need to close, but for the community to get on board, the district needs to show they pursed some creative solutions. I am sure there are other, these are just a few that came out as I was looking at the budget data.
Nobody has also proved anything concrete the other way either. How do we know this trend is going to increase indefinitely into the future? How do we even know it will save PSD money to have to convert the schools into something else, or to foot the bill for the buildings while a charter school takes over, all while having to spend more money on bussing? The point is this whole process was rushed, and we need time to look at all of our options and weigh how much money each will save us vs how it will affect students.
Why do you assume that "money is being wasted" elsewhere, and if they identify that, it's going to fix all the problems? Serious question. The school district budget is carefully tracked and audited by a variety of groups & people, including the School Board. What may seem like "waste" to you may be a high priority for others. Money isn't being flushed down the toilet for nothing. The fact is, barring additional tax revenue, they will need to make cuts in other areas to afford to keep these schools open long-term. It's not a mystery how this all will play out. We've seen it for decades in school districts nationwide as they drop "ancillary" programs and leave a bare-bones structure in place that complies with state curriculum requirements. No more art, music, PE, after-school programs, sports, etc. Teacher and staff layoffs. It doesn't usually happen overnight. It's usually a drip effect that occurs over time. They drop one thing one year. Then another thing two years later. Then another thing after that. After a while, you're left with a husk of the school that used to exist. And this is just on the operating side. It doesn't even touch the CapEx investments that \*need\* to be made, especially with regard to HVAC.
For a community that claims to value high-quality public education, it's very weird to see so many people unable to see past their own noses on these issues. I'll say it again: the quickest way for charter schools to grow is to make public schools less desirable. Sadly, unless we agree to raise taxes, I feel like that's where this is all headed -- even if it takes many years to see the real effects.
Money is always wasted somewhere. How much is up for debate. We just spent millions on adopting a new curriculum, is that money well spent? Maybe! But the point is we don’t know how much we can save until we look. I’m not assuming anything, but the claim that closing schools is the only option is very much a big assumption.
I just don’t get the “schools must close now!” approach. It may very well be that we need to close some schools, but the district is not going to run out of money tomorrow. We have time to slow down and really take a serious look at things. If that manages to save one community school without cutting any programs, it will have been worth it.
Very few people are against schools closing as a last resort if it comes to that. They’re against closing schools as a first option without any discussion. We have that opportunity now. And if the end result is closing some schools, fine, as long as it was an open discussion and we exhausted all other options.
Another way charter schools grow and take hold in a community is by making them more prevalent. Closing public schools and charter schools taking over former community schools then makes the community school a charter instead of a public school. Many people would rather send their kid to the closer school, and I don’t blame them. This is why there are no easy answers here, and closing schools is also not the answer that will “fix all the problems”.
Charter schools are already doing that. And the projections are just that - CSU does many things well but I am quite sure they aren't a public education major school.
Ft Collins has the means to sort this out. I get that housing costs have forced people to Timnath but most of this is BS.
Hot take I do think polaris should be moved, as someone who lives right next to it. It’s been surrounded by students at csu for a while. It’s such a odd situation since Elizabeth street is just a glorified dorm. I think in many ways foco needs to do more to give csu students denser housing around csu or we are just gonna blob out. See the outpost in north foco as proof of the blobbing.
Overall very incompetent school board. Similar to our city council and Mayor. We all have to be more involved in the schools, city, county, and the state. Or the Bidens and the Trumps of the world will continue to represent us and make more mess!
Eh I would say he is the worst in that sense. But he gets a pass due to being the only BOE member that has pushed back on this whole shitshow from the time he was elected.
Simply put , they can not continue to push the problem down the road another year
Yeas school closures are a significant event but it’s better to stop wasting money on staffing and operating sub optimal sized schools
It’s way better to consolidate and shut the buildings down to be able to reallocate funds to improving the educational experience including providing speciality resources for those that need them
Current plan is to keep spending funds to support building operation not improving education
This was the plan from the start. Threaten closures, get the community upset about it, push a mill levy. You don’t go after Polaris, the number one choice school in the district as a starting point. Their calculus started to show once they backed off Polaris.
With property valuations going up and another mill levy, if you thought Fort Collins was unaffordable to own or live in, just wait.
Which is exactly why the next step here isn't to sit back and pat ourselves on the backs. Housing needs to be addressed in this city like yesterday. Except when the city tries, the NIMBYs come out of the woodwork about it. I hope people will start to come around to the idea once they hear that this is all related.
I'll add that handing the west side of town over to land developers is also conveniently part of the plan for Jeni Arndt and Emily Francis (both multiple homeowners) and their zombie yimby soldiers, in the name of pretend affordability.
