Colorado school district considers bond measure, MIL levy override for facility improvements and higher salaries

At the Future Forward Campus at Washington Square, students like senior Xitlaly Villalobos are sparking their creative side.

"You learn skills that you never thought you would learn, especially with welding," Villalobos said.

Villalobos splits her time between Northglenn High School and the Future Forward Campus, where she takes welding and crime scene investigation courses, among a variety of other career and technical education programs offered through the campus.

"[The campus] helps you learn what you want to do in life after high school. It helps you open your doors and put your foot into different things," she said. "I never thought I would be into CSI."

However, funding growing programs in career and technical education comes at a cost to the district, as well as other needs currently facing schools across the Adams 12 Five Star School District.

"We feel like we've waited as long as we can," Chris Gdowski, superintendent of the Adams 12 Five Star School District, said.

Gdowski said that is why the district hopes to add two ballot measures to the upcoming November election that they believe will enhance students' education.

One measure will ask families in the district to approve an $830 million bond without raising property owners' taxes. This will be used by the district to fund investments in facilities across the district.

"We were initially thinking of doing this in 2022, and it just didn't feel like the right time, given people are still recovering from the pandemic and we were getting a lot of federal dollars at the same time to support us in our post-pandemic recovery," Gdowski said.

With this bond measure, each school will receive some facility improvements, but most of the funding will go toward improvements in some of the district's aging campuses.

"The biggest investments include the teardown and rebuild of Thornton High School. That building right now has challenges with flushing the toilets," Gdowski said. "If we don't make the investments now on the facility side, we're going to start to have more buildings that are going to have days closed because the toilets aren't flushing, the bricks are in a vulnerable spot, and the roofs are leaking," he said.

CBS News Colorado got a look inside Glacier Peak Elementary School, which is expected to receive several improvements if voters pass this measure.

"As you walked in, you may see that there's cracking, erosion, rusting that's happening on the stairs. The carpet in much of this building is the original from 27 years back, so it needs to be freshened up," Gdowski said. "We never put air conditioning in the gymnasium when we first did AC in these buildings a few generations ago."

A second measure families will be asked to consider is a $34.5 million mill levy override. This ballot measure would cost roughly $20 a month for a household over $500,000.

"We worry that we're going to be at a competitive disadvantage if we're not able to move forward and get this help now," Gdowski said.

It's been six years since the district passed a mill levy override, but Gdowski said other schools have passed multiple overrides since then.

"So, we're not 13th out of 15 in the metro area in terms of mill levy override money," he said.

A mill levy override would provide the district with funding to raise teacher salaries and help fill critical positions in special education and in some of their higher-poverty schools.

"The data from last week shows that we had more than 30 unfilled teaching positions and close to 100 unfilled support staff positions," Gdowski said. "We're in a more and more competitive environment where we can't hire all the teachers and staff that we need, and so if you're a special education teacher or if you're working with kids in poverty, those teachers often have lots of options about where they go."

Additionally, this funding would support the expansion of special classes across all grade levels. This includes adding computer science to all elementary and K-8 schools and creating more hands-on career and technical education courses like the ones being taught at both the Future Forward campuses at Washington Square and Bollman.

"Like aviation, advanced manufacturing, and cosmetology," Gdowski said.

Villalobos says she is encouraged the district is considering expanding career and technical education courses through this mill levy override and hopes it will give more students like her the opportunity to take classes that are both empowering and will better prepare them for the workforce.

"[They] make you feel heard. They actually help you and they're willing to work with you a lot more in these classes," she said.