BY FREDA MIKLIN
GOVERNMENTAL REPORTER
On August 12, the Cherry Creek School District Board of Education (CCSD) voted unanimously to ask voters to approve a phased-in mill levy increase expected to be $9 million for 2025 (Ballot Measure 4A) and a $950 million school bond (Ballot Measure 4B). These measures are on voters’ ballots arriving in the mail early next week.
The Villager sat down with Scott Smith, CCSD Chief Financial and Operating Officer, to get a more in-depth understanding of these requests.
Addressing the size of the bond issue, Smith told us, “We’re doing what other school districts have already done, which is start to replace old buildings with new buildings.” He pointed to Newton Middle School at 4401 E. Arapahoe Road in the Littleton School District, replaced with a new building and a new sports stadium three years ago, as an example, adding, “The reason the numbers are so big is because we run really big schools. The West Building alone at Cherry Creek High School (CCHS) has more square footage than any comprehensive high school in Douglas County. Just to replace the West Building (one of four discrete buildings on CCHS’s 82-acre campus) will cost $200 million.”
Regarding the 70-year-old CCHS campus, “The school is the kids, the teachers, the parents, the staff…(but) the building your school is in is falling apart…We’ve been closing three to four classrooms a week in the CCHS West Building and moving classes outside because we have sewage issues and we even found black mold (a known carcinogen). Going outside is great in the middle of September. It’s not going to be great in a few months. If we want CCHS to continue to be the flagship high school in the district, we have to invest in it. We want excellence for our kids, our families, our teachers, our staff. We want them to be in safe, healthy buildings. It doesn’t make sense to allow them to fall apart.”
New buildings also allow for up-to-date environmental design, Smith told The Villager. “There are new strategies around learning. It is interactive, it’s hands on, using small, collaborative, flexible spaces with flexible furniture.” He continued, “Safety and security were not an issue when these buildings were built. Now we view it as important for security to bring kids more to the center of the campus instead of being on the periphery. We are working with law enforcement to figure out how to maintain the campus feel, while maintaining safety and security.”
Those issues extend to the design of parking lots and the traffic flow around the campus, which CCSD is collaborating with the City of Greenwood Village to design, for the benefit of the community around the CCHS campus, as well as the students, focusing on the campus’ impact on the surrounding neighborhoods. He also noted, “Every design we’ve looked at adds 200 to 300 parking spaces around the campus.”
Smith emphasized that the only decisions that have been made about the new CCHS Greenwood Village campus are the tentative locations of the school buildings and the removal of the two administration buildings to an alternative location off the campus. All design decisions for the school buildings will be made through a collaborative process that includes extensive input from teachers, parents, students, and community members.
If voters approve the bonds, the $950 million is expected to be borrowed in four separate tranches over about four years. The initial amount will be $250 million. Under state law, CCSD must spend 85% of bond proceeds within three years and 100% within five years, so bonds will only be sold when the district has final plans in place to spend the money, thus voters will not pay interest on borrowed money until CCSD is ready to spend it. If interest rates continue to decline over the next few years, as the market expects, taxpayers’ costs will go down.
Smith told The Villager that CCSD plans to have a “retail period” for district residents to purchase some of the tax-exempt bonds, which he expects will pay 5% interest with an average term of 20 years. These high-quality investments are generally scooped up quickly by institutional investors.
The mill levy override will be phased in over about four years, going up by only about one mill in 2025. Smith does not expect homeowners’ property taxes to increase over the $3/month per $100,000 in actual value that CCSD has estimated, over the 20-year expected term of the bonds, because property values generally rise over time. Since the amount needed to repay the bonds will be established when they are sold, increased property values will result in a decrease in the mill levy.
The Villager wanted to know if CCSD had empirical data that showed that updated facilities had a demonstrated positive impact on student achievement.
We were referred to an October 2023 article in Education Week, a national, award-winning independent news source covering K-12 education since 1981, owned by Editorial Projects in Education, a nonprofit whose mission is to raise awareness and understanding of critical issues facing American schools. It said that a sweeping report published in 2023 that “analyzed data from more than 15,000 school bond ballot referenda in 28 states between 1990 and 2017, showed that schools “can expect student test scores to rise significantly after they invest local dollars to fix leaky HVAC systems or patch failing roofs,” and that investing in new athletic facilities or expanded classroom space can be expected to increase local property values. The study concluded that there is, “a growing body of evidence asserting that higher-quality school buildings translate to better academic outcomes…”
We also wanted to know the projected time frame for construction of the planned capital improvements, if the voters approve the bonds on November 5. We were provided the following tentative construction schedule (above).
CCSD residents who want more information can find it on the district’s website at https://www.cherrycreekschools.org/MillandBond.