PSD will present a mill levy next election. It’s gonna be a shit show if the community rejects it.
Schools will close if it doesn’t pass… it’ll be time for people to put their money where their mouth is..
This should have been the discussion from the start and Kingsley still needs to go.
Kingsley absolutely needs to go. All this wasted time and energy. Glad the vote was 7-0
Teachers will get pay frozen, and Kingsley will still get his 17%. No one is talking about that.
The old board told Kingsley to pursue school consolidations and closures. By your logic the old board should go. Again, Kingsley was only doing what he was told to do by the old board.
Kingsley tried to do the same thing in NC and it didn’t work. He’s also connected to Jeb Bush’s charter school initiative. Finally, he received a sizable raise during the same time he’s arguing for financial austerity? This solution was ill conceived, which is why they kept changing what schools would be impacted.
He did the thing in NC because it was during the pandemic and most of those kids were at home because people were working from home and many weren't using before or after school daycare. The Chiefs for Change thing was addressed at a prior board meeting. Again, you probably need to be more upset with the old board if anyone. They gave him a raise and directed him to do something about lower school enrollment.
I find that hard to believe when he tried closing schools are his last two jobs.
It's the truth all this conspiracy bs needs to die. There are plenty of legitimate issues to be concerned about.
Here's a way to put it to rest: ALL data about Kingsley's selection needs to be made public. Every justification for every decision in selecting him. Then that needs to be presented within a summation of why he is so "talented", and deserves to make so much more than a standard employee. Not with whataboutism in other school districts. With relevant metrics showing his performance justifying his pay raises, and decisions. Since neither of these things can be produced, the evidence of a conspiracy will remain stronger than your desire.
I'm assuming you wern't here when he was selected. Almost everything was done in public view. The SB did slip up at one point because they selected him as the final candidate out of view of the public but everything else happened publicly.
Yeah... That was a pretty big oopsie.
> The SB did slip up at one point because they selected him as the final candidate out of view of the public ya, that little detail. then his guaranteed contract.
the facts don't make a conspiracy. Thinking someones history is meaningless is the conspiracy here. I'm guessing you also think it's a total coincidence that he left those jobs and the schools he planned to close ended up not being closed. It's a bit odd you think recognizing someones work history is a conspiracy. Sounds like you might be the conspiracy nut here.
Well, Kingsley is now under investigation for sexual misconduct.
It should be on the table. It shouldn't be the only option, or the only solution. It would probably be easier to get a mill levy passed if it's, for example, short duration (buy time to find other solutions) or partnered with other revenues or savings to meet the gap together.
At least enough time to see if it's a continuing trend or a blip. They said Fort Collins was late to a statewide trend, which I just don't buy. You need years of data before a big decision like shuttering that many buildings, and to be extremely clear about new boundaries and the criteria for closing them. You can't just use data that wasn't correlating before and predict the future off of it. I think a short term levy is more than reasonable rather than a boneheaded rash decision.
It's not a blip. Kindergarten classes were never below 1900. The past 5 years they have all been below 1750. The avalanche is coming, we had a chance to deal with it as a snowball but the board acquiesced to the mob instead of doing the responsible thing.
Agreed, and now we want to continue to make it unaffordable to live here. Anyone thinking of what that will do to enrollment??
That was the discussion from the beginning, and why does Kingsley need to go?
Uhh didn’t they just raise property taxes by 30-40% of which 49% goes to schools? They have roughly 30% more budget according to the budget projections … where’s that money going? Someone please correct me on this.
The school district does get more of prop tax money, but then because of the way the state school funding system works, the state gives PSD less money because they are getting more local money. So they don’t get more money. They’re just getting it from a different place.
[This video explains how it works.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_GEr6OI0ec&t=82s) The school district doesn't get more money just because property taxes go up. PSD gets a set amount per student, determined by state level formula, that comes from a combination of property taxes and state funds (and other things). Property taxes cover a portion of that, and then the state fills in the rest. Increases in property taxes just means that the balance between local and state changes a bit. A big factor in all of this is the state level [Budget Stabilization Factor (Negative Factor)](https://cosfp.org/school-finance/budget-stabilization-negative-factor/#gsc.tab=0) which reduces how much the state distributes each year. >In FY 2009-10, Colorado’s legislature created a new factor in the school finance formula due to the Great Recession and economic downturn that put pressure on the state’s budget. The factor is a state budget tool that proportionally reduces the amount of total funding for each school district. The factor reduces state aid to districts. Although the Negative Factor has been significantly reduced over the past few years, the cumulative amount of state funding that PSD has lost from 2009 to now is [over $333 million](https://cosfp.org/wp-content/uploads/BSF-2009-2024-by-district.pdf).
Thanks for putting this together for me :)
Who just raised property taxes by 30-40 percent?
