Boulder Valley School District will close five schools as enrollment declines

Boulder Valley School District will close five schools and make major changes to several others beginning in the 2027-28 school year, the school board voted 5-2 Tuesday night.

The decision, driven by declining enrollment, incited a packed crowd in the board room, stirring tears among some adults in the audience and prompting many to abruptly exit. One parent from Douglass Elementary School, Jillian Waters, urged people to stay while the board took a break after they voted.

“If you leave you let them have this power over and over and over,” Waters said. “Stay in your seats. Please. Unless you have a child that is sad and needs to go home.”

Boulder Valley School District began contemplating how to adjust its matrix of schools last November after board and district leaders said they needed to make changes to keep class sizes small and ensure schools continue to have counselors, teachers in special classes like art and music, librarians, and educators for kids with disabilities.

The district’s plan impacts these schools:

• Mesa Elementary School in Boulder will close and the district will reroute students from that school to Bear Creek Elementary School in Boulder.
• Douglass Elementary School in Boulder will close and the district will send students to Coal Creek Elementary School in Louisville, Eisenhower Elementary School in Boulder and Heatherwood Elementary School in Boulder.
• High Peaks Elementary School in Boulder will move into Douglass Elementary School’s current building. Community Montessori, an elementary school in Boulder, will take over High Peaks Elementary School’s current building. The district will close Community Montessori’s current building.
• Flatirons Elementary School in Boulder will close and the district will reassign its students to Foothill Elementary School and Whittier Elementary School, both in Boulder.
• Birch Elementary School in Broomfield will close and students from that school will instead attend Kohl Elementary School in Broomfield.
• Eldorado PK-8 School in Superior will transition into an elementary school and Monarch PK-8 School in Louisville will switch to a middle school. Preschoolers and grade schoolers currenting attending Monarch PK-8 School will instead go to Fireside Elementary School in Louisville, Superior Elementary School in Superior and the newly configured Eldorado school serving only elementary school kids. The district will reassign middle school students currently enrolled at Eldorado PK-8 School to the new Monarch school designed to educate only middle school students.

A few board members attempted to remove schools up for closure from the district’s consolidation plan through amendments, but the board voted down those amendments.

“Integrity means a lot to me,” said board president Nicole Rajpal, who voted in favor of the plan. “Decisions, doing what is right over what is easy, and doing what’s uncomfortable and inconvenient at times is really important to me. And I’m always putting students at the center.”

The board’s decision followed protests from students, parents, educators and community members who spoke out during public comment and held a rally Tuesday afternoon.

“SOS! Save our schools,” a crowd of demonstrators chanted outside Boulder Valley School District’s administration building, led by young students shouting into microphones. Protesters hugged three corners of the intersection leading into the administration building, some ringing cowbells and many waving signs, cheering as cars cruising by honked in solidarity.

One sign spelled out in colorful letters, “Don’t Close Our Future!” Another read, “Power In The Pause,” urging the school board to hold off on making a final decision about closing schools.

During public comment, which ran more than an hour, one of the youngest speakers reminded board members of the high standards her teacher holds her to with every assignment, questioning where those standards were in the board’s decision-making process.

“At school, my teacher doesn’t just give me an assignment and say, “go do whatever you want,” Ensley Waters, a fourth grader at Douglass Elementary School, told board members. “She gives me a rubric. The rubric says what I need to do to show I learned what I’m supposed to learn. It tells me what she thinks good work looks like. And that’s what I think is missing from the Resilient Schools (consolidation) plan.”

School closures, perhaps the most painful decision confronting districts and communities, have picked up across the state and country largely because of declining student counts. It’s a discouraging trend for districts, coming after a period of fewer kids being born dating back to the Great Recession and exacerbated by an uptick in the number of kids switching to online and home school programs. 

Statewide enrollment in Colorado public schools has been on a downward slope since the 2022-23 school year and most recently decreased by more than 10,000 students, according to enrollment data from the state education department.

Enrollment dips have impacted a variety of districts, including some in rural parts of the state as well as Colorado’s 10 biggest school districts, all along the Front Range. Among them, Boulder Valley School District, Colorado’s ninth-largest district, has watched its student population take a hit every year since the 2018-19 school year. That year, the district served 31,169 students in preschool through 12th grade. This past school year, that number totaled 27,541 kids, according to state data.

Boulder Valley School District officials expect enrollment to decrease by another 1,706 students by 2030.

This is a developing story that will be updated.