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What's on my mind this week: A reader took something I sent you apart, and she was right.

Last Friday, I built an explainer for the November school questions. A Jeffco reader who follows this stuff closely wrote to me and pointed out several things. Some were sharp suggestions I took. Two were factual errors I needed to correct. I've fixed both, and I'll walk you through them below.

Getting corrected stings a little. It's also the job, and I'd rather tell you when I get something wrong than pretend the first version was fine.

Plus, another reader got me thinking when she asked on Reddit, “Didn't we already vote to fund our schools?” It's a fair question, and it shows how easily these measures get lumped together in the minds of voters.

Let's dig in.

I called about $4.6 billion a "surplus." It isn't. That number is the ceiling on what the state would be allowed to keep under Proposition NN, not on money sitting in an account, nor on what schools would get. The measure's own fiscal note projects an actual TABOR surplus of roughly $136 million in 2026-27 and $970 million in 2027-28. Forecasts move a lot, and the governor has recommended withholding refunds in both years. Telling you schools would get "a share of $4.6 billion" overstated what NN would do.

I put Prop NN inside a calculator that runs on your home value. That implies your house has something to do with what NN costs you. It doesn't. Property taxes go to local governments, income taxes go to the state, and Prop NN moves the state cap, which is funded by income tax. Your home value has no bearing on it.

The calculator now covers just your local measure. That cost is a fixed number, and your district keeps all of it. Prop NN gets its own section, where the honest answer is that no one can tell you what it will cost you, and I say so plainly.

A note on how this was built. The reporting in the tool is mine, the records, the interviews and the figures. I used an AI assistant to help build the interactive part itself. Every number in it was verified against primary sources before it went live.

A reader put it plainly on Reddit last week. "Didn't we just vote on increased funding for schools in the last several elections?" And a second question right behind it. "An audit should be required before any spending is added to our taxes, does this happen?"

Both are fair. Both have real answers.

What you actually voted on. In 2022, Proposition FF created Healthy School Meals for All. Last November, Propositions LL and MM shored up the funding. LL let the state keep about $12.4 million it had already collected, and MM raised taxes on households earning more than $300,000, worth about $95 million more. That money buys breakfast and lunch, pays cafeteria workers and funds grants to buy food from local farms.

Here's the catch. None of it reaches a district's operating budget. So yes, you voted for school food. You haven't voted on the thing a mill levy override pays for.

On audits, the answer is yes — a few kinds, actually. Every Colorado school district already gets an independent audit of its financial statements every year. It's state law, and the report goes to the school board by Nov. 30 and to the state by Dec. 31. But that audit checks whether the books are accurate, not whether a district spent the money as it promised voters. That second kind of accountability lives in the ballot language, and it varies by measure.

Between the lines: Jeffco's two proposed questions wouldn't be watched the same way. As proposed, the $60 million special-purpose mill for capital would flow into a separate fund with its own independent audit, a review by a Mill Levy Override Committee, and a public report every year. The $75 million operating override, as proposed, includes only the routine district-wide financial audit that every district already conducts, unless specific oversight language is included in the ballot question.

The stakes for this fall: For anyone hoping voters approve a local override, this confusion is a real risk. A parent who voted yes on school meals may think they've already funded schools and hesitate on a mill levy, even though the meal money and an operating budget pay for entirely different things.

Why it matters: Every Colorado voter gets a school funding question this November in Proposition NN. Depending on where you live, you may get a local one too, and they work nothing alike. One raises your rate. The other doesn't touch it, but trades away future refunds.

$95 million. That's the new money Colorado voters approved last November when they passed Proposition MM, a tax on households earning more than $300,000. It pays for school meals, breakfast and lunch for every student in the state. Not one dollar of it reaches a district's operating budget, the pool that pays teachers and keeps the lights on. So when a reader asks whether we already voted to fund our schools, this is the honest answer. You funded the cafeteria. Whether you've also voted on the classroom depends on where you live. Adams 12 voters approved an operating override last year. Most Front Range voters haven't.

Fewer than one in three Jeffco teachers told the state they feel prepared for what AI is bringing to their classrooms. On the state’s spring workforce survey, the AI questions scored lower than any other section.

This is the same year Jeffco put the tools in front of students. It made Google's Gemini chatbot available to every student in grades 6 through 12 last August and added a second Google tool, NotebookLM, in October. Whether a student can use them for a given assignment is left to each teacher.

The honor system: The teacher is the check on whether students use AI honestly. But only about one in three Jeffco teachers said they have a clear way to tell whether a chatbot wrote a student's work.

Why it matters: The people Jeffco is counting on to manage AI in the classroom are the ones saying they're least equipped for it. The district doesn't dispute the numbers and points to an upcoming self-paced AI course that teachers will work through on their own time.

Jeffco isn't an outlier. Its teachers answered almost exactly like teachers statewide.

📌 Westminster High staff gave leadership the district's lowest marks. In the state's spring workforce survey, fewer than four in 10 staff at the district's largest school said they'd recommend it as a place to work, and just 29% said they feel comfortable raising issues with the people who run the school, down 20 points from 2024. Across the rest of the district, staff rated their jobs better than two years ago. Read the story →

📍 A graduated income tax could reshape how Colorado funds schools if it makes the ballot. A citizen initiative would end Colorado's flat 4.4% income tax and replace it with graduated brackets, cutting rates for income under $500,000 and raising them on income above it, up to 8.4% on income over $1 million. New revenue would flow to a dedicated fund the measure limits to three purposes, K-12 education, health care and early child care, with the K-12 share aimed at teacher pay, smaller class sizes and rural schools. Backers have until Aug. 3 to gather signatures.

📍 Who's accountable for a school operating in Adams 12's backyard? The Everest Point program raises a question I'm working to answer: how much public money is flowing to a two-days-a-week program that no local district authorized, and who is watching how it's spent? Getting there meant a $147 records request to ERBOCES. I'm tracing the dollars and the oversight. More soon.

📍 Access to concurrent enrollment in Jeffco. I'm finishing my series on access to concurrent enrollment across seven Jeffco high schools, and I plan to publish in mid-August. Stay tuned.

Tried the corrected tool? Hit reply and tell me what surprised you, or which way you're leaning.

Know someone in one of these districts who's still deciding? Forward this to them.

Got a tip about your district's budget or ballot plans? Reply and let me know.

Class Notes is free because readers like you share it with people who need it. When you refer friends, you unlock tools I've built from covering five Front Range school districts:

🔓 3 referrals — CORA Request Template Kit (fill-in-the-blank public records requests)

Need to speak at a board meeting? Get "How to Give Public Comment That Gets Heard" →

I can't be everywhere, but you are. If something's happening in your district or school that doesn't add up, I want to hear about it. A policy that makes no sense. A budget line that vanished. A question no one will answer.

You can stay anonymous. I protect my sources.

If someone forwarded this to you, welcome. And thanks for reading! Want Class Notes in your inbox every Friday morning?

Class Notes is reported and written by Suzie Glassman for the Colorado Trust for Local News. I do the homework on your schools, so you don't have to.

WHY CLASS NOTES? Class Notes is your guide to the schools that matter to you, covering education across Jefferson, Adams and Weld counties. I don't just recap board meetings — I dig into budgets, policies and the decisions that affect your kids, your taxes and your community. The best part? It's FREE.

While district press releases give you the polished version, I file public records requests, sit through the meetings and talk to the parents and teachers living it. Class Notes gives you the reporting your local schools deserve, delivered every week.

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