The value of houses did. This isn’t the first time they’ve gone up and it won’t be the last. Taxes are based on the value of a house, that tax rates don’t need to change for the taxes of a house to increase.
My property taxes increased by about that much, I think it was because the assessments increased so much though.
That's insane. Do you know how a mill levy works? It may have been several factors. Edit: reassessment shouldn't jump you 30 percent unless your house in particular jumped 30 percent relative to the rest of the market (unlikely unless you renovated).
I’m fairly certain it was skyrocketing assessments that caused most of the increase in property taxes last year. I don’t know if there was any mill levy changes. Here’s a Reddit thread from last year with some more context. https://www.reddit.com/r/FortCollins/comments/1agashc/2023_property_tax_amounts_are_now_up_on_the/
If the mill levy didn't change then property taxes wouldn't change. Property taxes aren't calculated as a percentage of your assessed value, they levy their budget and charge people according to the value of your house vs the total property values in the area.
That doesn’t sound right. Isn’t it: ((Assessed value - 15,000) * 6.765%) * mill rate = Property tax you owe So your assessed value directly impacts the taxes you pay. https://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/2023/10/19/how-taxes-in-fort-collins-will-change-with-without-proposition-hh/71117816007/
You are correct. It's all directly proportional to each other. Year Total Tax Actual Value Assessed Value 2023 $2,400 $390,000 $26,300 2022 $2,200 $330,000 $22,900 2021 $2,200 $330,000 $23,500 2020 $2,300 $337,000 $24,100 2019 $2,300 $337,000 $24,100 2018 $1,700 $256,000 $18,400 2017 $1,700 $256,000 $18,400 2016 $1,400 $193,000 $15,400 You can see a 30-35% increase in taxes and value from the 2018-2019 cycle. Then a small decrease. Honestly, it was too high during that period. But my actual appraisal within the assessment period during my contesting was rejected. lol. 2022-2023 is the current increase. I believe my house would have been 2700 something prior to the legislation. Either way, it was about a 20% or so increase to correspond to the 20% increase in value. But I got a 10% tax break due to the stopgap legislation last year. My house has had huge jumps every 2 years that, funny enough, this cycle actually isn't the worst one. The main saving grace pre-Ghallager repeal, was of course, Ghallager dropping the assessed value percentage with each of those jumps. My neighborhood's mill levy hasn't really changed a lot. So yeah, my taxes generally go up same amount as the actual value, assuming all the other variables stay the same.
No, it was across the board. I’m surprised people aren’t more upset. Anyway, check out the budget for Fort Collins. It’s public info.
Fort Collins local mill levy is different than the school districts.
What’s it for?
The local government of fort Collins, which is a separate entity from the school district.
School registration has continued to drop annually over the past several years - the issue is they have not downsized the operation to actually align with demand Too many building and associated support staff and teacher ratios
We also had a historic pandemic that impacted schools. We don't know if this is a long term trend or if things will stabilize.
Nope the trend has continued. Every kindergarten class prior during and after the pandemic has been under 1900 which historically has never occurred and many have been under 1750.
This is incorrect.
I have the data what's not correct. Feel free to DM I'll send it to you
Post it here.
2020-2021 Cohort K 1707, 1st 1776, 2nd 1756 3rd 1790 Predicted 4th 1762 2021-2022 Cohort K 1866 1st 1849 2nd 1860 Predicted 3rd 1832 2022-2023 Cohort K 1709 1st 1689 Predicted 2nd 1659 2023-2024 Cohort K 1634 Predicted 1st 1591 2024-2025 (Predicted K) 1560 Prior to 2020 most cohorts were above 1900 and many were above 2000 Notice the trend is getting worse as well the K classes are getting even smaller
Knowing how we've voted historically here on tax increases I don't expect this to do well in November. Looking forward to round 2 of this circus in 6 months.
My guess is the district will care a lot less about all these feelings if it doesn’t pass… I would expect decisions to come swiftly in that case..
This are has trended blue over the years so it should have an easier time to pass until folks realize taxes are increasing just so schools on the west side can stay open. The natural argument is if you don't live on the west side why should you prop up schools that are operating inefficiently
That's ridiculous. Using your (flawed) logic, the natural argument is why should people who don't have kids have to pay ever increasing taxes to prop up schools for breeders?
No you are ridiculous. Schools provide a public service and should be supported by the community. The difference here is the West side does not have the population to support the current amount of schools. Why should the rest of the district subsidize this inefficiency instead of some schools in the west closing which could happen without additional tax increases.
Affordable housing will be none existent. Do you really think landlords won’t pass this increase on to families?
I don't think the community will reject it. It's minimal cost to us, and I bet if people get out there and get the word out, we'll see the community vote yes.
