BOULDER — No one disagrees that school enrollment in the Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) and throughout Colorado is declining. How to respond to the situation is up for debate. Each district is taking different routes.

On September 22 the BVSD Board of Education voted 5-2 to pass the Resilient Schools Proposal.

According to state data, during the 2018-2019 school year, BVSD served 31,169 students. Enrollment dropped to 27,541 students this past school year. BVSD staff expect the number to continue to go down.

Starting in the 2027-2028 school year the following changes will take place:

Boulder

School closure: Close Mesa Elementary and merge the school communities in the Bear Creek building.

School closure: Close Douglass Elementary School and divide its attendance area among Coal Creek, Eisenhower and Heatherwood.

School relocation: Move High Peaks Elementary to the former Douglass Elementary campus.

School relocation: Close the Community Montessori building. Move Community Montessori to the former High Peaks Elementary space on the Aurora 7 campus, co-locating with the Boulder Community School of Integrated Studies (BCSIS).

School closure: Close Flatirons Elementary and divide its attendance area between Whittier and Foothill elementary schools.

Broomfield

School consolidation: Close Birch Elementary and merge the school communities in the Kohl building.

Louisville/Superior

Grade reconfiguration: Eldorado PK-8 becomes an elementary school and Monarch PK-8 becomes a middle school. Divide the Monarch PK-5 attendance area among Fireside, Superior, and Eldorado elementary schools. Combine the Eldorado 6-8 and Monarch 6-8 attendance areas.

Voting "yes" on this proposal were board members Nicole Rajpal, Alex Medler, Jason Unger, Lalenia Quinlan Aweida, and Jorge Chávez. Voting "no" were Deann Bucher and Ana Temu Otting.

Before the vote Temu Otting brought to the board an amendment to remove Broomfield schools from the Resilient Schools Proposal. Her reasoning was based on the fact that Broomfield is part of four different school districts and changes are happening in the other districts. She suggested they wait to see what other districts do with their schools in Broomfield.

This motion failed 5-2.

Also before the vote Bucher brought an amendment to the board to remove the closure of Douglass Elementary, and to keep High Peaks and Community Montessori where they currently are located.

This motion failed 5-2.

Before the meeting started, students, parents, and community members rallied outside to protect their schools and protest school closures. In the first hour of the meeting, during public comment, students, parents, and community members spoke passionately about their schools and communities. One person presented a petition with 6,000 signatures imploring the Board not to close or consolidate targeted schools.

One parent pointed out that the Board had never provided the public with an opportunity to offer solutions to the declining student numbers; that they were only offered the Board's selected options to comment on.

There is no way around it—school closures and consolidations are difficult.

At the BVSD Board of Education work session meeting on September 15 Superintendent Dr. Rob Anderson spoke sincerely and thoughtfully, saying, "I do think to do something well you always have to not only look in front of you, but you have your eyes on the horizon, on what's coming and what you need to do to be ready.

"So, to the extent that there have been efforts to think about what this looks like on the other side, if the board would vote yes, I would be a bad superintendent and I would be failing our organization and our community and our families if I wasn't doing some of that.

"I also want to be empathic to our families who love their schools, who love their teachers, whose kids are happy. I'm a parent and I understand what that means when your kids are doing well and if there's change that there's even a slight chance that that changes.

"We always have a saying in our house that we are as happy as our least happy kid. And I think that holds true to families who care about and love their kids.

"And I know that there's been lots of community feedback on our plans, questions, concerns, and I actually think that that's right. I think that a smart, educated, responsible community should do that. And I also understand everybody loves their kids and would do about anything they could in their power to protect their kids because that's what I would do as a dad, too.

"I understand. I don't take personally the questioning, the pushing back. I think that is okay. It is my job as superintendent, it is our job as staff, to come back and answer the questions, which I believe we've done today. To share with folks here are the numbers, here are the sources, here's where some of that may be a disconnect.

"I do know this. That families love their teachers. We love their teachers. They love their schools. We love their schools. And it'll be my job and the job of everybody at this table and everybody down this row to make sure, if this plan is approved, that we take care of all of our families and all of our kids just like we are right now."

The BVSD mountain schools, Gold Hill School, Jamestown Elementary, Nederland Elementary School, and Nederland Middle-Senior High School were not a part of this proposal because of their distance from other BVSD schools.