Two Clocks, One Community: Why BVSD Has to Act and Why the City Must Too
Dear Friends and Neighbors.
My children attend one of the elementary schools affected by the Boulder Valley School District’s Resilient Schools proposal. So I am not watching this debate from the sidelines. My family will experience the uncertainty, disruption, and loss that come with consolidating schools.
A neighborhood school is more than a building. It is where children find trusted adults, where families build friendships, and where a community gathers. Whether you have children in BVSD today, raised children whose school years are now behind them, or have never had children in the district, these changes will affect your neighborhood, its identity, and the future of an important community space. The grief and anger many people feel are real, and I feel them too.
The decision is painful, but the enrollment and demographic data leave the school board with a responsibility to act. Leadership sometimes means choosing among painful options instead of pretending the choice can be avoided.
That is why I support BVSD moving forward with the proposal on September 22.
Since 2017, BVSD has lost 3,675 students. The district projects another 1,670-student decline by the 2030-31 school year. Boulder elementary buildings are currently about 63% full, with 2,585 open seats. Without changes, BVSD projects utilization falling even further by 2030.
Those numbers are not just about empty classrooms or building costs. They affect what students experience every day.
At my children’s school, the counselor is there only two days a week. Our school is not alone. That counselor is valued and important, but a child does not get to schedule a difficult day, a family crisis, or a mental-health need only on the days the counselor is present.
BVSD described the same problem during its August 25 work session. In schools with fewer than two classes per grade, also called two-round schools, counselors may be assigned only half-time. Art, music, and PE teachers can be divided among two or three buildings. Interventionists, special-education staff, and other specialists are spread across too many sites.
The goal of consolidation is not simply to spend less. It is to organize the district, so more students have consistent access to the teachers and programs intended to serve them. A service that technically exists somewhere in the system is not the same as a service a child can rely on when it is needed.
Much of the public frustration has crossed jurisdictional lines. The independently elected BVSD Board of Education governs a school district that is a political subdivision of the state, separate from city government. The school board, not Boulder City Council, decides school closures, attendance boundaries, staffing, and educational programs.
The city has a different responsibility. We make decisions about housing, land use, transportation, public safety, infrastructure, and the long-term ability of families to live in Boulder.
These responsibilities are connected, but they operate on very different clocks.
BVSD must organize schools for the students it has now and expects through 2030. Housing reforms adopted by the city today will take years to move from policy to plans, permits, construction, and occupied homes. We simply cannot produce hundreds of additional BVSD students by fall 2027. Those reforms cannot erase the projected decline through 2030, either.
Here is the scale of the challenge. BVSD projects the number of resident elementary students in Boulder falling from about 3,870 today to 3,522 in 2030, a decline of 348 children.
Boulder’s own comprehensive plan says the city added an average of about 370 housing units per year over the last decade, but most were apartments and condominiums. That total does not tell us how many were multi-bedroom, attainable, or otherwise suitable for families with children. We should not treat 370 new housing units as 370 new family homes.
Creating more family-suitable homes is the pathway the city controls most directly. Families can also move into homes that already exist. But enrollment depends on the net result: children moving into new or existing homes, minus children moving away or aging out of elementary school. To avoid the projected decline, Boulder would need 348 more resident elementary students by 2030 than BVSD currently forecasts.
That makes housing for older adults part of our family-housing strategy, too. Many longtime residents live in larger homes near schools where they once raised children and would prefer to remain in Boulder, or even in the same neighborhood, as their needs change. But too often they lack smaller, accessible, manageable, and attainable options nearby. Boulder’s "Lifelong Boulder" recommendations already recognize that an age-inclusive community needs a variety of housing types so older adults can remain in their community throughout their lives.
Creating those choices, such as accessible cottages, condominiums, townhomes, accessory dwelling units, and other smaller homes near services, can help older residents voluntarily right-size without being pushed out of Boulder. When larger existing homes turn over, some can become opportunities for new families. That outcome is not guaranteed, but it is an important part of restoring movement throughout our housing system. Supporting seniors and welcoming families are not competing goals; the right housing strategy advances both.
Put the scale in perspective. Even if every incoming family had two elementary-age children, Boulder would need 174 more such families by 2030 than BVSD currently projects. And because not every family-suitable home will house a new family with two elementary-age children, the number of homes needed would be larger. If one-third to one-half did so, Boulder would need roughly 350 to 520 family-suitable homes within three years, duplexes, townhomes, cottage courts, and other missing-middle options.
That is not a forecast; it is an intentionally generous scale check. Land-use reform is essential, but it cannot move that quickly. New policies must become projects, permits, construction, completed homes, and places families can actually afford. Turnover in existing homes can help too, especially when older residents have good options to right-size. But high prices and limited turnover are already part of the conditions behind BVSD’s enrollment projection.
A one, two, or three-year delay cannot magically bring hundreds of families and students to Boulder. It would not change the demographic outcome the district must plan for through 2030.
The Colorado State Demography Office tells the same broader story. In Boulder County, it projects the population under 18 falling from about 55,000 in 2025 to 51,200 in 2030. Over the same period, the population age 55 and older grows from about 100,100 to 107,800.
By 2030, Boulder County is projected to have more than twice as many residents age 55 and older as residents under 18.
