Brian Keegan is a regular opinion columnist for Boulder Reporting Lab. His “Charting Boulder” column uses public data to make sense of how the city is changing — from housing and politics to income and population — with clear explanations and a focus on equity.
Boulder’s declining school enrollments carry many inconvenient truths about its demographic past and future. The Boulder Valley School District’s proposal to close four elementary schools has sparked an outpouring of anger and anxiety at public meetings and lit up parents’ WhatsApp groups.
I previously wrote about the political implications of Boulder’s changing demographics. My seven- and two-year-old sons are in the cohort whose public school experience through 2042 will be defined by “managed decline.” These closures may be the first of multiple waves involving their schools being closed, their teachers reassigned or laid off, their transportation routines changing, and their core communities being scattered.
The background section of the district’s “Resilient Schools” slide deck (pg. 10) acknowledges the role that a growing senior population aging in place, dwindling housing opportunities and the high cost of living play in declining enrollments. These are not acts of God, but the consequences of policy choices that began decades ago and that Boulder’s voters continue to support.
A common defense is that declining enrollment “is happening everywhere,” so Boulder’s history, policies and politics can be acquitted of any responsibility. This defense is not only substantively false but also easily refuted. Boulder’s demographic past and future are unmistakable outliers compared with its peers, neighbors and the nation.
First, consider how the City of Boulder’s age pyramid changed between the 2010 and 2020 censuses compared with changes among a basket of 25 peer college cities and the U.S. overall. Boulder’s under-5 population dropped by 17.9% compared with 4.8% in peer cities and 8.9% nationwide. Boulder’s population in the prime parenting years of 35 to 44 was flat, while that population in peer cities grew 14.5%. It is also impossible to ignore the enormous growth of Boulder’s senior population.
Second, the State Demography Office’s forecasts reveal that Boulder County’s school-age population, ages 5 through 17, is projected to shrink significantly through 2050, while other Front Range counties and the rest of the state show low but generally positive growth.
Boulder’s high housing costs are a primary force keeping young families from being able to move here and send their children to local schools. The ratio of median housing costs to median income has grown by 64% in Boulder County since 2000, compared with 50% across other Front Range counties and 40% across peer university communities nationwide. Because these are county-level estimates that include our more affordable “L-town” neighbors, they understate the severity of the housing affordability crisis within the city’s boundaries.
Housing in Boulder is expensive in no small part because its voters chose policies that prioritized “neighborhood character” over neighborhood children. Between 2010 and 2025, the City of Boulder issued permits for only 62 new housing units per 1,000 residents. This is lower than the rates in peer college towns (72), Front Range counties (127), and communities like Erie, Lafayette and Longmont.
While critics may cry that “Boulder is full,” single-family homes are not the only way to build housing: Transit-oriented infill development can generate affordable options for families and seniors alike. Eighty-three percent of Boulder’s permits since 2010 were for multifamily housing (dark bars), higher than in any of the neighboring towns and higher than the median among peer college towns.
Why did Boulder stop building the housing needed for families to populate our schools? A major reason is that a half-century of land-use policy has given greater weight to incumbents’ anxieties about growth than to newcomers’ ability to raise a family in the community where they work.
This can be seen most clearly in the language used in the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan since 1977. Preservation-related terms like “growth management” appear far more frequently throughout the 50-year history of the comprehensive plans than terms related to children, schools or affordability.
The 2026 revision and the city’s family-friendly vibrant neighborhoods initiative are promising but only partial starts toward unwinding decades of Boulder’s unnecessarily restrictive land-use policies. The status quo does not preserve Boulder’s existing stock of single-family homes. It allows older homes to be scraped and replaced, by right, with more monochrome McMansions for multimillionaires.
Boulder Valley parents becoming politically activated by school closures should consider all this context before directing their ire at the wrong people or throwing their support behind counterproductive solutions.
BVSD needs to pause this proposal and provide greater transparency about the evidence and strategies it is considering. Its reluctance to share internal evidence and models undermines the legitimacy of its claims, particularly since school closures often do little to save money. Enforceable commitments to smaller class sizes, more support services and expanded programs could garner more support among anxious families than consultantese about “resilience.”
The board should come back with an integrated and unambiguous proposal to “rip off the Band-Aid” by committing to a single round of closures and mergers. The proposed multiyear monitoring process for other elementary and middle schools might keep the consultants they hired to run this process busy but is generating ongoing anxiety for thousands of families about whether, where and when other closures and cuts might land.
The families whose schools are closing should work together to make the case for pursuing alternative metrics and strategies rather than organizing individual efforts to protect their “own” schools. Engaging with school staff and their unions and elevating the voices of marginalized communities are critical. But chatter about recalls risks distracting from the more important work of building an intersectional and intergenerational coalition to support the policies that support public education.
The timing of these closures also overlaps with the start of campaign season for the city’s first even-year elections for city council and mayor. City councils and county commissioners have little to no jurisdiction over the school district’s properties and policies.
It is regrettable to see some candidates making promises they cannot keep to anxious parents while rejecting desperately needed policies they do have authority over, like legalizing “missing middle” housing that could keep more families inside the district.
Boulder’s declining enrollments are yet another hangover from well-intentioned decisions made decades ago. Choices to outsource housing to other places to preserve neighborhood character mirror decisions to defer maintenance to other times to balance short-term budgets.
As you weigh how to engage with political questions about preserving public education and public infrastructure in this year’s and future elections, ask whether candidates and ballot issues are engaging on behalf of the future or disengaging on behalf of the past.
The data and code for replicating these analyses can be found on GitHub.
