🔔 The Bell
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What's on my mind this week: There's often a gap between what people know is best for teachers and students and what actually gets funded, enforced or implemented. I keep running into it.
Investment in school conditions is investment in the people working inside them. When a teacher wears a roll of toilet paper on her lanyard because the bathrooms never have any, and when work orders go unfilled for months, the message isn't subtle. Jeffco isn't ignoring its buildings out of neglect; it's running out of money to fix them. But the people inside those buildings are paying the cost of that math in ways the math doesn't capture.
The same gap shows up elsewhere in this issue. A 27J parent is still waiting for basic progress updates the state requires. A copycat post reopened Evergreen's wound. A bill to speed up social media warrants is stuck in committee. Adams 12 families know closures are coming, but not which schools.
My job is to close the gap where I can.
Let's dig in.
🏆 Top of the Class: Jeffco's aging schools are failing. The repair fund is too.
Candice Steinke taught at Foothills Elementary for two years. She described her classroom as having two settings.
"It was either the seventh circle of hell or the sub-Arctic," she said. "There was no in between."
The heating and cooling systems were so old that turning up the AC in her room made the room across the hall unbearably hot. Trash cans lined the hallways during roof leaks. Toilets overflowed. Bathrooms were taped off for days.
She wore a roll of toilet paper around her lanyard because the bathrooms never had any.
She left in September.
Why it matters: Jeffco's Capital Reserve Fund, the account that pays for building repairs, peaked at $131.9 million in 2024. The district's own documents project it will reach $4.1 million by 2028. That's less than the repair backlog at a single elementary school.
A closer look:
When Foothills became the receiving school for Green Mountain Elementary after that school closed, the district converted windowless storage closets into classrooms.
A preschool teacher in a Foothills portable complained to the building's facility manager and principal that the AC wasn't working and children couldn't sleep during nap time. The response from both: “good luck.”
Superintendent Tracy Dorland told the school board last week: "We have a lot of really nice buildings on the West side, not as many on the east side of our district." Foothills and Dennison — two of the district's oldest and most deteriorated buildings — are on the east side.
Which Jeffco building has perfect air conditioning? "The Ed Center," Steinke said.
Between the lines: Dennison Elementary, a 68-year-old Lakewood school, has 90 unresolved deficiencies totaling $1.8 million. The most urgent is a missing emergency eyewash station in the art classroom. It would cost $2,687 to fix. It still hasn't been fixed.
What's next:
Polling presented at Thursday's Capital Asset Advisory Committee meeting showed a special-purpose mill levy drawing 52% support among Jeffco voters. A bond drew just 31%. Full results in an upcoming issue.
The board must vote by August to place a measure on the November ballot.
Jeffco did not respond to questions about conditions at either school.
📣 The follow-up: A copycat post reopened Evergreen's wound. The bill that could stop the next one is stuck in committee.
On Thursday, April 9, students at Evergreen High School started receiving social media content that mimicked posts from Desmond Holly, the 16-year-old who shot and critically injured two students at the school on Sept. 10, 2025. Someone had screenshotted Holly's original posts and reposted them across what appeared to be a few accounts. Multiple students flagged the content through Safe2Tell. A criminal investigation is underway.
No direct threat. No new shooter. Just the community's September trauma, dragged back into view seven months later.
I reported the copycat incident last week. Read that story →
Here's what Rep. Tammy Story, who co-sponsors HB26-1255, told me this week, and what's at stake in the Colorado Legislature right now.
The bill, briefly: HB26-1255 would require social media platforms to respond to law enforcement search warrants within 24 hours. Under federal law, they currently have up to 35 days per warrant. Identifying a user typically takes two or three warrants in sequence. In Holly's case, the process took 75 days. By the time investigators identified the account, he had already entered the school.
What Rep. Story told me:
She wants the 24-hour window — not a compromise. "Even the difference between 24 hours and 72 hours, if it's a three-step search warrant process, which it is, that's six days," Story said. In Holly's case, the FBI file arrived two days after the shooting. "Three days less could have made a difference."
Amendments are drafted on the duty-to-report piece. Stakeholders raised Fourth Amendment concerns about requiring social media companies to report threats they identify. Rep. Story says her team has tightened the language and will bring it to the House floor.
Senate Bill 11 has to be reconciled. A separate Senate bill addresses only the search warrant response time, with no duty to report. Rep. Story called the conforming process "the easy part."
What's next:
HB26-1255 is before the full House. No floor vote scheduled yet.
Story says Evergreen families have started writing to the governor's office in support of the bill.
If the House passes it, the bill moves to the Senate, where it will need to be reconciled with SB26-11.
✅ Quick hits
📌 27J acknowledges its reading plans aren't reaching every kid. A parent told the 27J board that her child's READ plan isn't being followed, and district staff confirmed that the format is being redesigned for shorter check-ins and better family communication. Just 32% of 27J students in grades 3-8 read at grade level, and the district declined to say when the new format takes effect. Read more →
📌 Jeffco's ballot advisory committee is leaning toward a combined $135M ask. At its April 6 meeting, 38 members of the Partnership for Fiscal Sustainability backed a combined $75M general-purpose mill levy override plus a $60M special-purpose mill in a straw poll. None supported a $75M MLO alone. Five abstained. The committee delivers its formal recommendation to the school board on May 11.
📌 Adams 12 is drafting the operating rules that will guide school closure decisions. At Wednesday's board meeting, Deputy Superintendent Beau Foubert presented the closure and consolidation timeline and an initial draft of operating-end policies that will govern how Superintendent Chris Gdowski approaches the decisions. The board will refine the language over the next two or three meetings before Gdowski brings closure recommendations in September or October, with a vote expected before early November. Read the full story from last week →
🔎 The records room
Jeffco's consultant spending is coming into view
I've filed a CORA request with Jefferson County Public Schools for contracts, invoices and related records tied to a dozen outside vendors hired over the past three fiscal years.
The question I'm trying to answer: How much is the district spending on outside consultants, and what has that work produced?
The request comes as the district cuts school-based positions under its Budget Reduction Blueprint.
Records are pending. More as they arrive.
📚 What I’m working on
📍 Marshdale Elementary's Young Writers Conference. A 30-year mountain-community writing tradition is still drawing families out on weeknights for a GT program that's quietly remarkable. I've finished my interviews with the teacher who runs it, the featured author and a parent who's sent multiple kids through. That story is coming soon.
📍 Jeffco's concurrent enrollment savings — who's getting them? At last week's Jeffco board presentation, the district celebrated $8.5 million in college tuition savings for families. I'm looking into which families — and whether the schools serving Jeffco's highest-poverty students are getting anything close to an equal share of that benefit.
✅ Know a parent who could use this?
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" →
🧐 Know something I should look into?
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.
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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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