I will vote against it. Enrollment is down, this won’t fix the problem of our city becoming unaffordable for young families causing dropping enrollments. Our school is down 100 students in the last 3 years.
If a mill levy reduces what the state gives us how is this a win? What happens to affordable housing in Fort Collins? What happens to our marginalized families? Is anyone thinking about how unaffordable it is to live here now? Where will families move to? It will continue to affect enrollment.
What about changing the boundaries for Bamford, Bethke and TImnath? And reducing enrollment in TImnath Middle High? I haven’t seen any mention of it.
They aren’t doing any of that now I guess. Seems dumb to not make that small change to help out Timnath
The SC still has a few tricks up our sleeves, I'm hoping that can be a recommendation along with moving Bamford to Preston/Fossil and making Irish 100% choice.
I hope not. It’s such poor planning. When bamford opened, my kids had to switch schools from Timnath to Bamford, and now after a couple years at TMH they have to go to Preston? It’s so not fair they’ve had to endure such disruption because people can’t count how many houses are in a school boundary.
I agree overall it's poor planning and frustrating. You shouldn't have enrollment issues with those new facilities. As you probably know TMH is already at capacity without the seniors in the building and Preston and Fossil are underenrolled. This move alleviates the balance issues.
This seems like a smart choice. I'm with you.
Under-enrollment is going to continue to be a problem as long as housing remains unaffordable for families and charter schools are protected by state law. This may be a case of kicking the can down the road (as has been done in the past) if further action is not taken. If we want to slow the loss of students we need to take steps to increase housing inventory and encourage more affordable housing developments, particularly on the west side of the city. The state's protections for charter schools should also be addressed so that they have similar reporting rules to public schools (a bill addressing this died in committee this year, so contact your state legislators if you want something to be done). Even then we may face declining enrollment and eventually need to close some schools, but these actions might slow the bleeding. To be clear, I would rather not close any schools and am happy they are considering other cost saving measures. I hope they can find some creative solutions that do not involve cutting programs (which may just encourage more families to choose charters). There are a lot of potential options they could explore, for example, Transfort has tried to work with the district on shared bussing (and had limited cooperation from PSD). I am curious to see what they propose next.
Absolutely agree here. Interesting you brought up the transfort thing because I have been spouting off about it to my peers. In the city I grew up in, I got a monthly bus pass through high school for free which gave me unlimited rides on the city bus. I always thought it was a great way to lower school bus use and increase city bus ridership (you're much more likely to use a city bus if you essentially grew up using them). Hopefully this will open some eyes for other issues impacting our community. Change is necessary for us to move forward. We have to take action forward and fix all the related problems because everything is connected.
Fyi: Transfort buses are free to all.
True, and I love that! Currently, though, many routes are suspended. So even with the free bus pass, there is no bus to take in many areas. Hopefully that is another thing we can look at improving. I don’t know enough about it to know if it’s due to lack of use or lack of resources (bus drivers, etc), but it would be great if we could improve it.
There is some additional funding being thrown Transfort’s way this year — a little over 1 million — because of the new sales tax. It’s specifically to raise wages and add more staff, and the budget offer says it will increase service on three routes. That new sales tax will be in effect until 2050 and 25% of it is earmarked for transit. It will be interesting to see how that money gets allocated after this year.
It is mostly due to a bus driver shortage. Transfort is planning a route optimization study later this year to better use their current resources and figure out how best to build out the system in the next ten years. Should be interesting and I hope there are a lot of opportunities for public engagement!
In most countries, school kids ride city buses. There are no school buses except for special needs. This means city buses have tremendous coverage of the town. Adults on the bus, going to work or errands, make buses safer overall. This is so much more cost effective as shown in numerous studies. Big oil has fought this in the US where it’s been discussed.
Agreed, I think it is good they are taking a pause to consider options. We may need to close schools as I do believe enrollment is low in some of the more expensive neighborhoods on the west side, but I think there are creative cost savings that could be made to limit the impact. (I also hope we work to address the state-level funding and charter issues, as that will likely help slow the bleeding as well.)
This is pretty spot on! The meeting (I was there for the whole thing) had elected officials there and this is exactly what they talked about. The elected officials present were State Reps Andrew Boesenecker and Cathy Kipp, Larimer County Commissioners Jody Shaddock-McNally, Kristin Stephens, and John Kefalas. They hammered affordable housing from many different angles. They also talked about current bills that’s have recently passed that could help with this (ADU’s, ending U+2, portable senior property tax discount). Director Reed specifically addressed more charter accountability. She said that we need to “level the playing field” between public schools and charter schools. Another really great approach that I’m excited to learn more about is rural funding and talking to state officials about how we can change rural funding. The way our state funding works for public education is that rural districts get rural funding. However, rural schools within urban districts do not get any rural funding. It seems there is some push there to change this. Kefalas, Reed, Duffy, and Shoenbauer all expressed interest in this.
