Jeffco considers closing schools

LAKEWOOD - Over the next four years, Superintendent Cindy Stevenson expects her district to cut about $40 million. With those numbers and years of declining enrollment, she says Jeffco Schools is now forced to pose a question no one wants to ask.

"When you have those kinds of situations and you're in a budget reduction crisis, you really have to look and say: can we sustain all these facilities?" Stevenson said. "So, it's a very serious question."

The question will be addressed by the Facilities Usage Committee. It is a mix of community leaders and district staff that will make recommendations to the Jeffco Schools School Board in December.

The committee is hosting four community forums to gather input on top of the data it will analyze when deciding what to recommend to board members.

"It's going to be at the fringes where there's those schools that - when you look at all six criteria - are on the borderline," Phillip Infelise, co-chair of the Facilities Usage Committee, said. "That community we want to talk to more intensely than any other."

The six criteria being used to evaluate the usage of school buildings are academic performance, building condition, capacity, number of students who open enrolled, overall enrollment figures, and costs to run the building.

Infelise says the public's emotions for a particular building are something that cannot be measured on paper, yet it is vital to the process.

"The part we're looking most forward to, we want to see that passion," Infelise said. "We want to turn that passion into support for those schools."

Infelise, who works professionally in strategic corporate development, says at first glance, it looks like much of the attention will be focused on elementary buildings.

"It's clearly harder to make movement at the high school level, less difficult at the middle school level," Infelise said. "And there are certainly more elementary schools."

Stevenson says district-wide, elementary schools are about 91 percent full while middle schools sit at about 71 percent capacity. She says closing an elementary school can save the district up to $500,000 in costs, a secondary school up to $1 million.

"It could include building closure. It could incorporate re-purposing buildings, looking at buildings differently, sharing buildings," Stevenson said.

The community forums will be as follows:

Saturday, Sept. 12, 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. - Manning School, Golden.
Monday, Sept. 14, 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. - Jefferson High School, Edgewater.
Wednesday, Sept. 16, 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. - Chatfield High School, Littleton.
Monday, Sept. 21, 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. - Arvada West High School, Arvada.

The committee will then draft recommendations will be presented to the public in four more hearings.

Wednesday, Nov. 11, 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. - Alameda High School, Lakewood.
Saturday, Nov. 14, 9: a.m. to 10:30 a.m. - Manning School, Golden.
Monday, Nov. 16, 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. - Summit Ridge Middle School, Littleton.
Wednesday, Nov. 18, 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. - Pomona High School, Arvada.

The school board is expected to vote on the issue in January.