Emotions, crowds increase at Poudre School District consolidation plan listening sessions

Emotions are on the rise as the Poudre School District community begins to fully digest the district’s options for consolidating and closing schools to deal with declining enrollment and subsequent budget reductions.

About 360 people showed up for a listening session with the Facilities Planning Steering Committee on Monday, March 25, at Rocky Mountain High School, 350 participated in an online session Wednesday night and about 260 were on hand Thursday night at Lincoln Middle School to share their thoughts. The first two listening sessions last week, on the day after the committee’s scenarios for discussion became public at a Board of Education meeting, drew about 50 and 80 participants apiece.

On Thursday night, parents and staff of schools that would be consolidated or closed in 2025-26 under some of the scenarios wore shirts and jackets in school colors bearing the names of their schools. When it was time to break out into smaller groups to share feedback on the plan with members of the steering committee, they appeared to make a conscious effort to split up to plead the case for saving their school to as many committee members as possible.

Some parents broke down in tears as they were speaking, unable to bear the thought of losing a particular school or program.

Increased feedback improves the process, committee members say

Still, Facilities Planning Steering Committee members Rebecca Everette, Lindsay Ex and Andrew Spain were pleased to have so many people willing to share their thoughts on what they all agree is a difficult process with no solution that will make everyone happy.

“I’d say it was extremely helpful with the high attendance, because there were a lot of schools represented, and people got to hear from each other,” Everette said. “So, there’s kind of a dialog and understanding that’s happening across the whole community rather than just a conversation internal to one school. …

“The input is really helping to advance the conversation in a really productive way. This amount of input doesn’t complicate the process; it makes the process better.”

Spain said he would be a lot more concerned if people weren’t showing up, because that would mean nobody cared.

“The fact that we have this level of engagement, we should be celebrating that,” he said. “We’ve got to leverage that work together.”

Participants generally seemed to appreciate the efforts of the 37-member Facilities Planning Steering Committee, as well, with many thanking the group moderators before voicing their specific concerns.

More: Poudre School District parents, staff weigh in on draft school consolidation scenarios

“I thought it was a pretty simple process, and people listened to each other,” McGraw Elementary School parent Adam Dillon said. “I thought it was good to see a lot of engagement. It’s tough, because a lot of people are just fighting their individual fight of where their kid goes. I don’t want to do that. I wanted to rise above it.”

McGraw Elementary would not be closed under any of the draft scenarios but would potentially gain students through consolidation from other schools that would be closed.

Parents, staff make passionate pleas for their schools

Dillon's approach was a difficult one for many participants to take, particularly those whose schools would be consolidated or closed under any of the three scenarios the steering committee has presented. Those scenarios are far from final, steering committee facilitator Josie Plaut reminded the group as they were being presented at the start of Thursday night’s meeting. Plaut, the associate director of Colorado State University's Institute for the Built Environment, is leading the steering committee’s work through her organization.

To emphasize the need that something must be done, Plaut told the full audience that the plan that would best maximize financial efficiency and building utilization would have resulted in the closing of 13 schools.

“That’s how many empty seats we have in our schools,” she said.

That plan was ruled out quickly, she said, because it was too drastic and would have eliminated many of the educational programming options PSD schools now offer.

At Thursday's meeting, Dunn Elementary School and Cache La Poudre Middle and Elementary schools were particularly well represented by people speaking out to share the unique qualities of each of their schools.

The case for Dunn Elementary

Dunn, those speaking out for the school noted, is operating at roughly full capacity with an unofficial January enrollment count of 399 while drawing the largest percentage of school-of-choice students (65%) of any neighborhood school in PSD. It serves a large population of international families who came to Fort Collins to study at Colorado State University, just two blocks away from the school. Its students were born in 50 different countries and speak 26 different languages. Dunn is an International Baccalaureate school, recently recertified for the fourth time by the IB program’s accreditation board for another five-year period, and the primary feeder for IB programs at Lesher and Lincoln middle schools and Poudre High School.

Air conditioning is currently being installed at Dunn, as well, in a two-phase project that began in 2016 at a total cost of more than $3.2 million. And the projections for capital improvements the building would need over the next 20 years is the lowest of any neighborhood elementary school in the district, they said.

“Dunn Elementary is a high-performing school that serves a lot of underprivileged, minoritized students and families, and if you shut that down, that’s going to have significant fiscal and financial impacts on the district,” said parent Janie Yoder, an associate professor in social work at CSU.

Should CLP elementary, middle schools be treated as mountain schools?

Cache La Poudre parents and staff argued that their schools are an integral part of the fabric of the Laporte community and an extension of the three mountain elementary schools that the committee intentionally left out of the consolidation discussion because of their geographic isolation and importance to their individual rural communities. CLP elementary and middle schools, they noted, serve historically marginalized populations as well as rural students who ride school buses for more than an hour each way each day.