Those are county figures, not a City of Boulder or BVSD-specific forecast. But the direction is unmistakable: our region is aging, the child population is shrinking, and waiting a few years does not reverse that trajectory.
None of this lets the city off the hook. Quite the opposite.
The enrollment decline we face today is partly the accumulated result of housing choices made over decades. Boulder did not make enough room for the range of homes that families need. Housing is not the only factor. Birth rates, aging in place, migration, and family choices also matter. But it is one of the most important factors the city can influence.
That is why the newly adopted Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan matters. It is why the Family-Friendly Vibrant Neighborhoods work matters. It is why we are implementing state transit-oriented communities requirements and preparing to rewrite a land-use code that can free us from the shackles of past policies that made it nearly impossible to create the housing our community needs.
It is also why I have been one of Council’s most persistent and aggressive advocates for housing reform. Deed-restricted affordable housing is essential, but it cannot be our only strategy for making room for families. Boulder has too often offered a choice between large, expensive single-family homes and apartments, with too little in between. We need duplexes, fourplexes, cottage courts, townhomes, and other family-suitable homes in more of our neighborhoods. Solving that “missing middle” problem must be a central focus of our housing and land-use work.
Those actions will not refill schools by 2027 or 2030. Done well, they can make it possible for more families to live here over the next decade and beyond.
No zoning reform can guarantee future enrollment. But creating a broader range of attainable, family-suitable homes is one of the strongest tools the city has to reduce the likelihood, and lessen the severity, of future school consolidations, closures, and disruptions.
The school board must make a decision for this generation of students. City Council must make decisions that give the next generation a better future.
BVSD has monitored declining enrollment for years, and the district reports receiving more than 6,000 responses through its community-engagement process. But families first saw the specific school-by-school proposal on August 25, less than a month before the scheduled September 22 vote. It is understandable that such a compressed period for reviewing a consequential plan has left many people feeling unheard.
I continue to believe the district must act. I also believe the Board can strengthen community trust by answering two of the most common questions I'm hearing from community before it votes:
What common criteria were applied across all elementary schools and programs? BVSD says it examined enrollment, resident-student data, building capacity, facility conditions, transportation, capital needs, and open-enrollment patterns for neighborhood, focus, and charter schools. The community should be able to understand how those criteria were applied and how considerations such as dual-language education, specialized programs, equity, and program continuity affected the result. Equal consideration does not always require identical treatment, but different treatment deserves a clear explanation.
Was a consolidation involving University Hill and Flatirons evaluated? If it was, why was that alternative rejected? If it was not, why not? This is not a call to diminish University Hill’s dual-language program. This is the question I get asked the most by community members, and it is also not the question for a city council member to answer. It is a request to understand whether an alternative that protected that program while retaining a school presence for central Boulder families was tested. When a community is being asked to lose a neighborhood school, it deserves to know which alternatives were considered and what tradeoffs led the district to its recommendation.
These questions do not erase the enrollment decline, and answering them does not require another open-ended, multi-year process. They offer the Board an opportunity to show that the proposal did not emerge from a vacuum, that meaningful alternatives were considered, and that community input can still produce a response. Trust grows when elected leaders explain not only what they chose, but what else they examined and why they chose against it.
Here is a link to the BVSD FAQ
Assuming the school board adopts the plan as proposed or in some modified form, the next chapter of the partnership among BVSD, the city, and the community will be important.
Some buildings may no longer operate as elementary schools. BVSD has not decided how those properties would be used, and the district owns them. But if one or more campuses become available for a new purpose, their future should not be an afterthought. Several sit within established neighborhoods and near the kinds of neighborhood centers envisioned in the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan’s 15-minute-neighborhood framework.
I hope BVSD, the city, and surrounding communities can begin a joint visioning process for those sites. The possibilities could include some of the housing our community needs, childcare, recreation or other community services, and resilience hubs that provide neighborhood infrastructure for natural disasters and the growing impacts of climate change. Some sites may support a combination of uses.
The point is not for the city to dictate what happens to school district property. It is to bring the owners, neighbors, public agencies, and community partners together early enough to imagine the best long-term public value.
Consolidation may feel as though it is tearing communities apart. Thoughtful collaboration on the future of these places could become an opportunity to bring people together and make a new investment in the neighborhoods those schools have served.
What leadership looks like
Leadership is not avoiding painful choices. It is facing the facts, making the least harmful choice available, and accepting responsibility for what comes next.
I respect the BVSD Board for being willing to do that. I know families will continue to raise important questions about implementation, transitions, transportation, and support for affected students. Those questions deserve care and clear answers. But they do not change the enrollment trajectory, and an undefined delay would offer false hope while leaving student services spread too thin.
City Council owes this community the same willingness to act on housing, not after the next crisis arrives, but now.
I genuinely hope this is the last round of school consolidation and closure Boulder sees for a generation or more. My commitment is to do everything within the city’s authority to help make that true: build a community where more families can find a home, raise their children, and stay.
If you found this helpful, I'd appreciate you forwarding it to friends and neighbors. The more people understand the full picture, the better decisions we'll all make together.
As always, thank you for being engaged, asking hard questions, and caring deeply about Boulder’s future.
Matt Benjamin
Boulder City Council
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