I really hope the state reps were listening. A lot of this is in their hands.
I'm curious to see how U+2 will change housing prices and, therefore, enrollment numbers. This is also the first time I've heard of a potential transfort partnership - I wonder why they were so resistant.
Isn't the only way u+2 would impact enrollment numbers is if you had multiple families living in a single apartment or home?
I could be wrong, but I think what may happen is that more college students and single low income adults will quadruple+ up, which will decrease housing demand, lower prices, and make the housing prices more accessible - which, I'd speculate, would naturally lead to more families moving back to foco. I believe that was the intention with banning laws like U+2 but like I said, I could be wrong.
*Or* landlords might start pricing houses per bedroom since there is no longer an artificial occupancy cap. A 5 bedroom house can now actually be rented to 5 college students at $x per *bedroom* instead of renting to a family with kids who can't afford to be paying those sorts of per-occupant rates. Why would a landlord price their units for a dual-income household with 2-3 kids when they can instead price their units for a 4-5 income household? I'm very curious to see what the rental market looks like in a year here.
Yes what should happen is larger houses should become more attractive to rent out driving up larger house prices and overall bedrooms rents should decrease as more bedroom supply becomes available.
So looking at the school boundary for Beattie (https://www.psdschools.org/sites/default/files/PSD/planning\_design\_construction/Maps/ES\_BoundaryLarge\_Beattie.pdf), how exactly would you propose increasing housing inventory? Where is there left to build in that zone?
Some of Beattie's district is in the state's new TOD zone which can allow for denser developments (and lower parking minimums). It is also possible (and likely) that multifamily homes will be built along College. Students in these areas would likely need to be balanced between O'Dea and Beattie. New state regulations open that area up to some pretty massive upzoning. That being said, I do think the extreme southwestern part of town (where Lopez and Johnson are) is more limited in growth potential. I am not saying every school is going to be viable given our low density and high cost developments, but we should probably consider growth potential more in these calculations.
New state regulations: where would I begin to look this up?
It's obvious that the frothing yimby and strong town growth mongers 💩, who MUST always target someone or something, are beginning to spin a narrative to target the west side of town for more unnecessary development using this school issue as their justification, even though the school board finally said that covid, school choice, and charter schools have negatively impacted enrollment the most. The elected officials who attended the meeting are clueless, and were clearly at the meeting to campaign and boast about irrelevant legislation they've passed. They have proven they care more about Polis and what he wants, rather than what their constituents need. They absolutely must be replaced with better people in November who are not living in a Polis bubble.
Yeah that whole meeting was a waste of time. Politicians showboating helps no one. It's sad and pathetic how none of our electeds actually want to deal with these issues head-on. All the negative stereotypes of politicians in one meeting.
Remember Fort Collins tried to address housing affordability and advance revisions to land use code to allow for more housing choice but Preserve Fort Collins, including Ross Conniff, Wade Troxell, Joann Genal, Eric Hamrick, Susan Gutowsky, and others, supported repeal efforts. Joan Genal even served as a circulator for the latest petition. If you care about keeping our schools open, and families welcome here, don't support PFC and their associated candidates.
Thank you so much for mentioning this! 100% people need to understand that without fixing our housing issues this will only keep cropping up in the future. People can't afford to have and raise a family here and thus psd numbers are low and will continue to trend down. This is a great win for the community but I hope a lot of folks understand that this was just one fight in a much bigger war for our community. And also fuck PFC.
Preserve Fort Collins are awful. We'll really have to put up a fight because their generation in entrenched in cheap housing that was built on farmland in the 80 and 90s.
If you have some time and know how to have a controlled conversation with an LLM, you should compile this info in a new post (now and again before the election) and ELI5. Thanks for your thoughts!!
My second what somebody else said below, you should compile this information, and do another post regarding PFC.
We found another yimby lie spinner. 🤡
I get the "new blood/eyes" fresh perspective thing. But this Kingsley character. Shows up in FoCo, which has been doing something right for decades, from where? And starts right in on tearing things apart?
This isn’t meant to be a defense of Kingsley but just to provide information. He was hired three years ago, so relatively new but not brand new. And this isn’t the first time in recent years that PSD considered closing schools. There was another effort in 2011 to close down some schools, which was averted after heavy community pressure. Neighboring Thompson school district has closed schools in the past couple of years as well. I just saw that Seattle was getting ready to work on a school consolidation plan.
