GOLDEN–Jefferson County Public Schools, a district that has hemorrhaged roughly 10,000 students since 2019, is asking voters for $133 million more from property owners.
The Jeffco school board on Thursday unanimously referred a pair of property tax hikes to the November ballot. Ballot Issue 5A asks for $73 million, mostly for staff raises and career and technical education. Ballot Issue 5B would raise $60 million for building repairs, technology and security, among other things. Together they’d cost the owner of a $650,000 home about $273 a year, or roughly $42 annually per $100,000 of value, according to the district.
Declining enrollment
Once Colorado’s largest school district, Jeffco’s enrollment decline pushed it to second place over a decade ago, and has been sliding since then. Officials expect to keep losing close to 1,000 students a year, costing roughly $10 million annually in per-pupil state funding. The district trimmed its budget by $40 million last year and still drained reserves below its own board-mandated minimum.
Even as enrollment fell, the district added administrators. A July Common Sense Institute analysis found Jeffco grew its administrative ranks by eight positions — about 10 percent — between 2021 and 2025, while teachers per administrator dropped from 60-to-1 to 50-to-1 and students per administrator fell from 969 to 833.
District leaders argue teacher pay is the real problem, saying Jeffco ranks ninth of ten Denver-metro districts on compensation. But as previously reported by Complete Colorado, the numbers complicate that urgency: a first-year Jeffco teacher starts at $55,256, well above Clear Creek’s $46,033 and Douglas County’s $51,914, and above the $47,200–$51,200 range the state Department of Education says a Colorado general-education graduate typically earns statewide.
The trust factor
Board members concede they’re fighting an uphill battle for trust. The 2018 tax measure voters approved came with a promised citizen oversight committee that was never formed. Board member Peter Gibbins said flatly that little in this year’s ballot language fixes that accountability gap. In response, both measures now include a board-appointed citizens’ committee, annual public reporting and a spending-tracker website — additions the board admits exist to get skeptical voters past its track record.
The tax hike pitch comes at the same time the district is in litigation with the federal government over its transgender-student policies, after the U.S. Office for Civil Rights found them in conflict with Title IX. Interim Superintendent Rob Stein told the board there have been no new developments, calling the matter “in a holding pattern.” That legal fight draws on the same operating budget the district claims is already too meager for staff raises and school repairs
Recent history suggests the pair of tax asks is a roll of the dice, at best. Jeffco voters rejected both a mill levy override and a bond in 2016, and approved the 2018 override only with promises of independent oversight that were never kept. The same school district that spent the years since adding administrators, not shrinking to match its enrollment, now needs to convince those same voters this time is different.
Colorado’s general election is Nov. 3
