A Boulder County judge has put plans to close four Boulder Valley elementary schools on hold while she considers a lawsuit alleging that district officials violated Colorado’s Open Meetings Law.
At an Oct. 8 hearing, testimony focused on whether private meetings between district leaders and school board members complied with Colorado’s Open Meetings Law, and whether the board changed its approach to addressing declining enrollment without adequate public notice.
District Judge Dea M. Lindsey issued a stay, temporarily halting implementation of the district’s Resilient Schools plan while she considers the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction. “So what I’m going to do is issue in a stay with regard to the board’s starting the process with the resilience plan until the court’s decision on the issue,” Lindsey said. An attorney for the plaintiffs confirmed that the stay pauses implementation of the plan. Lindsey said she expects to issue a written ruling within about two weeks.
The plan, approved 5-2 by the school board on Sept. 22, calls for closing Birch, Douglass, Flatirons and Mesa elementary schools in fall 2027. Lindsey has not yet ruled on the preliminary injunction or the merits of the lawsuit. The parents are asking the court to overturn the board’s approval of the plan.
The plaintiffs presented evidence that Superintendent Rob Anderson and district administrator Rob Price privately shared the plan with school board members before it became public. They met with members in pairs and, in one instance, individually.
Colorado’s Open Meetings Law generally requires meetings of three or more school board members to be open to the public when they discuss public business. The plaintiffs argued that the series of smaller, private meetings got around that requirement, even though no individual meeting involved three or more board members.
District witnesses — including board members Deann Bucher, Alex Medler, Ana Temu Otting and Nicole Rajpal (who appeared remotely), as well as Price and Anderson — testified that the meetings focused on improving the presentation slides and answering general questions about how the district would help schools through the transition. They said the meetings did not involve discussions about how board members would vote.
“This is not the smoking gun the plaintiffs think it is,” said BVSD attorney Elliott Hood.
Colorado’s Open Meetings Law is intended to protect the public from political decision-making happening behind closed doors, according to Jeffrey Roberts, executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition.
Its purpose is “to give the public an opportunity to observe the decision-making process in real time,” he said in an email to Boulder Reporting Lab. The plaintiffs’ attorney, Eric Maxfield, serves as secretary of the coalition’s board; the coalition is not involved in the case.
During opening arguments, Maxfield raised concerns about “serial meetings” between board members and district leaders before the proposal became public. He also questioned whether the district’s shift away from its previous school-by-school approach to declining enrollment was made outside public view or during a work session without adequate public notice.
Roberts said the question is whether the public received adequate notice that the board might change its approach to school closures.
“If the board discussed the new policy and/or made the decision during the work session or in another meeting, was the public adequately notified of that impending discussion?” Roberts said.
The district’s attorneys countered that no private meeting involved more than two board members and maintained that officials had acted lawfully.
“These people have nothing to hide,” the defense argued.
When and how did the district change its approach?
A central question in the plaintiffs’ case is when and how BVSD changed its approach to declining enrollment under the framework established by its Long Range Advisory Committee (LRAC), which used school-level enrollment data and thresholds to identify schools for additional support and community engagement.
The LRAC framework called for a community-based process to develop possible solutions for the board to consider. It also allowed the board to consider multiple schools or geographic areas together and set the timeline for that process. It included an “early warning system” intended to engage school communities well before potential closures.
The plaintiffs argue that families were led to expect more opportunities under the LRAC process to help develop possible solutions before the district settled on a closure proposal. They pointed to the district’s April timeline, which referred to “options,” plural, even though the district ultimately presented a single proposal.
Anderson testified that he chose to present one proposal to avoid pitting school communities against each other, as he said had happened during prior closures.
Theresa Schultz, a Mesa Elementary parent and one of the three plaintiffs, testified that she had not expected the district to depart from the LRAC process.
“I was introduced to LRAC by our principal, and he assured us that our school had five to 10 years before engagement was even a possibility. And he said Dr. Anderson was not interested in closing schools,” Schultz said.
The district has pointed to a public work session in October 2025, when board members discussed addressing declining enrollment more quickly through a regional approach rather than evaluating each school separately. But the plaintiffs argue that BVSD policy prohibits votes during work sessions and that the agenda did not notify the public that the board might discuss changing its approach.
Schultz testified that she read the agenda for the October 2025 meeting but did not attend.
Price acknowledged that the minutes from the Oct. 21 meeting do not reflect the discussion about changing the district’s approach. He said someone would have to watch the full meeting recording to learn about it.
In March 2026, LRAC was still using school-level enrollment measures to identify schools needing additional attention. It listed Heatherwood and Flatirons as schools in the “community engagement” category.
The district maintains that it never abandoned the LRAC framework, even as it shifted to a regional approach. Price testified that he believed staff had continued to follow it.
The district had also described the board as having set aside the LRAC system.
In late April 2026, BVSD communications chief Randy Barber requested a correction to a Boulder Reporting Lab article by this reporter. The article identified several schools under enrollment pressure as among those “most likely to face closure or consolidation.” In his email, Barber sought to clarify that the board had changed its approach:
“While LRAC helped set up a system to monitor and support schools experiencing declining enrollment, the Board set that system aside when it decided on the current approach. Consequently, that data will help the process but won’t be the deciding factor for actions taken at specific schools.”
In response to a question after the hearing about how the LRAC framework informed the closure proposal, Barber pointed to language on the LRAC website allowing the district to consider enrollment challenges across multiple schools or geographic areas, rather than evaluating each school in isolation.
Judge expects ruling within two weeks
Lindsey did not rule on the parents’ request for a preliminary injunction. The district had submitted its response to the initial lawsuit the night before the hearing, and the judge said she had not yet had time to review it.
Maxfield previously represented a parent who successfully sued the Woodland Park school board over a violation of Colorado’s Open Meetings Law.
In that case, a judge ordered the district earlier this year to reimburse the parent nearly $150,000 in attorney fees and court costs after finding that the board had inadequately described a discussion of a controversial charter school under a vague “Board Housekeeping” agenda item.
The district says it is confident in its case.
“We remain confident that our practices throughout the Resilient Schools process and decision-making were transparent and complied with Colorado’s Open Meetings Law,” Barber said.
The plaintiffs remain unconvinced.
“I think if you’re going to close schools, there should be robust public debate,” Schultz said. “In this case, the proposal was identified Aug. 25. There was seven hours of public testimony on Sept. 8. There was a six-hour work meeting on Sept. 15. And then the same exact proposal without a single amendment or change was ratified.”
