A Daily Post reader sent me an email a couple of days ago that read, in part:
I am contacting you as I am guessing you know more about our schools, as you have written many articles as to the need for a very expensive school building proposal. We get the Durango Herald so I have found several recent articles as to the Durango and Bayfield school’s financial situation. Both districts are suffering major financial deficits. Durango’s shortage is over two million and Bayfield’s is slightly over one million three hundred thousand. The Durango Superintendent said they were down 162 students and she seemed to indicate that most had left the county. They were laying off some staff immediately, with more to come. The Bayfield District had asked for volunteers to resign their positions and so far had accepted 15 out of 17…
I admit I had not heard this news previously. I knew that Colorado public schools, in total, have seen falling enrollment, down about 5% since 2019, but I’d not heard about staff layoff in neighboring Durango and Bayfield. Nor have I heard anything about staff reductions in Pagosa Springs, if that’s happening?
I do, however, know a little bit about the “very expensive school building proposal” that may come before the voters this coming November. I currently serve as a volunteer Board member for our public tuition-free charter school, Pagosa Peak Open School, and I understand that any Archuleta School District (ASD) bond issue placed on the November ballot would include some level of funding for building upgrades at PPOS.
I also served on the Master Plan Advisory Committee last year — the MPAC — which made a recommendation to the ASD School Board to seek funding for a new Pre-K – 8 building, to replace the existing Pagosa Springs Elementary School and Pagosa Springs Middle School facilities. (On that committee, I voted against a new facility, but was overwhelmingly outvoted.)
Has ASD also been seeing an overall decline in enrollment? Because PPOS has seen the opposite.
PPOS — which is officially an ASD public school, but governed by an independent volunteer board — has seen its enrollment increase from 106 in 2023 to 129 students this school year. Based on current enrollment trends, PPOS might have as many as 145 students next year.
Enrollment numbers have quite a significance in the Colorado education industry, because our public schools are funded on a “per pupil” basis. The more students, the more funding. The “Per Pupil Revenue” (PPR) this year was about $12,400 per enrolled student.
For instance, ASD had an enrollment of 1,742 students in 2019. This year, the district enrollment is 1,583 (according to the Colorado Department of Education). At the current funding rate of $12,400 per student, that suggests a drop in ASD funding of about $2 million per year.
It’s not only our schools that are experiencing falling numbers. The state of Colorado, as a whole, grew in population at a somewhat fabulous rate between 1990 and 2020 — growing from 3.3 million to 5.8 million, a 75% increase. But the state lost residential population during 2025. (The total population increased just slightly due to an influx of immigrants seeking asylum or employment in the U.S.)
Total population numbers don’t tell the complete story, however, because the high cost of living in Colorado — and in Pagosa Springs — poses a special challenge to young working families with children. And that has impacts on school enrollment.
Which in turn has impacts on school district budgets… and school employment.
From the Durango Herald article mentioned above, posted by journalist Elizabeth Pond on March 18:
A Durango School District finance director painted a bleak picture of the budget outlook for local and Colorado schools during a Board of Education work session at Park Elementary this month.
Durango School District faces a $1.8 million deficit and has lost 365 students in the past five years, said Kira Horenn, executive director of finance. Of those, 160 left this year, and enrollment declined from 4,409 students in 2015-16 to 3,900 in 2025-26, she said.
Horenn said the district projects it will lose an additional 82 students by the end of this school year. Statewide, enrollment in K-12 public schools has declined by 42,440 students since 2020, she said…
…In addition to cutting department budgets by 10% and school budgets by 5%, the district has been reducing staff members as a cost-saving measure. Reassignments, layoffs, attrition and contract nonrenewals have affected staff members across the district in recent weeks. District spokeswoman Karla Sluis told The Durango Herald earlier this month that a range of roles have been affected, including 25 administrative positions.
It’s a common misconception school districts receive more funding when property taxes increase, but in fact, Colorado’s school funding formula merely makes local property owners pay a larger percentage of school costs — when property valuations increase — while the the state reduces its contribution accordingly, leaving the district’s total revenues roughly the same. A few years ago, the state budget was funding the majority of the costs for Pagosa’s public schools. Now, the larger share is being paid by local property owners.
Voters in Durango recently approved two measures to support the district financially: the 2024 ‘Investing in Our Schools’ bond… and a 2016 Mill Levy Override, part of which is distributed to local charter schools. The Mill Levy Override can be used for teacher salaries, staffing and operations, but Colorado law caps it at 25% of the district’s total program funding, a limit the district has already reached.
In 2023, voters here in Pagosa Springs renewed a Mill Levy Override (MLO) property tax for salaries and building improvements, and PPOS receives a portion of that MLO revenue based on enrollment numbers. Archuleta County voters approved an MLO of $1.7 million annually, and made the MLO perpetual.
Now, ASD is preparing to ask for a much larger property tax increase.
$75 million? Or more?