DENVER–Colorado voters will find no shortage of school district tax requests on their November ballots, with boards ranging from the suburbs of Denver to the mountain towns beyond asking property owners to send them yet more money.
At least eight school districts, including the state’s three largest, have now referred measures to the Nov. 3 election. The pattern looks familiar: declining enrollment, warnings about teacher pay, and school boards betting that voters will keep saying yes.
Jefferson County (Jeffco) offers the starkest contrast between rhetoric and record. Jeffco schools has lost roughly 10,000 students since 2019 and slid from the state’s largest district by enrollment to second-largest, yet it grew its administrative ranks by about 10% between 2021 and 2025, according to a Common Sense Institute analysis. Now the board wants $133 million combined across two measures — one for $73 million largely for raises, and a $60 million ask for building repairs and security — which would cost the owner of a $650,000 home about $273 a year.
District leaders claim Jeffco ranks ninth of ten metro districts on teacher pay, but a first-year Jeffco teacher still starts at $55,256, well above Douglas County’s $51,914 and the state’s typical range. Only adding to the skepticism, voters were promised a citizen oversight committee after a 2018 property tax hike passed, and it was never formed. This year’s measures promise oversight and spending trackers — the same assurances voters were promised, and didn’t get, last time.
All of this unfolds while the district is in active litigation with the federal government over its transgender-student policies, a legal fight funded out of the same operating budget the district says is too thin for raises and repairs.
Denver Public Schools’ board voted unanimously to ask voters for a $43.9 million mill levy override, the bulk of it — $25.8 million — earmarked for a $1,750 across-the-board employee raise, with the rest split among career and technical education, mental health and special education support, and charter schools. It would be the district’s eighth property tax hike since 1988. DPS already collects $369.6 million a year from seven prior tax increases. The typical Denver homeowner’s DPS tax bill has climbed nearly 54% since 2020, from $1,480 to a projected $2,276 for 2026, and would rise another $72 a year if this override passes.
Douglas County school district is asking for $54 million, its third property tax request this decade after voters rejected one in 2022 and approved one in 2023 — alongside a $490 million bond debt package passed in 2024. Supporters argue the district remains $2,000 behind peers in per-pupil funding and pay. Critics call it a bad time to ask, citing a soft economy and a school district grappling with declining enrollment and school consolidations even as it seeks more revenue. If approved, homeowners would pay an extra $33.70 per $100,000 of home value starting in 2027.
Elsewhere, the pattern repeats with smaller dollar figures. Garfield Re-2 is pairing a tax-neutral bond debt extension with a $4.7 million property tax hike for teacher pay. Westminster Public Schools is asking voters merely to let it collect a higher percentage of revenue already approved in past elections, without a new tax. Clear Creek County’s “Debt Free Schools” mill levy override targets alleged pay gaps and $20 million in deferred maintenance. Roaring Fork school district is seeking up to $5.6 million tied to a new cost-of-living funding cap. And Littleton Public Schools, facing a budget deficit, claims the only alternative to a $10 million property tax hike is a wage freeze and furlough days.
Taken together, the ballot measures amount to hundreds of millions of dollars in new and continuing obligations for Colorado property owners, and a test of how much patience voters have left for school districts asking for higher taxes while enrollment, and in some cases trust, keeps declining.