More: Small enrollment, big impact: PSD mountain schools are hubs of three communities

They have always had smaller class sizes and smaller overall enrollment than schools in Fort Collins, and those numbers have remained relatively steady, they argued, though official enrollment data shows otherwise. The combined enrollment of 588 students in kindergarten through eighth grade at the two schools this year, according to the state’s October count, is down more than 100 from the 692 they had in 2018-19 and more than 140 from the 731 they had in 2008-09.

Beattie and Olander supporters speak up

Several parents and staff members spoke up on behalf of Beattie and Olander elementaries, as well. Both serve neighborhoods that don’t have another elementary school nearby, so closing them would create school “deserts,” several parents said.

Beattie is in the growing area of Midtown Fort Collins, where the city has put considerable effort into encouraging people to walk and ride bicycles to school and work, utilizing the nearby Max bus service to easily get to CSU and Old Town. It also is the only school in PSD utilizing an open classroom concept with no walls or doors. Classes are large and team-taught by multiple teachers working collaboratively with students in multiple grades. CSU students studying education regularly visit the school to get a first-hand look at how open classrooms work.

Olander has a unique integrated services program that puts students with disabilities, including some with extreme disabilities, in regular classrooms alongside students with no disabilities as much as possible through curriculum modifications and adaptations. All staff members are trained to work with students with disabilities, and the inclusiveness and diversity of that integration, a fourth-grade student told her breakout group, “makes us stronger.”

Olander is also the only project-based learning school in PSD, teaching children at a young age how to collaborate with others while working on long-term, multidisciplinary projects. Many of the CSU students she teaches, one parent said, lack the critical skills Olander students learn through those projects.

Plenty of other concerns expressed

A number of other concerns were raised, as well.

Several participants questioned the validity of the data the steering committee was given to work with, which is all available on PSD's long-range planning website. The lack of financial transparency in the process was an issue for many, too, knowing that significant savings will only come from closing schools and eliminating the teaching, administrative and other jobs connected to those schools.

More: Enrollment declining slower than projected as Poudre School District weighs consolidations

Others were concerned about the larger class sizes that will be created by moving toward the district’s goals for financial optimization of having at least 400 students in every elementary school, with as many as 25 students in a class, and at least 700 students in middle and high schools, with up to 30 in a single class. Larger schools and larger classes, they said, are detrimental educationally for many students and are likely to increase the mental health issues among students that PSD leadership has put so much emphasis on alleviating in recent years.

Several others wanted to know how school choice patterns would be affected by each of the proposed changes.

One parent wanted to know why PSD was building new schools in new neighborhoods when there’s room in existing schools. Her neighborhood in northeast Fort Collins was incorporated into the boundaries of Lincoln Middle School when it was built, because that’s where the district had room for more students, even though it was a long bus ride away.

Nehalem Clark, a parent with one child in elementary school and another at Lincoln, was concerned about the “bigger picture of what is Fort Collins going to be? Do we want to provide neighborhood schools for our kids or not?”

What comes next?

The Facilities Planning Steering Committee’s only remaining public listening sessions are geared toward families who don’t speak English. There’s a session scheduled for 6-8 p.m. Thursday, April 4, for Spanish-speaking participants at the Future Ready Center at Foothills mall, 215 E. Foothills Parkway, Suite 510; and another planned for Monday, April 15, for Arabic-speaking participants. The time and location of the April 15 session have not yet been finalized, Plaut said.

People who were unable to attend a listening session, or those who did and want to ensure their voice is heard as the process moves forward, can submit feedback through an online questionnaire on PSD’s long-range planning website that will be available through 10 a.m. Friday, April 5.

There are also two planned listening sessions involving the full Board of Education:

• Tuesday, April 16: 5:30-10 p.m. in the auditorium at Poudre High School, 201 S. Impala Drive

• Tuesday, June 4: 5:30-10 p.m. in the auditorium at Fort Collins High School, 3400 Lambkin Way

The steering committee will provide an update on the feedback it has received to the school board at its April 23 meeting, then refine scenarios and recommend two to three options to the school board at its May 28 meeting. Plaut said the steering committee hopes to share the refined scenarios publicly in some fashion, too, before it makes its recommendations to the school board.

The Board of Education is scheduled to vote on the recommendations June 11.

No changes will take effect until the 2025-26 school year.

“I feel like I was listened to,” Clark said. “I think the consensus in the group is the process is moving too quickly to be thoughtful.”

Dig into PSD enrollment data

Coloradoan reporter Kelly Lyell compiled enrollment data, capital costs, program details and more for each of PSD's non-charter schools:

▶ See data for PSD non-charter elementary schools here.

▶ See data for PSD non-charter middle schools here.

▶ See data for PSD non-charter high schools here.

Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, x.com/KellyLyell and  facebook.com/KellyLyell.news. 

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Emotions, crowds increase at PSD consolidation plan listening sessions