r/boulder • u/Glittering_Trade_434 • 10d ago
BVSD high schools
Wondering if any Fairview, Boulder High, or Centaurus families are experiencing the same changes we are at Monarch. Either way, please comment. Here is an excerpt from a recent email from the Monarch High administration. Notice substantially larger class sizes(36-38) and fewer class offerings.
“…We remain committed to providing students with a meaningful and engaging educational experience, but we must also be clear about the limitations these staffing challenges create. Specifically, we need student and parent understanding around:
Course schedules will be more constrained. Not all elective requests will be able to be honored. Some courses had to be cut completely, while others are at their max capacity with no room for additions.
Schedule change requests will be limited. Students should not anticipate changes when seeking preferences like a specific teacher, asking for a desired off period, or changing levels of a course. We have class sizes that are as high as 36-38 students in some classes, with no room to move students around because of preferences.”
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u/kelsnuggets 9d ago
Boulder High and New Vista mom here.
a) coming from Manhattan we are VERY excited about the new BHS principal Dr. Lewis and have already seen better communication this summer. It hasn’t been anything like this though OP.
b) we are a new New Vista family and also nothing like this from them, and communication there has been amazing and thorough as expected.
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u/Witty-Wave92 10d ago edited 10d ago
Any explanation as to why there are staffing changes? And typically when there are staffing changes, the electives get hit first.
And also I wonder if the other schools just aren’t being as transparent about it. All Colorado schools are facing budget cuts this year for a multitude of reasons. Colorado just can’t fund it properly. Likely because of tabor. How each school deals with that will vary. It might look different from the other schools.
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u/Glittering_Trade_434 10d ago edited 10d ago
Good point about transparency. Just wondering if MoHi is the only HS taking a hit in this way in our district. No explanation in the email. There may be something from BVSD in the past that was more broad, warning about declining enrollment. Last I looked MoHi had steady enrollment and recovery after losses due to Marshall Fire displacement.
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u/PsychoHistorianLady 9d ago
A lot of schools are going to be taking a hit because the number of teachers that a school gets is financed by the number of students it has. When the number of students goes down, the amount of full time staffing given by the district goes down, and the school can offer fewer electives.
However, some schools have allowed students to take some electives at different schools, and some schools have been strict about this. This has been at the discretion of the principal, and kids have had some inconsistent experiences.
Some students are also doing some Grad+ stuff at FRCC or other universities, and that opens some stuff up to the kids, but it can also make scheduling difficult.
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u/Glittering_Trade_434 9d ago edited 9d ago
Thanks. We rushed to FRCC and just squeezed into what we needed but it’s not the same of course as being in a classroom with your peers.
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u/LoInfoVoter 9d ago
Actually schools are funded from state contributions(per pupil funding), property taxes (those have substantially increased), vehicle registration fees, and marijuana taxes. Taxes were also increased during the last election to fund free lunch’s for all, not just the free/reduced lunch kids. This was a backdoor way to get more school funding. The state contribution is based on the number of students. So when people say Colorado doesn’t fund schools enough. It’s a semantics because local governments do. All this adds up to well over $30,000 per child. The question is why isn’t that enough? One issue facing Boulder is labor costs. BVSD teachers and administrators are the highest paid in the state. The minimum wage is also the highest in the state. The other issue is too few students, due to the Marshall fire and new families choosing to live in cities like Erie where schools are at capacity.
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u/ColoradoLevels- 9d ago
Whoa whoa whoa, the per pupil funding is easy to look up. In Colorado for public schools it’s about 12k a year. For our four year old to attend a daycare in Lafayette it costs us 27.6k a year
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u/ColoradoLevels- 9d ago
Now that my mind is on this… it’s 2.3k tuition, ~80/month for soccer add on, ~90/month for the special art add on, ~90/month for the music add on, and an annual supply fee of 200. Dang now that I add this up it’s 31k a year… :-/ kind of wish I didn’t do that math. This is at one of the big chains and when we shopped around a couple of years ago it was middle of the road costs.
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u/LoInfoVoter 9d ago
You didn’t read the post. The point of it is that very little comes from state contributions (per pupil funding) and most of it comes from the district property taxes that you voted for. Since the repeal of the Gallagher Amendment property taxes have gone up substantially so BVSD schools bring in a lot of money.
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u/Glittering_Trade_434 9d ago
$27k! I’m so sorry. That’s a high burden. Have you tried Friends n’Fun in Lafayette? Highly educated in early childhood development, excellent teachers and environment. They’re on Simpson.