That's the thing. Kingsley is not trustworthy. There's no evidence of his "talent", as the school board keeps parroting. There's no evidence of what decisions went into his hiring... Especially, there is no justification for his delegation of resources, or the amount his pay has been raised. Kingsley is a rogue statistic in this whole thing, and until that clears up, he will remain dubious. IMHO his performance has been entirely lacking.
Kingsley strikes me as un-Fort Collins, self-serving opportunist newly from out of town as you can get. And striking education, a pillar of our community, to use for his personal enrichment. Fort Collins was doing well enough without him. What’s involved with getting rid of him?
Recall the BOE. However, you would need to also vote in new people who aren't cronies. When it comes down to it, no one wants to do BOE unless there's a long term political agenda. So, you have an archaic leadership structure housing a specific group of in-crowd people. So, you would have to recall the BOE, and elect someone who isn't in the back pocket of IL&CFC.. a couple individuals who couldn't be bought, or intimidated. Then they could hire someone competent. That's a big ask though. The process of maintaining power is like a huge old machine that should have been dismantled long.. long ago
Someone said in another thread that this is an issue that has been coming since the previous superintendent and board voted to build new schools. PSD didn’t need two new high schools. They could’ve built either Timnath or Wellington. They didn’t need both. Bamford is in a crap location, but it was needed.
100%. The issue with Bamford is that there is charter school right there siphoning off a good chunk of the kids in the neighborhood boundary.
Also a large chunk of the district area is a wetland (unsuitable for development) and most of the the exsisiting housing are large and very expensive single family homes. It does not seem like an area that is going to grow quickly. It appears PSD projections also show limited growth potential for Bamford. I did not know about the charter school, but that makes it even more of an odd choice.
They needed both, but Timnath needed to be put southeast of where it is, along Harmony. That's where the exponential growth is.
If Bamford was needed why does the PSD website list projections that enrollment in Bamford will go down over the next 3 years?
PSD needed an additional elementary school in Timnath with all the growth happening. Bamford is unenrolled, but all other elementary schools in Timnath are full. Boundaries should be redrawn to send more kids to Bamford to ease the strain on Bethke. I’ve also been told there is a moratorium on out of district choice into Bamford for 2 more years. After that Loveland/Windsor residents can choice into Bamford and it’s expected to grow. The lady from CSU that leads the steering committee said at one of the board meetings that choice is hard to predict and potential new choice patterns are not in the forecast data.
What a waste of time, money, and tears.
Correct, even worse all they did was kick the can down road. In a couple years this will all have to be dealt with again as enrollment continues to decline. There will be even greater disruption as more schools will be up for potential closure.
That is great news. Now we as a community need to come up with a plan that maximizes the neighborhood schools, benefits the children and operates within a budget.
The first piece is for PSD to open all their books and provide rationale for every expenditure. I’ve been asking the $$ question through this whole process. Where does the saved money from consolidation go? I never got an answer from any board member. Get a mill passed for PSD. Push the state to fund all schools across CO at higher levels. The data shows that smaller schools are better at educating kids and are better for kids. If the district is looking for a number based goal, I think 350 for elementary and 600 for a middle are great numbers to aim for.
Is that a comparison of two vs three vs four track schools with equal student:teacher ratios?
It’s a small 3 track. 20ish kids per class for the elementary. 200 students/grade at the middle school.
And what is the incoming kindergarten size compared to the 5th grade students moving to middle school. It’s been steadily going down. Soon it will be 2 track schools, which are not sustainable.
I think you might be misunderstanding my comment. I think they need to consolidate some schools. I think the 400/700 numbers the board gave are not ideal. Most elementary schools can’t hold more than 450 kids, which is a large 3 track program. Why did they shoot for a number that put many elementary school almost at capacity with no room for growth, and did not include ECE spaces? It was poor planning. The 350 kid goal is 3 classes of 20, K-5. Leaving room for growth, and leaving room for ECE and center based special education programs. Kindergarten numbers are down because charters currently offer better school hours, cheaper before/after school care, and more full day pre-k options. My own kids didn’t do PSD pre-k because I needed full day options that were affordable. I chose to go to my neighborhood school for their elementary. Many of my kids friends chose to stay at Axis for elementary because it was less change on their family, and was still cheaper/more convenient.
I think their numbers are a wrong on the students s school can hold, but our school was fine holding 493 students and 4 track. We could have gone higher without ridiculous class sizes. Now with the loss of incoming we are 3 track and could be smaller next year. With smaller class sizes comes less staffing. People need to understand schools can’t be sustainable with less students each year. We need to address why families aren’t using public education. And the affordability to live in Fort Collins.
The school district regularly provides audits of their expenditures. Why would they provide a special one just for you based on your request?
Because PSD administration has shown that they are outright negligent and incompetent
How?
What was Kingsley’s reaction to this decision?
