Heatherwood Community Engagement Process

The purpose of the Heatherwood Educational Advisory Team is to brainstorm and evaluate possible programming options to develop recommendations for the Board. Last fall, BVSD conducted a community survey of parents in the district to understand what types of educational programs might be of interest. The results of the survey will generate some initial ideas for the Team to consider. We anticipate that additional surveys will be conducted throughout the process to gather further input about what the Heatherwood community might be interested in and support.

The Heatherwood Educational Advisory Team will meet from April to Sep. 2024 and will present recommendations to the Board in Sep. 2024. BVSD is aiming to implement any recommended program changes beginning in the 2025-26 school year.

In February 2024, the Board revised Policy JC to direct staff to evaluate boundaries at least every five years and more frequently if needed. Staff is in the process of determining when the first review will occur.

Although the recommendations of the Long Range Advisory Committee (LRAC) include closure/consolidation as a possible outcome of the community engagement process, at this time the goal is to boost enrollment at Heatherwood in order to support well-resourced educational programming. BVSD will continue to monitor enrollment throughout the district and respond according to the established LRAC recommendations.

We know we make the best decisions when we work together with our community. In its recommendations, the LRAC intentionally specified the community should be involved in developing plans for responding to declining enrollment at specific schools. The work of the Heatherwood Educational Advisory Team will inform how we move forward together.

In the past, preschool has been considered a special district program that's placed at a school by the Early Childhood Education department (similar to how some special education or other programs are placed at schools). It has a different funding calculation and requires more specialized facilities. As such, any rooms devoted to preschool are exempt from any particular school's program capacity calculation. With changes from Universal Preschool, this determination may be revisited. That process is still evolving, and it will probably be a few years before it is determined exactly how that program will operate. Currently, BVSD still doesn't have preschool in all elementary schools. 

Heatherwood has two preschool rooms but neither are included in the school's overall program capacity number, nor are the preschool students included in the enrollment numbers used to calculate a school’s capacity.

When enrollment at a school declines below three classes per grade level, there is not enough funding (which is allocated on a per pupil basis) to provide for full time librarians, Specials teachers, counselors, etc.

Open enrollment is mandated by Colorado state law. Moreover, educational choice is highly valued by many BVSD families. All schools in the district experience both in- and out- migration due to open enrollment.

The School Finance Act (SFA), which is approved by the State legislature every year, identifies a per pupil funding amount which is multiplied by the number of full-time students enrolled in a district to determine the amount of funding a district receives. As the number of students declines, funding declines. This link [page 22] to BVSD’s Budget Book explains in greater detail how this works. The SFA funding a district receives comes from both local sources (property tax and car registrations) and state sources. School districts are limited in how much SFA revenue they can collect. Rising local property taxes don’t increase the total amount of funding, however, it does affect what percentage of the funding is paid locally by BVSD tax payers and what percentage is paid by the State. As the local share increases, the state share decreases (think of a teeter-totter).

Count day is typically the first Monday of October each year and is when the State of Colorado collects and audits official enrollment numbers for funding purposes.  This information is used to determine the school demographics, number of students in instructional programs, free and reduced lunch counts, and distribution of school finances to school districts across the State of Colorado. BVSD also runs informal enrollment counts throughout the school year for data collection purposes. Enrollment statistics are found on the BVSD website here.

Heatherwood is initiating the Community Engagement Process because on average across the grade levels there are fewer than 1.5 classes per grade level, the building is at less than 50% capacity, and enrollment is projected to continue to decline. There are six other BVSD schools that are in the Advisory phase but their enrollment is not yet at a point where a community process will be initiated. In the coming years, as enrollment is projected to continue to decline, more schools will move into the Advisory and Engagement phases.

When enrollment drops to the point where there are only enough students for one teacher per grade level, other staff resources diminish as well. Librarians, counselors, and Specials teachers may only be in the building a few hours per week. From a teacher perspective, there can be advantages to having a grade level team to plan with and collaborate around how to best support students. There can also be advantages for students in a larger social pool. Staff provide an explanation in the May 16, 2023 Board work session.

Enrollment projections are created by BVSD staff based on a number of factors. Staff provided an explanation of how the projections were developed with the Feb. 27 Enrollment Trend Update to the Board.

One of the most powerful tools Heatherwood has to boost enrollment is the robust support of current families. Talk to your neighbors and let them know how amazing Heatherwood is, that your family is committed to it, and the district is working with the Heatherwood community to make it even better.