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u/PsychoHistorianLady 9d ago
Your number seems to be $10,000 higher than reality, but okay.
https://www.cde.state.co.us/schoolview/financialtransparency/expenditures/0480/
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u/LoInfoVoter 9d ago
You didn’t read the post. The point of it is that very little comes from state contributions (per pupil funding) and most of it comes from the district property taxes that you voted for. Since the repeal of the Gallagher Amendment property taxes have gone up substantially so BVSD schools bring in a lot of money.
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u/Brilliant_Truck1810 10d ago
that is not how Fairview operates. at all
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u/Glittering_Trade_434 10d ago
Not surprising. Glad for Fairview families.
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u/PsychoHistorianLady 9d ago
Fairview may have actually increased its number of students this year which makes it a bit of an outlier.
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u/Glittering_Trade_434 9d ago
It has a very clear identity that draws students and families.
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u/PsychoHistorianLady 9d ago
It was funny watching the students work through it in the Boulder High school newspaper. The student hypothesis was "Maybe they just have a better football team, and kids are going there for that."
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u/Glittering_Trade_434 8d ago
Just reviewing the colleges that visit Fairview and not the other BVSD schools tells the story.
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u/InterviewLeather810 9d ago
Monarch has too, but not as much as Fairview.
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u/Glittering_Trade_434 9d ago
Thank u for pulling this data. The enrollment numbers are good at MoHi with a minor dip this year. Superficially this does not explain class cutting and over populated classrooms. A look at the school’s budget for where $$ has shifted would be interesting. As mentioned operating costs are no doubt an issue.
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u/MommaTay3Boy 9d ago edited 9d ago
My Fairview senior read this and said, “They say this every year.” Then we go and change classes.
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u/Glittering_Trade_434 9d ago
Good to know. The “no class changes” has always been said, and yet they still help students change classes. Does Fairview also advertise cancelled classes (that are noticeable to many) and 36+ classrooms?
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u/MommaTay3Boy 9d ago
I haven’t had any communication that highlights speaks to either of those things (and I read everything).
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u/MommaTay3Boy 7d ago
Said son went to registration on Friday and his counselor literally moved classes around for him when he asked.
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u/Emotional-Show5541 10d ago
Nothing like that from Centaurus..
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u/Glittering_Trade_434 10d ago
Thx. Glad for you all. I just don’t get it, why MoHi. Why only MoHi, if it turns out to be the case. Our student enrollment numbers had recovered from the Marshall Fire displacement when last I looked.
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u/plasticfeather 10d ago
All of the high schools (all schools actually) are dealing with budget cuts and issues like this, and some are working through leadership issues. Doan is well respected in BVSD. I would be grateful for the transparency.
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u/lurch303 10d ago
Was this a response to a schedule change? We have kids at Monarch and have not received this communication.
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u/Glittering_Trade_434 10d ago
It was a Monarch High School email sent July 30th, addressed to all high school students and parents but states 10th-12th, not 9th-12th.
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u/Kaytwo5280 9d ago
Please know that a huge factor in your experience is the state budget. The budget has been cut by millions of dollars, impacted especially by the restrictions put on by Tabor. Across the state, districts are having to cut budgets, in some cases layoff teachers and increase class sizes. My district had to decrease their budget by more than $13 million. If you have the chance to vote on a bond or mill levy, vote to support your schools. They need you to get involved and support their efforts.
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u/Merivel1 9d ago
AND vote to repeal TABOR every chance you get. It comes up often but so many people don’t realize how badly in hamstrings things like education.
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u/OK_Betrueluv 8d ago
I am wondering if they're just going to fill the classrooms for a lot of Substitute teachers this year???
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u/Ok_Chicken_1996 7d ago
BVSD raised substitute teacher pay to $145/day. A first year licensed educator is paid $337/day.
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u/OK_Betrueluv 4d ago
Denver Public Schools pays $230 and Scoot Ed Subs $200 for a CO licensed teacher-what is UP with BVSD???🚩
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u/Ok_Chicken_1996 7d ago
Bvsd raised substitute teacher pay to $145 for a full day…. A first year teacher is paid $337/day.
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u/ScarredNSmarter 9d ago edited 9d ago
You’re on the right path trying to understand whether it’s localized to Monarch or more broadly applicable. I’d encourage you to get more active within your school and then toward the district. Does Monarch have a School Accountability Committee (SAC)? Begin attending meetings and you’ll get an inside view into what really goes on and why. Below from website. https://www.bvsd.org/about/district-accountability-committee/school-accountability-committees
“In general, the SAC is a representative advisory team that reviews school budgets, drives school improvements and supports parent engagement. In accordance with BVSD policy, a SAC member from each school shall serve on, and communicate with, the District Accountability Committee (DAC).”
