An incomplete plan today means more closures tomorrow

The Resilient Schools proposal doesn't hit the target it was built for. If it passes as-is, another school and another community will be put through exactly what Douglass is facing now.

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Signatures submitted to the Board

The Douglass Situation

67%

Douglass's capacity utilization. The district's threshold for review is under 60%.

281

Students at Douglass that will be split between 3 under-utilized schools.

1%

Less than 1% will be saved from the district's annual $494M budget to redistribute 1,800 kids.

$10-15M

Cost to execute this plan and will take 3 to 4 years to potentially break-even.

On August 25th, the BVSD school board reviewed a proposal that impacts approximately 1800 students. Included was the blindsiding proposal to close Douglass Elementary, which never triggered a low-enrollment warning during the Long Range Advisory Committee’s study.

Amidst the shock and sadness of our own community, what has become glaringly clear is that consolidation & closures are not done yet. Even schools that consolidate if the Board votes yes on September 22nd may be closing in the next round of closures.

The proposal cumulatively fails the Board’s ask by every measure. With a shuffling play involving 10 schools in Boulder, what we are left with is a hopeful at best 4.8% increase in total enrollment. On a wider scale, the summary of the proposal does not get to the Board’s identified target of 80% utilization and 3 rounds per grade.

A "yes" vote on this incomplete proposal commits the entire school district to a slow drip of continuous consolidation and closures. And that's the optimistic case: it assumes the four Board members up for re-election in 2027 keep their seats and keep pushing a wider study into middle schools, bilingual programs, and schools further east. If the Board's makeup changes and that momentum stalls, we're left with students who were upended for no gains.

Our Ask

Vote 'NO' on the current proposal on Sept. 22nd

Contact Board Members

When launched on August 28, our petition called for a pause on the Douglass Elementary closure. After Superintendent Rob Anderson confirmed at a BVSD working session that the board will not vote on plan components individually, we updated the petition on September 3 to advocate for a "no" vote on the entire proposal. This adjustment ensures we stay true to our original mission in light of the board’s single vote approach.

The four p's

The district's plan skips their own process, doesn't provide the payout, deprioritizes stability and breaks promises with our community.

BVSD asks families to commit to a school zone for thirteen years, but can't offer a logical, sustained justification for what the educational landscape will look like past a single planning cycle. We cannot ask the district's youngest learners to shoulder trauma the district itself won't justify beyond a few years at a time. If this passes without real answers, families won't wait around for the next round — they'll opt into schools and options outside the district altogether, taking their enrollment, their funding, and their trust with them.

Process

Douglass never triggered the district's early-warning system

BVSD's Long Range Advisory Committee framework, in place since 2023, triggers a closure review at under 2 classes/grade and under 60% capacity. The capacity thresholds were clear and Douglass, at 67%, never met them. Schools that did get flagged received years of support and community outreach.

Now Douglass, the one school with growing enrollment and cleared data, is being scuttled with it's students sent to 3 of the lowest enrollment schools flagged by the district's own system.

This sets a dangerous precedent that any school can be closed for any reason at any time with no warning or review process.

Payout

Is the juice worth the squeeze?

The margins here in density gains* and budget savings don't go far enough to justify what's being asked of Douglass and the other schools. And while the proposal doesn't say it outright, the board's own words suggest more closures are coming.

Board Representative Deann Bucher told the Boulder Reporting Lab, "Maybe we're not done creating efficiencies yet." Board President Nicole Rajpal went further, telling the outlet “I think down the road, maybe not this year, but down the road, we’ll have to continue...This board, future boards will have to continue to look at what makes sense for the City of Boulder.”

What we're left with is a plan with no meaningful impact other than chaos for 1,800 students.

*Projected enrollment ranges depend on how many resident students actually move from the attending school to the receiving school.

Misses district's own target

The district's own deck says Boulder's enrollment sustains 10 elementary schools; this plan leaves about 13. Districtwide utilization moves only from 63.1% to 67.9%. More closures will be needed regardless and with the current precedent, no advance warning or outreach faces those schools.

Savings under 1% of the total annual budget

This proposed disruption to 1,800 students could save $3.5 to 4M a year against a roughly $494M budget. After an initial $12.5-$15M in one-time costs, that leads to no net savings for 3 to 4 years. A June 2026 Stanford study of California school closures found districts essentially broke even rather than recouping funds. Staff is reassigned rather than cut and per-pupil funding follows families that leave the district.

Priority

What about today's district students?

BVSD asks families to commit to a school zone for thirteen years, but can't justify what this district will look like past a single planning cycle.

We can't ask our youngest kids to absorb that kind of disruption when the district itself won't commit to anything past a few years at a time. If this passes without real answers, families won't stick around for the next round of closures, they'll just leave and take funding with them.

Promise

Douglass gets the most fragmented of any community in this plan

Douglass students get the most fragmented and thinnest assurances of any community in the plan. A three-way split for its resident population and no guarantee for the 103 choice-enrollments students. Students are offered a one-year, space-limited priority with other impacted students and a lottery for childcare with no placement certainty until January.

Disruption research links this to real harm, especially for students like Marshall Fire survivors already displaced once. It's also impactful for ICAN students that call Douglass home. Our highest-need students face uncertainty and no assessment or transition plan.

ICAN, the Intensive Center for Affective Needs, is the district's center-based special-education program.

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