Poudre School District lags behind rest of state in closing schools as enrollment declines

Declining enrollment is not just an issue in Poudre School District.

Public school systems nationwide are experiencing similar population shifts, and many have been closing schools for several years to address declining birth rates.

Colorado’s two largest school districts — Denver Public Schools and Jefferson County — have closed a combined 62 neighborhood schools over the past 20 years because of declining enrollment, according to the Colorado Department of Education.

Aurora Public Schools and Boulder Valley School District closed eight and five neighborhood schools, respectively, in those same 20 years, and neighboring Thompson School District, with half as many students as Poudre School District, has closed four elementary schools.

Meanwhile PSD, where enrollment had increased annually until the COVID-19 pandemic, has closed just one — Moore Elementary, following the 2009-2010 school year.

That’s a big part of the reason PSD finds itself in the position it is in now, with a 37-member Facilities Planning Steering Committee putting together recommendations for school consolidations, closings and boundary changes to deal with the loss of per-pupil funding from the state associated with declining enrollment.

That committee has been revising the four draft scenarios it released March 19 based on public feedback and additional information it has gained. The committee provided an update on its work at the Board of Education’s regular meeting Tuesday night and is expected to unveil revised scenarios May 7.

The steering committee is scheduled to provide two to three recommended plans to the school board May 28. The Board of Education, which has the final say in any consolidations, closings or boundary changes, is scheduled to vote on a plan June 11. That plan would take effect in the 2025-26 school year, giving the district and impacted communities more than a year to figure out the best way to implement the plan.

More: 'Too much at stake': Community shares school-closure concerns with PSD Board of Education

PSD can’t keep “kicking the can down the road,” as Board of Education President Kristen Draper and other school board members have said, and pass this problem on to a future superintendent or future school board.

The impacts of that declining enrollment are being felt now, Superintendent Brian Kingsley said at an April 9 Board of Education meeting. Principals in some PSD schools are being forced to reduce staffing costs, with many telling their art, music and physical education teachers that they can’t afford to continue employing them full time. Some schools have already reduced those positions to four days a week instead of five, Kingsley said, prompting those teachers to look for full-time work in neighboring districts.

“I’m not here, we as a leadership team are not here, to blame any past person or administration for the real financial problems we find ourselves in,” Kingsley said after more than a dozen people expressed concerns about potential school consolidations, closings and boundary changes during public comment that night. “We’re here to lead. We have an obligation to grapple with hard things. It is fair to ask hard questions, it is fair to question pace, it is fair to question the level of engagement.

“But we have a long-term responsibility to be financially responsible to make changes now to maintain the long-term health of our school system.”

School enrollment on the decline statewide and nationally

Public school enrollment in Colorado has declined 3.3% over the past five years, falling from an all-time high of 913,223 in 2019-20 to 881,464 in 2023-24, according to the state education department. Although the peak years have varied by district based on growth rates in the areas each serve, a review of school closings over the past 20 years reveals that 118 of Colorado’s 178 school districts have closed one or more neighborhood schools — even small, rural districts with fewer than 500 total students.

PSD, with 29,914 students in preschool through 12th grade this year, is Colorado’s eighth-largest district. Only two of the 10 largest school districts in the state have not closed any neighborhood schools in the past 20 years — Cherry Creek and Douglas County — and they have both experienced more significant declines in the past five years than PSD’s 1.8% drop.

Nationwide, public school enrollment has declined by 2.1% from the fall of 2017 through the fall of 2022, the most recent year for which national data is available through the National Center for Education Statistics. Its projections call for a drop of another 5.5% from 2022 through 2031.

Enrollment in private schools is also declining across the country, falling 4.3% from 2017 to 2021 (the most recent year available) as population growth slows.

PSD neighborhood schools losing enrollment faster than district overall

The PSD decline in its neighborhood schools is more significant than that, though.

Enrollment in the district's four 100% choice schools — Harris Bilingual, Kinard Core Knowledge, Polaris Expeditionary Learning and Traut Core Knowledge, which are counted in the neighborhood totals for the purposes of this story — has declined 4.5% over the past five years, from a combined 2,050 students in 2018-19 to 1,957 this year.