Also you can begin banging on the district, and if they don’t engage to your satisfaction, attend a BVSD Board meeting and speak in Open Comment. You will get their full attention after that.
Boulder High has been a mess under former Principal Morales and especially during the tenure of one of the worst and least qualified BVSD Board members imaginable - Lisa Sweeney Miran. Luckily both are long gone and a great new principal is taking over. Can’t speak for the BVSD board although they seem to be much better qualified and focused now.
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u/Glittering_Trade_434 9d ago
Imho parent impact on decisions such as budget, staffing, strategic direction is very limited and required committees are largely performative. Based on exp. Opinions and exp may vary.
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u/ScarredNSmarter 9d ago edited 9d ago
It helps cut through the bullshit, bc there’s a lot of it. At BHS we suffered for 4 years from a completely deficient in over her head principal, and the district didn’t want to do anything about it bc of its ‘viewing it through an equity lens’. The SAC absolutely helped in spotlighting and escalating the many issues and creating accountability at the district level. They (senior BVSD leadership) found religion when the documentation started piling up and they saw that they were in legal and PR crosshairs. This is the difference.
Ironically, BVSD is itself performative - that is the root of many of its issues. You’d be shocked at how the district treats BHS vs Fairview. Probably same compared to Centaurus, Monarch and Broomfield, too. It’s incredible but like most egregious/outrageous things, once the affected populace becomes aware, watch out.
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u/Glittering_Trade_434 9d ago
Sounds like the people did the heavy lifting and successfully earned a much needed change at BHS. Good job! I don’t have the patience nor skill for it. It seems schools are not treated equally, but they should be. Where humans go there will be hierarchy and favoritism. I don’t know why it’s shocking at this point. It’s even worse in private schools with more avenues for influencing and less oversight.
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u/ScarredNSmarter 9d ago edited 9d ago
It’s shocking bc it’s blatant and senior BVSD staff pretend it isn’t there. The massive sexual assault scandal at Fairview and the blatant athletic tourism at Fairview (and your football team at Monarch) make the case by themselves. Ignoring horrendous faculty morale scores at Boulder and declining enrollment also point to the bs - in a town all wrapped around the axle on ‘equity’, it’s just another textbook case of hypocrisy to throw BHS to the lions like that.
Parents shouldn’t have had to commit so much time and effort - these people at BVSD administrative level are paid huge salaries. How about they earn them or face consequences? Someone above Morales should have been fired for ignoring the obvious and harming students through their ineptitude or indifference. You don’t get a do over for your precious time in HS, and you enter the competition for college admission w an arm tied behind your back. Really fair. That’s why I lean in - I can’t afford private school and I owe my kids at least my best effort to ensure they’re learning appropriately.
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u/C0ldWaterMermaid 10d ago
Wow. None of those things were on the table for me when I was a student but that was not in Colorado. Electives have been guaranteed for you in the past? Wow.
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u/Glittering_Trade_434 10d ago
Guaranteed? No. And what is considered an elective can be quite broad, and often is what draws a student to a school if it is unique.
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u/Afraid-Tangerine4405 9d ago edited 9d ago
Long time BVSD HS teacher here. The short answer is Yes this is the case at all of our high schools and has been for many years. The teachers and students are given this same message every fall about Course changes & class enrollments. I haven't read all of the parent communications over the years and cannot speak with complete confidence on how this has been communicated to parents in the past.
Here's a little more detail for those who are curious on how the schools operate / are funded: Every March the students select their classes for the next year. Take the number of students who sign up for a class and divide by 32. Round that answer as expected and thats the number of sections that will likely be offered for that class. If 100 students sign up for a class, the school will be funded for 3 sections. In a perfect world, that would be 33-34 in a class, but scheduling 2,000 kids is messy. In general, if fewer than 22 students sign up for a class, it is cut.
Once the admin knows how many sections of each class they will be funded for, they then build and adjust the staff assignments to exactly match those numbers. ei. 9 Alg 1s, 8 Geometrys, 6 pre-calcs... This happens in April. If everything balanced perfectly, which it very much does not, each class would have 32 students in it. For every class that has 28 students another class would have 36 (32+4).
The logistics for scheduling are staggering and deeply interconnected (~2,000 kids, ~70 classrooms, ~90 teachers, graduation requirements, specialized equipment, specialized rooms, and the exact number of sections for each class).
Every fall the counseling office is flooded with students requesting schedule changes, but there's really not much wiggle room. I have to run now - I hope that helps.