Welcome to Class Notes, where I dig into budget documents, file records requests, and ask follow-up questions about schools across Adams, Jefferson and Weld counties.

What's on my mind this week: I've been covering Jeffco's budget cuts since last fall, and I'll be honest, I missed something. After a source pointed out that enrollment declines were landing on top of the budget cuts, I pulled the records. The gap between what the district presented publicly and what's actually hitting schools is bigger than I expected. You're seeing the full picture here first.

Here's what the FY27 projected enrollment impact on school budgets shows: 70 schools are losing funding from two sources at once — the Budget Reduction Blueprint and enrollment-driven budget adjustments. The district has presented these as separate processes. But for staff and families, they fall under the same school budget.

On its website, Jeffco says: "Smaller schools that serve more at-risk students will have a smaller reduction." That's true when you look only at the BRB percentage. But when you add enrollment losses, the picture flips.

Schools losing students face an average combined cut of $251,196. Schools gaining students face just $31,115 on average, an 8-to-1 gap.

Look up what’s happening at your school

Between the lines: The district's budget presentations to the board never included the combined impact. Board members only learned the full scope through their own school visits. Tina Moeinian said after touring schools in January that cuts were "more heavily impactful than we had originally anticipated." Peter Gibbins told colleagues the district would have "a better chance of rebuilding community trust" by being honest about the impacts rather than minimizing them.

Why it matters: Principals are finalizing staffing decisions right now based on the combined number, not the BRB number alone. At a Dec. 18 board meeting, a district employee said shrinking budgets are "creating a situation where schools are having to decide do they want a classroom teacher or do they want to support the mental health needs of their students."

Rocky Vista High School opens in Commerce City in the fall of 2027, and 27J needs to redraw every middle and high school boundary to fill it. The district is weighing three priorities: keeping students from crossing US 85, balancing enrollment across all four high schools, and keeping middle school friend groups together into high school. Every option comes with a real tradeoff.

I built an interactive tool that lets you step into the superintendent's shoes and see exactly what each choice costs. Ninety-eight people have weighed in so far, and the results are tight: safety leads at 36%, followed by balance at 33% and alignment at 31%. The district said it will consider the results.

Take the survey and see what each option costs →

📌 Your kid can't use ChatGPT at school. Westminster Public Schools blocked ChatGPT on district networks last month, joining Jeffco and Denver in directing students to Google's Gemini instead. The reason: student data typed into ChatGPT can be used to train OpenAI's system. Read more →

📌 Stuart Middle School keeps its leadership after state board vote. The Colorado State Board of Education voted 9-0 to approve an improvement plan that keeps 27J's Stuart Middle School under its current principal. The Commerce City school has been on the state's watch list since 2018, but staff satisfaction hit 99% and behavior referrals dropped 42% last year. The bigger challenge: classrooms with 35 to 40 students, leaving each kid with less than 90 seconds of individual attention in a 50-minute period. Read more →

📍 Westminster accelerates WAIS/Harris Park merger. The district is recommending the school board approve combining Westminster Academy for International Studies and Harris Park Elementary a year earlier than originally planned. I'll have the reasons behind the timeline change.

📍 Weld RE-8 adds math and reading tutors. The district is piloting additional math and reading tutors in its elementary schools, a program that could expand to middle schools in the future. I'm looking into the details.

10% — That’s how much a landmark study suggests per‑pupil spending needs to rise, year after year, to change a child’s life chances. A 10% increase in per‑pupil spending sustained for all 12 years of school was associated with roughly 7–10% higher earnings in adulthood, about a third of a year more education, and a 3–4 percentage‑point drop in the likelihood of being in poverty.

For children from low‑income families, the gains were substantially larger than for their higher‑income peers, suggesting that when funding is cut instead of increased, the students who feel it most are the ones who can least afford it.

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:

🔓 5 referrals — How to Give Public Comment That Gets Heard (checklist)
🔓 10 referrals — CORA Request Template Kit (fill-in-the-blank public records requests)

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.

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.

If you like our work, then there's one easy way to keep it coming: support us with a subscription or a monthly or one-time donation. Hit the button below!