Jeffco Public Schools, Colorado’s second-largest school district, is recommending the closure of 16 elementary schools across Denver’s suburbs as the district faces declining enrollment, according to a presentation given to the school board Thursday.

The district’s Board of Education will vote Nov. 10 on whether to approve the proposed closures, which would affect more than 2,400 students and 422 full-time employees at schools in Arvada, Evergreen, Lakewood, Littleton, Westminster and Wheat Ridge.

Declining enrollment has been a “constant pain point” for Jeffco Public Schools, Superintendent Tracy Dorland said during Thursday’s board meeting.

“This is not an easy recommendation for any of us to make,” she said. “We take this very seriously and we know at this point of time, and moving forward, there’s a lot of emotion around this recommendation in our Jeffco community.”

Most of the school closures would take place next year, before the start of the 2023-24 school year, though one school — Bergen Meadow Elementary — would close ahead of the 2024-25 academic year.

Here are the Jefferson County schools the district is recommending should be closed:

Campbell Elementary School in Arvada
Parr Elementary School in Arvada
Peck Elementary School in Arvada
Thomson Elementary School in Arvada
Bergen Meadow Elementary School in Evergreen
Emory Elementary School in Lakewood
Glennon Heights Elementary in Lakewood
Green Mountain Elementary School in Lakewood
Molholm Elementary School in Lakewood
New Classical Academy at Vivian in Lakewood
Colorow Elementary School in Littleton
Peiffer Elementary School in Littleton
Sheridan Green  Elementary School in Westminster
Witt Elementary School in Westminster
Kullerstrand Elementary School in Wheat Ridge
Wilmore-Davis Elementary School in Wheat Ridge 

The district has 157 schools, including charter schools. Of those, 142 are managed by the district.

“There are certain communities and certain students and families, specifically, that are more impacted than others in this recommendation plan for a host of different reasons, and not calling that out would be disingenuous,” said Stephanie Schooley, president of the school board.

Declining enrollment hits K-12 schools

K-12 school districts across Colorado and the U.S. are seeing fewer students enroll and are considering ways to consolidate. That includes Denver Public Schools, which is also looking to close schools in the coming years. Statewide K-12 enrollment fell by 1,174 students to 855,482 pupils in fall 2021.

Jeffco Public Schools experienced one of Colorado’s largest declines in enrollment, with the district losing more than 5,000 students between 2019 and 2022, according to the presentation given to the school board. The district has the capacity to serve 96,000 students, but only has about 69,000 students.

Elementary schools are feeling the brunt of the crisis — more than half of Jeffco’s have fewer than 250 students and/or use less than 60% of their building capacity.

In the past two years, Jeffco Public Schools has abruptly closed two small schools — Allendale Elementary School and Fitzmorris Elementary — in the spring because of what it called “unsustainable enrollment projections for the upcoming school year.”

One area where student enrollment hasn’t declined: charter schools. The number of students attending charter schools in the district has remained flat at about 10,000 students for the past seven years.

There are multiple factors leading to declining enrollment, including shifting populations and falling birth rates. The pandemic has also affected schools as families lost jobs or moved.  Falling enrollment hits schools financially as their funding is based on the number of students they have — so when students leave, they get less money.

Jeffco Public Schools said that while the overall population in Jefferson County grew between 2000 and 2020, the 2020 Census shows the population dropped among both school-aged children and kids ages 5 and younger.

The number of school-aged children in Jefferson County peaked in 2001 and more than one-third of the district’s elementary schools were built during the baby boom between 1946 and 1964.

On average, 45% of families choose not to attend their neighborhood elementary school, according to the district’s presentation.

As school funding is tied to the number of students who attend, declining enrollment has created wide gaps between how much money individual schools get. The elementary schools with the most per-pupil funding receive more than $19,000 per student while smaller schools get just under $14,000 per student, according to the district.

This means the district is unable to financially support programs aimed at attracting students, such as dual language classes and expeditionary learning programs.

“When I was running for office people asked me how I felt about closing schools and my answer then and my answer now is that it’s very hard,” said school board member Paula Reed. “It’s also necessary if we’re going to give our schools the resources they need and give every single child the education they deserve.”

Proposed elementary school closures

The schools the district is looking to close meet the following criteria: they enroll fewer than 220 students in kindergarten through sixth grade or use 45% or less of their building capacity. There must also be at least one other school that is less than 3.5 miles away, according to the presentation.

The school closures are affecting both families and school employees who already have gone through previous closures.

The district is planning to mostly move every student from one school to another campus so that they can stay with their classmates. Employees who work at a school that is closing will be able to interview for jobs at other schools in the district, according to the presentation.

“For years, Jeffco Public Schools has experienced declining enrollment, as have the majority of public schools across Colorado,” said the Jefferson County Education Association, the district’s teachers union, in a statement. “This has led to neighborhood schools, many of which serve our students and families of color, that are so small they cannot provide students with fair and equitable access to high-quality learning experiences.”

The potential closure of elementary schools is just the beginning of consolidation at Jeffco Public Schools. Next year, the district will announce which secondary schools it believes should close.

The district will use different criteria to determine which secondary schools school close, said Lisa Relou, chief of strategy and communications for Jeffco Public Schools.

By closing elementary schools, the district will be able to serve about 89,000 students — but that doesn’t mean there will be that many school-aged children in the county to attend neighborhood schools.

“We do not believe that there are 89,000 students out there that we can just recruit into our district,” Relou said. “We will need to make further consolidation recommendations in order to best resource all of our schools.”