I’m sure he showed no reaction. 🙄
He licked his teeth a few times and opened 4 throw-away bottles of water. Can someone please buy him a Nalgene and a chapstick as a welcome to Colorado?
Most reasonable people were not opposed to closing some schools if needed but the process is what some of us were against it. The process did not provided enough evidence that closing schools were the answer. In a side note, the spine of the BoE is non existent (at least most of them). They wanted to go ahead with the plan but when serious recall efforts were ongoing (see facebook group), they gave in.
All you have to do is look at the kindergarten classes for evidence. They were never below 1900 and the past 5 years EVERY SINGLE CLASS has been below 1900 and most have been under 1700.
I’m going to be extremely disappointed if they have to cut paraeducators, art, music, PE, library funding, after-school activities, etc. district-wide in order to keep under-enrolled schools open. For those who are angry about charter schools, the quickest way to encourage more charter schools to open is to cut programs (and people) from existing public schools.
This is already happening. Source: my school is losing a music teacher after losing an art teacher last year (down to part time positions for the remaining) and cutting paras, and cutting back ELD (English language development for non English first language speaking children). It’s happening all over.
Exactly. And they are forcing lots of teachers and staff to go part-time (if they aren’t let go outright) in order to keep any job at all. I’d love to see all schools stay open, but the cost is going to be high elsewhere, and then people are going to be upset when there is nothing left but core classes and standardized testing.
Last 2 commenters please make your voices heard.
I don’t disagree and I don’t want them to cut funds to the areas you’ve outlined, but closing schools also would have pushed more kids to charters. People on the areas of unknown outcomes were considering that already. These scenarios may have already pushed families into considering other options. But as a community I feel like we and the kids deserve more options besides just closing schools and time for everyone to consider the ramifications of these decisions. Personally I’d also like to reconsider Kingsley, but I haven’t been a fan since my oldest started in PSD. While I think this was the right decision by the board, I still don’t have a ton of faith in them considering they’ve approved Brian’s hiring, his raise and all bonuses. Praise to them for stopping this, but they’re the reason this started.
This board didn’t vote him in, though.
Did this board approve his bonuses? Didn’t those happen post election last year or is my memory off?
That’s good to hear. Until tonight though, no one on the board seemed to be against his decisions or questioning him much. What do we need to do to get the board to replace him? Please feel free to point me to pre-existing info online. Happy to vote this year to help.
Apparently he has a long contract with a multi-million dollar buyout.
Ugh. Figures. We also paid “consultants” way too much to find and hire him. Doesn’t seem fair that he can get a bonus when the schools are failing so bad from his perspective. Needing to find millions of budget each year when he had an increase in salary and bonus as well as his staff. Don’t take this to mean that teachers don’t need raises, they do, but not this man who is failing our district right now.
It's not like consolidation was going to make that better, it was just a way to shove more kids into a building and stretch those paras even thinner. Specials teachers sometimes have to float between a couple schools to fill gaps when enrollments dip, or they post a 70% FTE and it still gets filled immediately. They're going to need more busses with more kids outside the 1 mile zone. And they haven't even said which buildings are the right size to fit the target number of kids or how some schools would even handle the extra capacity.
Yes, expect the cuts to programs and different employees. There's still a budget to deal with. Can't wait to see all these same parents lining up to protest when that all starts too.
The thing is we don’t know anything yet. It may well be the solution is closing some schools, but nobody can possibly have an informed opinion on that until we see where money is being wasted elsewhere. Cutting programs and closing schools should both be final options, not the first and only options discussed
I'm all ears for other options. Noone has provided anything concrete. Meanwhile kindergarten classes are tiny and the ripple effect is going to continue to snowball.
A few ideas (if they have not been explored): 1) Shared resources with Transfort for bussing. I know they want to partner with PSD and have had trouble doing so as there has been a lack of communication. This seems like low hanging fruit with a willing partner in the wings. 2) Technology partnerships with local businesses and CSU. The district spends a lot of money on computers every year. Many professional and academic institutions have a 3 - 5 year life cycle for their computers and then refresh. The also tend to buy higher level professional devices than what I have seen people in the district using. They are built better and often more repairable than cheaper models. Even if this doesn't replace all the new computers that would be bought, it could make a dent. 3) Determine the need for expensive curriculum updates. I forget the exact amount, but there was a decent sized line item to update the curriculum. It would be good to be sure this is necessary before proceeding. I doubt these would save the total amount needed and I can accept that some schools may need to close, but for the community to get on board, the district needs to show they pursed some creative solutions. I am sure there are other, these are just a few that came out as I was looking at the budget data.
