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What's on my mind this week: Most ballot coverage tells you what the campaign wants you to think. The slider in this week's voter guide does something different. It shows you what the ballot would cost your household.

Tools like this don't tell readers how to vote. They make the math personal, which is what's usually missing from most civic reporting on school finance. The decision Jeffco voters will make in November isn't whether $135 million is a big number in the abstract. It's whether $20 a month for a year, on top of everything else, is worth what it would buy.

That's a different question. Worth answering on your own terms, before the ballot language is final.

Let's dig in.

A volunteer committee recommended Jeffco put a $135 million tax package on the November ballot. It's the largest school tax ask in district history, and it would arrive in two separate questions: a $75 million mill levy override for staff compensation, career programs and charter funding and a $60 million special purpose mill restricted to building maintenance.

For a homeowner with a $550,000 home, the combined package would cost about $20 a month, or $236 a year, on top of existing property taxes. The override alone would run about $80 a year. The capital question alone is about $157.

I built an interactive voter guide that lets you enter your home's current value and see what you'd actually pay, drag-and-drop your priorities to see which of the two measures funds them, and read the district's claims, checked line-by-line against the data behind them.

Between the lines: The two questions don't come with the same accountability commitments written into their proposed ballot language.

The $60 million capital measure names two specific oversight mechanisms: a Mill Levy Override Committee and an annual public audit report, which is required by state law for special-purpose mills.

The $75 million general override names none of these. The proposed ballot language states the dollar amount, the priority uses, and that the revenue is collected under TABOR.

A Partnership presenter told the board on May 11 that the accountability framing was intended to apply to both questions. The reason it appears in only one, the presenter said, is that general fund money cannot be audited the same way special mill money can. "In the 2018 mill levy, it was said that we would audit the funds that went into the general fund, and there is no ability to audit those funds," the presenter said. "That was an over promise that was made at the time."

For the $75 million, the Partnership has committed to "develop public reporting on fund use and impact in perpetuity." That commitment appears on the deck's next-steps page. It does not appear in the ballot language.

Why it matters: Voters approve ballot language. They don't approve policy. If the $75 million override's language goes to the printer unchanged, the larger of the two questions will arrive with less explicit oversight than the smaller one. The board has until August to amend it.

What's next:

Open the interactive voter guide → Enter your home value. Rank your priorities. See the polling. Read the fact-check.

About a dozen Jefferson County Education Support Professionals Association members lined up Monday in red "United" shirts and took turns reading the same sentence to the board, each adding a different reason at the end.

"I demand guardrail language in the MLO so that new money is allocated to ESPs and teachers, not central administration staff," each speaker said. Then: Affordable health insurance. Reasonable workloads. Healthy meals. Clean and safe buildings. Bilingual educators.

JESPA's testimony tracked the union's argument that central administration grew while schools shrank, and that any new revenue needs language to prevent the pattern from repeating. JESPA representatives told the board that central administration spending has more than doubled since 2016. That figure has not been independently verified. Still, Jeffco's central administration spending grew about 40% over four years, even as the district closed 21 schools.

JCEA had a different non-negotiable. President-elect Ang Anderson told the board the district's proposal to tie a cost-of-living adjustment to whether the mill levy passes is conditional compensation she can't ask members to budget around.

"We will not accept a COLA tied to a mill levy passing," Anderson said. "We need guaranteed compensation, not conditional compensation."

The architect's dissent. Partnership member Devin Mills, who helped build the $135 million package, told the board it doesn't go far enough. He said the general override should be $105 million, not $75 million, to bring Jeffco to a true average per-pupil funding level among nearby districts. But he recommended what he believed could pass.

Why it matters. JCEA is negotiating its contract through July, the same window the board has to finalize ballot language. What gets settled at the bargaining table shapes what the MLO campaign can promise.

Board President Michelle Applegate paused her own questions Monday to publicly acknowledge what the room had been saying for an hour.

"We all acknowledge we have a massive communication problem," Applegate said. "Board, Superintendent, Dorland, cabinet, we must fix this."

