u/Technical-Water4687

Hi r/LakewoodCO, Suzie Glassman again. Part 2 is out. It's about why the gap in Part 1 exists, and a lot of it comes down to who's still there to teach.

Between 2021 and 2026, the three Title I schools in my comparison lost licensed staff to resignation or retirement at about 33% a year. At the four wealthier schools, it was about 20%. That doesn't explain everything on its own, but it's the condition under which a one-teacher course is hardest to keep.

English Composition I is the clearest case. At Jefferson, one teacher held the approval to teach it from 2018 through 2023-24. The district posted her position that June and recorded a new hire in August, but no teacher appears on its rolls as approved to teach the course in 2024-25. At Wheat Ridge, three teachers held the approval. When one stepped away last year, another who'd been approved since 2018 was already there to keep the class running.

Green Mountain, at the other end of our four, produces more college credit per student than any school I looked at.

Jeffco has a program meant to keep a course from leaving with the teacher. Over four years, it put $9,733 into Green Mountain and $3,000 into Jefferson. Alameda International got nothing.

Usual caveat: this is a seven-school comparison, not a districtwide statistic, and it is not a story about anybody's kids being less interested.

If you teach in Jeffco, or you've tried to earn a master's in your subject while carrying a full load, I'd like to hear how that went. Suzie@cotln.org, or right here.

https://www.thegoldentranscript.com/news/title-i-school-teacher-leaves-college-courses-jeffco/article_c2bf1a3f-d950-4290-b894-8b7da3e56b10.html

Hi r/LakewoodCO. I'm Suzie Glassman, education reporter for the Colorado Trust for Local News and the Golden Transcript. I spent 10 months on this one, and four of the schools in it are ours, so I'd rather bring it here directly than just drop a link.

Background. Concurrent enrollment lets a high schooler take a college course and earn credit for both, and Colorado law makes the district pay the tuition. Jeffco told its board that came to $8.5 million in savings last year. It reports that as a single districtwide number and has never broken it out by school.

So I built the school-by-school version for seven neighboring high schools. Four of them serve this area: Green Mountain, Lakewood, Alameda International and Jefferson Jr/Sr. They are at opposite ends of what I found.

Green Mountain offers 19 college courses on campus this year and produces more credits per student than any school in the comparison. It built College Algebra into a sequence that runs through Calculus.

Jefferson offers three. The only college math it ever had was College Algebra, which last ran in the early 2020s and hasn't been scheduled since. Alameda offers eight, but half of those rest on a single teacher hired last year.

Here's the part I keep coming back to. In 2019, more than half of Jefferson's graduating class took one of these courses, a higher share than at any of the wealthier high schools around it. This is not a story about our kids not wanting college credit.

What changed is who was there to teach it. Between 2021 and 2026, the three Title I schools in my comparison lost licensed staff to resignation or retirement at about 33% a year, against 20% at the four wealthier ones. A college course lives or dies with the one teacher credentialed to teach it.

Two things I want to be careful about. This is a seven-school comparison, not a districtwide statistic. And size doesn't explain it either. Lakewood High has about half again as many juniors and seniors as Green Mountain and produces far fewer credits per student.

If you have a student at any of the four, I'd like to know what the counseling office actually told you was on offer. Happy to answer questions about how I got the data. I'll be in the comments.

https://www.thegoldentranscript.com/special_article/opportunity-tax/part-1-the-gap/

I'm Suzie Glassman, the education reporter for the Colorado Trust for Local News. I cover Jeffco schools, and I went through the district's filing this week.

The coverage frames this as a transgender sports fight. The filing argues something narrower: that the federal government didn't follow its own enforcement process. Jeffco says the Office for Civil Rights reached its findings on a paper review alone, no interviews, no site visits, and skipped the 90-day negotiation window OCR's own manual requires. The signature deadline the government set landed one day before a meeting it had itself scheduled.

More than $50 million a year in federal funding is attached to the outcome. That's money for low-income students, students learning English and students with disabilities.

Story with the documents and the timeline: https://www.thegoldentranscript.com/news/how-jeffcos-lawsuit-could-risk-millions-in-funding-loss/article_2fff2620-d3bc-4712-85b8-575815e64634.html

Happy to answer questions in the comments.

I'm a senior education reporter covering Jeffco Public Schools and Colorado education policy for the Colorado Trust for Local News. I've been following the federal Title IX investigation of Jeffco since March, and today I published a story based on the government's own 31-page Letter of Findings, which I obtained through a public records request.

