As Douglas County School District leaders and board members weigh closing three schools in Highlands Ranch, they’ll prioritize keeping together groups of students and staff from individual schools, ensuring student safety in traffic zones and analyzing current and future enrollment projections.
Those are among the parameters the board approved Tuesday to guide them in determining which schools to close beginning in the 2026-27 school year from a list of 16 schools.
The seven-member board will also consider how walkable schools are for students; the availability of programming such as art, science, technology, engineering and mathematics; building capacity and limitations; and school finances and long-term sustainability. They will also try to maintain feeder patterns to middle and high schools.
Additionally, the school board must also select three schools with room for students whose classrooms have closed.
During a board meeting Tuesday evening, Superintendent Erin Kane denied rumors the district has already narrowed down schools it will consolidate.
Instead, Kane said school officials will consider the factors laid out by the board and then “dig even deeper into each scenario to make sure we have transportation, boundaries, special education, gifted and talented, multilanguage-learner supports for students — make sure we have all of those things ironed out before we put out a recommendation.”
The district will announce its recommendations in March. The board will vote on those recommendations during its April 8 meeting before deciding April 22 which schools to close.
Similar to some of its peer districts, including Denver Public Schools and Jeffco Public Schools, Douglas County School District has watched its student count fall in parts of the community, particularly in Highlands Ranch, where birth rates have plummeted and an aging population of residents have stayed in their homes long past their children graduating from high school.
It’s a dramatically different trend from what’s happening about 10 miles away, where new housing developments, Sterling Ranch and Solstice, are creating an urgent need for construction of new schools.
After local voters approved a $490 million bond in November, the district is building two elementary schools, in Sterling Ranch and RidgeGate, communities that Kane describes as “school deserts,” meaning “they don’t have access to a local neighborhood school within reasonable proximity.”
Meanwhile, enrollment across the 16 Highlands Ranch elementary schools up for possible closure has dropped from serving about 10,500 students in 2012 to about 6,000 this school year, according to figures provided by the district.
“You can see that that’s not sustainable,” Kane said. “And the ones who are missing out are our kids. All of our kids, no matter what neighborhood they live in, they deserve a great neighborhood school that has lots of programming opportunities.”
The enrollment dips across those schools factor into a broader, albeit slight, enrollment drop in the district as a whole. State data shows Douglas County School District tallied 61,851 students in preschool through high school this year, losing more than 5,400 students over the past five years.
Part of the district’s enrollment downturn has been buffered by the county’s new housing developments, Kane noted.
During Tuesday’s board meeting, district leaders highlighted the steep financial costs of operating smaller schools, which typically serve between 250 and 350 kids. Close to 3,200 students currently attend small schools in Highlands Ranch, which adds up to $8 million for the district. According to district projections, by 2028 4,640 kids will attend small schools — a $17 million expense for the district, factoring in inflation, if enrollment remains steady.
That’s the same amount of money the district stands to lose under Gov. Jared Polis’ latest budget proposal.
If enrollment continues to fall, that will increase costs for the district to maintain programming even more, according to Steve Colella, chief of staff for Douglas County School District.
?? READ MORE
11:29 AM MDT on Mar 25, 2025
9:34 AM MDT on Mar 25, 2025
4:01 AM MDT on Mar 25, 2025
District leaders reiterated Tuesday night that they are planning ahead for school closures before the district’s financial outlook becomes dire.
“The Board of Education is being so proactive to make sure that we’re addressing things before we fall off a fiscal cliff,” Kane said while presenting to the board. “And so that’s something I really appreciate about you all is having us start really going through this process before it becomes a six-alarm fire.”
District officials also say they are committed to maintaining buildings that no longer operate as traditional schools with plans for students and staff to continue using those buildings for various programs.
And they are reassuring staff members from the 16 schools under consideration for consolidation that they will still have a job with the district, even if their school closes. Because the district is so large, natural attrition will open up enough job openings for all affected staff, Kane said.
The district plans to appoint new principals for schools that absorb students from closing schools by June. During the 2025-26 school year, each of those principals will hold conversations with staff members from both the school that is closing and the school receiving an influx of students to understand how each staff member wants to move forward in their career.
Any school employee who decides they do not want to work at a newly consolidated school will be able to take an early look at district job postings beginning next February and contact the leaders overseeing those positions before the jobs are publicly posted, according to Colella.
Board members have fanned out across the community this year to meet with parents and staff and listen to their fears about the fate of their schools.
Saddle Ranch Elementary School parents who belong to the school’s School Accountability Committee met with board members Brad Geiger and Susan Meek last week to ask them questions about the school closure process ahead.
Parents spoke about how much Saddle Ranch Elementary School has brought children and families together and shared concerns about uprooting their kids, particularly after a tumultuous few years during the pandemic.
The elementary school has become the axis of the neighborhood, where families gather for movie nights and kickball tournaments as well as come together for holidays, including an Easter egg hunt and a Thanksgiving morning celebration.
“It will be a super hard transition for everybody (if the school closes), but I do know that our kids are super resilient and I know that this community is strong and we’ll all take it on together, but that’s not what we want to do,” said Jordan Hayes, a parent of two kids who attend the school. “It’s going to be rough.”
Katie Facchinello, a parent of two students at the school, faulted a lack of community planning, suggesting county commissioners did not fully analyze how local schools would be impacted by new housing or knew school closures would be a possible outcome.
“In general, I’m just disappointed at the lack of vision that appears to be missing for many, many years on the part of community planners, and I don’t necessarily hold our school board wholly responsible for that,” Facchinello said. “It’s hard to understand how we got to this place and how it couldn’t have been avoided.”
Facchinello said she worries about losing the regular interactions with other families while walking to and from school that have become a staple in her day. Her relationships with other parents from the school have made her a better parent, she said, and driving her kids to another school would limit how much she sees and talks to other families. That would detract from the strong sense of community built around the school, she said.
“I know how critical neighborhood schools are for a community to thrive,” Facchinello said. “It’s a connection point. It’s a way to build our resilience as families. Folks here have a tendency to pull into their garages. We have busy lives, and it’s hard to make a connection. And school brings it out of us.”
Kane said district officials will release information on school closures as soon as they can as families, racked by anxiety, brace for the potential closure of their school. The district will devote much of the 2025-26 school year supporting families and staff through the consolidation of schools, she noted.
“Ideally when two communities come together, you get the best of both communities,” Kane said. “We are going to be there to support everyone through the process.”
Type of Story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
[email protected]
Erica Breunlin is an education writer for The Colorado Sun, where she has reported since 2019. Much of her work has traced the wide-ranging impacts of the pandemic on student learning and highlighted teachers' struggles with overwhelming workloads... More by Erica Breunlin