That loss has been more than offset by enrollment gains at PSD’s five charter schools — Compass Community Collaborative, Fort Collins Montessori, Liberty Common, Mountain Sage and Ridgeview Classical.

Remove those five charter schools from the equation, and enrollment in PSD’s neighborhood schools, as reported by the state education department, has fallen by 3.75% over the past five years, from 28,020 students in 2018-19 to 26,969.

Charter schools educating 10% of PSD’s students

PSD’s charter schools have seen steady enrollment growth over the past 20 years, to an all-time high of 2,945, or roughly 10% of the district’s total enrollment, this year. The largest of those schools, Liberty Common, has 1,475 students in grades K-12 this year on three different campuses — elementary schools in east and west Fort Collins and a combined junior high school-high school for grades 7-12 in east Fort Collins. The school plans to open a new junior high school at a yet-to-be-determined site in August 2025, and that site is likely to pull several hundred more students away from PSD’s neighborhood schools.

“The charter school footprint has expanded in our community from a facility standpoint, which means also from a capacity standpoint,” Kingsley said.

PSD spokesperson Madeline Novey said earlier this month that PSD has no plans to lease or sell any school buildings that might become vacant through consolidations and closings. Those buildings, she said, will be maintained by the district for other uses — such as office space for district staff, staff development training programs or early childhood education programs.

That would allow those buildings to be converted back to schools in the future “if we see enrollment increases down the line,” as state demographer Nancy Gedeon projected in a Jan. 23 presentation to the PSD Board of Education.

Specific plans for buildings, she said, are not part of the Facilities Planning Steering Committee’s process. Those will be determined through implementation of whatever plan the school board ultimately approves.

Although district-authorized charter schools have a lot of autonomy in how they operate established by state law, they are part of PSD and ultimately answer to the same superintendent and Board of Education as the rest of the district under their charter agreements. Their per-pupil funding from the state flows through PSD, but the district can only legally siphon off money it spends on certain administrative costs associated with those schools. That flow-through funding totaled $32.5 million in 2022-23, the most-recently completed fiscal year, and was budgeted to total $33.4 million this year out of annual district expenditures of $410.5 million, according to a Jan. 24, 2024, revised budget available on PSD’s finance and budget website.

Non-district charters, private schools also cutting into PSD’s enrollment

PSD’s charter schools operate differently than those authorized through the statewide Charter School Institute, which distributes their per-pupil funding from the state. There are five CSI-authorized charter schools within PSD’s boundaries — Academy of Arts and Knowledge, Axis International Academy, Ascent Classical Academy of Northern Colorado, Colorado Early Colleges Fort Collins and Colorado Early Colleges Windsor — with a combined enrollment this year of 4,305 students, according to the state education department.

More: No longer niche: Colorado charter schools educate nearly 15% of state's public school students

Most of those students live outside of PSD’s attendance area, though. Colorado Department of Education data has 1,441 students with parents or guardians living within PSD’s boundaries attending CSI schools this year.

Enrollment in private schools is on the rise locally, as well. Fort Collins Christian School, Front Range Baptist Academy, Heritage Christian Academy, Rivendell School and St. Joseph Catholic School, all private schools in Fort Collins, have a combined enrollment this year of 840 students. That’s 74 more than they had five years earlier.

And another private school just outside the PSD boundaries, Resurrection Christian in northeast Loveland, in the neighboring Thompson School District attendance area, has 1,199 students this year, 92 more than it had in 2018-19.

Out-of-district transfers boost enrollment slightly

There are 1,174 students from outside the PSD attendance area enrolled in district schools this year, according to the state education department. There are 541 students whose parents live within the PSD boundaries attending public schools in other districts this year, not counting those 1,441 attending CSI schools.

So, PSD has a net gain of 633 students in out-of-district transfers, primarily from Thompson School District (635), Windsor-Severance Weld RE-4 (320) and Ault-Highland (75).

(Correction: There is no scheduled Board of Education meeting May 7, when the Facilities Planning Steering Committee plans to share its revised scenarios publicly. That point was incorrect when this story was first published online).

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: PSD lags behind Colorado districts in addressing declining enrollment