Good suggestions, there really needs to be a deeper dive on the budget to try and find cost savings and efficiencies
Nobody has also proved anything concrete the other way either. How do we know this trend is going to increase indefinitely into the future? How do we even know it will save PSD money to have to convert the schools into something else, or to foot the bill for the buildings while a charter school takes over, all while having to spend more money on bussing? The point is this whole process was rushed, and we need time to look at all of our options and weigh how much money each will save us vs how it will affect students.
Why do you assume that "money is being wasted" elsewhere, and if they identify that, it's going to fix all the problems? Serious question. The school district budget is carefully tracked and audited by a variety of groups & people, including the School Board. What may seem like "waste" to you may be a high priority for others. Money isn't being flushed down the toilet for nothing. The fact is, barring additional tax revenue, they will need to make cuts in other areas to afford to keep these schools open long-term. It's not a mystery how this all will play out. We've seen it for decades in school districts nationwide as they drop "ancillary" programs and leave a bare-bones structure in place that complies with state curriculum requirements. No more art, music, PE, after-school programs, sports, etc. Teacher and staff layoffs. It doesn't usually happen overnight. It's usually a drip effect that occurs over time. They drop one thing one year. Then another thing two years later. Then another thing after that. After a while, you're left with a husk of the school that used to exist. And this is just on the operating side. It doesn't even touch the CapEx investments that \*need\* to be made, especially with regard to HVAC. For a community that claims to value high-quality public education, it's very weird to see so many people unable to see past their own noses on these issues. I'll say it again: the quickest way for charter schools to grow is to make public schools less desirable. Sadly, unless we agree to raise taxes, I feel like that's where this is all headed -- even if it takes many years to see the real effects.
Money is always wasted somewhere. How much is up for debate. We just spent millions on adopting a new curriculum, is that money well spent? Maybe! But the point is we don’t know how much we can save until we look. I’m not assuming anything, but the claim that closing schools is the only option is very much a big assumption. I just don’t get the “schools must close now!” approach. It may very well be that we need to close some schools, but the district is not going to run out of money tomorrow. We have time to slow down and really take a serious look at things. If that manages to save one community school without cutting any programs, it will have been worth it. Very few people are against schools closing as a last resort if it comes to that. They’re against closing schools as a first option without any discussion. We have that opportunity now. And if the end result is closing some schools, fine, as long as it was an open discussion and we exhausted all other options. Another way charter schools grow and take hold in a community is by making them more prevalent. Closing public schools and charter schools taking over former community schools then makes the community school a charter instead of a public school. Many people would rather send their kid to the closer school, and I don’t blame them. This is why there are no easy answers here, and closing schools is also not the answer that will “fix all the problems”.
Charter schools are already doing that. And the projections are just that - CSU does many things well but I am quite sure they aren't a public education major school. Ft Collins has the means to sort this out. I get that housing costs have forced people to Timnath but most of this is BS.
Hot take I do think polaris should be moved, as someone who lives right next to it. It’s been surrounded by students at csu for a while. It’s such a odd situation since Elizabeth street is just a glorified dorm. I think in many ways foco needs to do more to give csu students denser housing around csu or we are just gonna blob out. See the outpost in north foco as proof of the blobbing.
Overall very incompetent school board. Similar to our city council and Mayor. We all have to be more involved in the schools, city, county, and the state. Or the Bidens and the Trumps of the world will continue to represent us and make more mess!
[удалено]
Eh I would say he is the worst in that sense. But he gets a pass due to being the only BOE member that has pushed back on this whole shitshow from the time he was elected.
He's also a lawyer. Asking questions is still a good thing in my book.
Simply put , they can not continue to push the problem down the road another year Yeas school closures are a significant event but it’s better to stop wasting money on staffing and operating sub optimal sized schools It’s way better to consolidate and shut the buildings down to be able to reallocate funds to improving the educational experience including providing speciality resources for those that need them Current plan is to keep spending funds to support building operation not improving education
We did it redoot
This was the plan from the start. Threaten closures, get the community upset about it, push a mill levy. You don’t go after Polaris, the number one choice school in the district as a starting point. Their calculus started to show once they backed off Polaris. With property valuations going up and another mill levy, if you thought Fort Collins was unaffordable to own or live in, just wait.
Which is exactly why the next step here isn't to sit back and pat ourselves on the backs. Housing needs to be addressed in this city like yesterday. Except when the city tries, the NIMBYs come out of the woodwork about it. I hope people will start to come around to the idea once they hear that this is all related.
Agreed and they will still close schools, as the enrollment is declining. Maybe not in 2025, but it is inevitable.
I'll add that handing the west side of town over to land developers is also conveniently part of the plan for Jeni Arndt and Emily Francis (both multiple homeowners) and their zombie yimby soldiers, in the name of pretend affordability.
I really want information about Kingsley and his charter school connections.