Here's what it shows.

When OCR asked Jeffco for evidence that male students were competing on girls' sports teams, the district handed over athletic rosters and told investigators up front that the data reflected "the gender provided by students and/or their families" — self-reported gender identity, not biological sex. OCR acknowledged that in the same document. Then used the count anyway to conclude that Jeffco violated Title IX and to justify threatening to withhold roughly $98 million in federal education funding.

There's a second problem in the document. OCR built part of its case on a CHSAA policy it described as an "orphan page" it couldn't locate in the association's current bylaws. CHSAA's own communications director confirmed to me that the eligibility review process described in that policy has not been applied since it was adopted in 2008, primarily due to privacy laws.

The enforcement threat is escalating. The Department of Education issued a Letter of Impending Enforcement Action on June 26, and Jeffco's board voted 4-1 to prepare for a legal fight.

But nationally, not one district or state has lost federal funding in a transgender Title IX case since the Trump administration began this enforcement campaign in early 2025.

This has implications beyond Jeffco. Jeffco told OCR its practices are identical to those of school districts and public postsecondary institutions across Colorado. The underlying conflict between the federal government's interpretation of Title IX and the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act is already being litigated in a separate federal case, District 49 v. Sullivan, which continues against Attorney General Phil Weiser and the Colorado Civil Rights Division.

Full story: https://www.thegoldentranscript.com/news/the-data-flaw-inside-jeffcos-federal-title-ix-findings/article_8bf14fb2-717d-4ee1-b26d-cc369895738f.html

If you want to follow this story as it develops, I write a free weekly newsletter called Class Notes covering Jeffco and Colorado education every Friday: https://cotlns-newsletter-education.beehiiv.com/

Questions welcome in the comments.

When I posted an earlier article about Jeffco schools asking for a tax measure to increase its funding, many people wanted to know why their rising property taxes aren't enough for the district.

The short answer surprised a lot of people, so I'll share it. Colorado funds districts through one pot called "Total Program," paid for by local property taxes and state aid. They work like a seesaw: when local property tax revenue rises, the state's share drops by about the same amount (it's called equalization). So when your bill jumped at reassessment, Jeffco didn't keep a windfall — state aid shrank to match.

The one exception is a mill levy override. It sits outside that formula, so every dollar it raises stays with the district. That's the lever Jeffco is weighing for the Nov. 3 ballot.

Full disclosure: I'm the education reporter who wrote this up. If it's useful, I explain the whole thing (and what to watch in the ballot language) in my free newsletter, Class Notes, where it was first reported: https://cotlns-newsletter-education.beehiiv.com/p/why-isn-t-your-rising-tax-bill-helping-your-school

Hey r/Arvada — I'm Suzie, the local education reporter who covers Jeffco Public Schools full-time.

Jeffco's school board just got a formal recommendation: a $135 million ballot package for November. Two ballot questions — $75M for staff pay, career programs and charters; $60M for buildings. The board has until August to decide whether it goes to voters.

I spent the last few weeks pulling together a voter guide. Three things worth knowing for Jeffco families:

The math on your house. About $3.58/month per $100,000 of your home's actual value (the market value on your annual notice from the assessor, not the assessed value). $550K home = ~$20/month, or $236/year. The guide has a slider so you can plug in your own home value and see the exact yearly number.

What the building money would actually fix. The $60M capital portion would specifically fund 350 chillers and rooftop AC units, replacement of cooling at 93 schools still running R22 refrigerant (illegal in new equipment by 2030), and remediation at 19 schools with what the district classifies as Priority 1 HVAC failures. About 10 school days last year were canceled, delayed, or dismissed early because of building problems.

The accountability piece worth a look. The $60M capital mill comes with a Mill Levy Override Committee and an annual public audit report written into the ballot language. The $75M general override doesn't. The 2018 mill levy override Jeffco voters approved promised an oversight committee — it was never formed.

Full guide (with the calculator, per-pupil comparison, polling data, fact-check, key dates): https://www.thegoldentranscript.com/news/what-jeffcos-135m-ballot-ask-means-for-your-tax-bill/article_19ee3b28-7259-4392-9c13-d5389d3ab24e.html

Has your kid's school been on the list for HVAC or building work? Anything your principal has flagged this year? What's the conversation sounding like at pickup? Drop it here — I'm reading.