BVSD redraws attendance boundaries, partly to boost low-enrollment schools — but will it work?

About 150 Boulder Valley School District students will be impacted by a redrawing of school attendance boundaries if the board approves the current proposal this month. After months of planning, BVSD said each family was contacted over the summer for feedback, which will be shared with the board on Sept. 9 ahead of a final vote.

The district’s goal is to feed more students into schools with low enrollment, which could balance spending and help prevent closures. But boundaries in BVSD are not the final word on where children go to school. Since 1994, Colorado law has guaranteed open enrollment, allowing parents to apply to any school in the district. BVSD has fully embraced this flexibility, operating charter, nontraditional and 50 neighborhood schools with focus programs ranging from dual language to STEAM. 

That means the new boundaries may shift which school a student is guaranteed a seat in and where bus service is offered. But they cannot ensure families will actually enroll there. In 2024, 36% of BVSD families opted out of their assigned school through open enrollment. Board President Nicole Rajpal has said there are no plans to change that policy. This raises a key question: Will new boundaries matter if families continue to enroll elsewhere? 

In effect, BVSD is relying on attendance boundaries in a system designed to let families bypass them. That paradox has also drawn attention from state leaders. Gov. Jared Polis has expressed interest in the Trump administration’s new private school voucher initiative, which could give more students the means to attend schools beyond their neighborhood.

“Honestly, these attendance boundaries are an obsolete relic,” Polis said in a statement to Boulder Reporting Lab.

In Denver Public Schools, enrollment zones have been used since 2012 and guarantee students a seat at one of several schools in a geographic area. In Boulder, by contrast, the choice process functions as a lottery, meaning students are not guaranteed a seat outside their neighborhood school.

Rezoning for declining enrollment

Two of the schools that could gain students from the boundary changes, Heatherwood and Flatirons, have been hit especially hard by declining enrollment and have been on the radar of the Long Range Advisory Committee (LRAC) since its inception in 2022. The committee consists of 20 members from different areas of the community — principals, teachers, engaged parents, a bus driver and a city councilmember — who are working to determine a long-term strategy to manage declining enrollment. 

Heatherwood was the first school to fall into the red zone, below the threshold of 50% enrollment, triggering a community engagement process to determine how to improve numbers. The school dropped to 226 students in 2023, about 46% of its capacity. The engagement process led to the school launching a new STEAM curriculum starting this year to attract families. However, enrollment remains at 226 as of Aug. 22. 

“Our STEAM program is officially launching this school year (2025-26), and we anticipate a lot of momentum as we roll it out,” Heatherwood’s PTO President Mira Oleson said in an email. “We’re building partnerships with the local neighborhood and Boulder’s wider science and environmental communities, which means even more hands-on, outdoor and enriched learning opportunities for our students.” 

She thinks the boundary change, which would shift about 52 students from Crestview Elementary to Heatherwood, makes sense and is optimistic about the school’s future.

“I think it makes sense on multiple levels,” she said. “Transportation-wise, it’s more logical for students who live in the Gunbarrel neighborhood to be bused to their actual neighborhood school, Heatherwood Elementary.”

She noted that many of the housing communities in Gunbarrel didn’t exist when BVSD boundaries were first drawn. “Now, those students are growing up and playing alongside Heatherwood kids but are being sent over to Crestview Elementary. This change would bring our entire Gunbarrel community together, making school align with the way families already live and connect.”

The district says it’s committed to letting the changes play out and hasn’t provided any timeline for discussion of school closures if enrollment doesn’t budge. However, according to the LRAC’s description of the community engagement phase, the board determines the timeline for the process, which could lead to recommendations for allocating grades to other schools, consolidation or closure.

With the proposed boundary change, an area east of the Diagonal Highway currently assigned to Crestview would shift to Heatherwood. If all 52 students affected chose to enroll in Heatherwood, that could make a big difference by bringing the school up to 56% of its capacity. The school has lost resources like a librarian, specials teachers and counselors — who are now only in the school a few hours per week — due to having too few students to be cost-effective. As enrollment declines, per-pupil spending increases, and spending at Heatherwood was up to $22,000 per student in 2023, which is more than $5,000 higher than the state average. 

Flatirons continues its enrollment decline as well, going from 181 students in 2022 to 150 as of Aug. 22 — 15 students fewer than the projection presented in January — with per-pupil spending at over $23,500 as of 2023. The proposed boundary change could add 48 students to the mix, bringing money and resources back to the school. 

Another change comes at Bear Creek in South Boulder, which would gain two areas of attendance from Creekside, amounting to 41 students. Creekside is doing well on enrollment, hovering around 80%, while Bear Creek is just above the threshold of 60% that would trigger a reduction in resources.

One of the smaller changes would dissolve a Creekside attendance island within the Whittier Elementary boundary. This would absorb six families into Whittier. 

The proposal also adjusts feeder patterns for middle and high school. Right now, some elementary schools split into several different middle schools. Creekside, for example, feeds into three. The district is proposing to streamline that by reducing the number of feeder routes coming from Heatherwood, Whittier, Creekside, Coal Creek and Eisenhower so more students can advance together. 

Provisions allow for fifth- and seventh-grade students to stay at their current school, and for their siblings to attend the same school for one year so they aren’t split. However, neither group would receive bus service. 

While the boundary changes will only impact a small percentage of students, BVSD hasn’t touched them in 40 years, and some community members have spoken out about their unease. 

Amy Franke, a parent of a Boulder High student and Centennial student, spoke at the Aug. 26 board meeting to oppose the proposal.

“The proposal claims to balance enrollment, which is a laudable goal, but shifting these kids to new schools doesn’t fix the problem. It simply puts a band-aid on BVSD’s major issue, which is keeping families in the school district and at their neighborhood schools.”

The reality is that even if these changes succeed, declining enrollment is expected to continue draining students from the district, driven by factors such as lower birth rates, families having children later and Boulder’s high housing costs, which make it difficult for young families to stay. Schools like Heatherwood may be nearing a breaking point. Board President Rajpal admits some tough decisions are on the horizon. 

“We are going to have [school] choice,” she said in a BVSD blog post in March. “But we have a lot of facilities, and at some point, I know it’s not today, but at some point we are going to have to have fewer facilities.”