📌 Westminster High is cutting three IB courses and two career pathways next year. A program audit eliminated IB History of the Americas, IB World Languages and IB Visual Arts, plus the horticulture and animal science pathways. The IB program itself continues. Read more →

📌 A federal appeals court is weighing whether Jeffco must tell parents in advance if their child will share an overnight trip room with a transgender student. A 10th Circuit panel heard arguments Tuesday in a suit from four families. One judge pressed Jeffco's attorney on whether the district had considered less restrictive alternatives, a legal test that asks whether the policy goes further than necessary to achieve its goal. Read more →

📌 The Jeffco Board of Education unanimously denied the Mesa K8 charter school application. Board members cited declining enrollment in the Two Creeks area, where the district has already closed schools, as well as the superintendent's recommendation against authorization. Board member Peter Gibbins cited his own child's experience at Great Work Montessori, which "catastrophically failed in the middle of the school year," in explaining his vote. Mesa K8's founders told the board the District Accountability Committee's rubric scored their application favorably but a denial recommendation went to the board instead. The vote was 5-0.

Tracy Dorland's contract and what her exit could cost

Jeffco provided Tracy Dorland's superintendent contract and 2022 amendment in response to a Colorado Open Records Act request I filed earlier this week.

The board hired Dorland on April 19, 2021, at a base salary of $260,000. In December 2022, the board amended her contract to extend the term through June 30, 2027. By the 2024-25 school year, her base salary reached $300,770. She announced her resignation effective July 5, 2026, roughly 12 months before the contract was set to expire.

What she's owed on the way out depends on how the board classifies her departure.

If the board terminates the contract unilaterally under Section 10.4, Dorland is entitled to up to 15 months of base salary, plus accrued benefits. At her last reported salary, that cap works out to about $375,963 in base pay alone. She would also be paid for accrued vacation at the per-diem rate, up to a maximum of 50 days, which adds roughly $58,000.

If Dorland resigned unilaterally, the contract doesn’t require a severance payment. She would receive only accrued vacation.

If the parties reached mutual agreement, the terms would be set in a separation agreement that’s not part of the original contract.

The board's May 8 statement said Dorland is "stepping down." Public framing of an executive's exit is not always the same as the legal mechanism that triggers payment. The separation agreement itself, if one exists, is the document that resolves the question.

My May 11 records request also asked for any separation agreement, any 2025 or 2026 amendments to Dorland's contract, records of payments tied to her exit and the contract for the announced national superintendent search. Some of those records may not yet exist. I'll follow up when the district produces what it has.

📍 Jeffco's response on the $7.4 million miscoding. The district confirmed this week that the FY25 audited financial report contained a $7.4 million coding error and that no formal restatement will follow. The district also disclosed similar errors in the FY23 to FY24 figures. Both claims are being verified. Follow-up to come.

📍 What's next for 27J's Brighton High School pool. I'm following up on last week's story with the people whose programs depend on the pool, including the boys' and girls' high school swim coaches and the Brighton Bullfrogs club team. The district's COO told the board a replacement would likely require a bond election, which 27J has never put to voters for the pool. Parents and coaches are pushing back on the framing that only a small handful of students use it.

📍 The Jeffco ERS contract. On May 5, I filed a Colorado Open Records Act request for the monthly reports of Education Resource Strategies, Inc. that should have been delivered to Jeffco's CFO between May 2022 and January 2023. ERS is the outside consultant Jeffco hired to review its student-based budgeting program, the formula that drives how much money each school gets. I also asked for the sole-source justification, the Request for Information the district published on BidNet, and the board's February 2022 staff memorandum. The district responded that "extenuating circumstances" would require pushing the deadline to Tuesday, May 19.

Sat., May 16, 9–10 a.m.: Weld RE-8 community meeting. District Office, 200 S. Fulton Ave., Fort Lupton.

Mon., May 18, 6:30–7:30 p.m.: Weld RE-8 community meeting. Fort Lupton FPD Fire Station 2, 2999 9th St., Fort Lupton.

Tue., May 19, 5:30–7:30 p.m.: Jeffco District Accountability Committee meeting. Education Center Room 4E, 1829 Denver West Dr., Building 27, Golden.

Thu., May 21: 27J Bond Oversight Committee meeting. Lois Lesser Board and Conference Room, 1850 Egbert St., Suite 120, Brighton.

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)

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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.

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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.

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