A $60 million structural deficit continues to hang over the Jeffco Public Schools.

The Jeffco Board of Education met with members of the district’s financial team on Nov. 13 to discuss updates to the Budget Reduction Blueprint — or overall plan to reduce $60 million from the district’s budget in the 2026-2027 school year.

“Over the past five years, we’ve made meaningful progress to help students recover from pandemic-related learning loss, create stronger alignment across our schools and departments and protect school staffing — even as enrollment has declined,” the district said on its budget reduction website.

These changes included closing 21 schools since 2021, bringing around $20 million in savings, and investing “in our people through long-overdue and meaningful compensation increases,” the district said.

But the changes led to a significant deficit in the 2025-2026 budget, which caused the district to pull $39 million in one-time spending from the district’s fund balance for the current year.

In a June meeting, Chief Financial Officer Brenna Copeland said the budget continues to grow due to inflation, compensation increases and special education needs.

Ultimately, the proposed budget changes are going through various studies and surveys before being voted upon, and enacted, in June of next year.

“Our community is really asking us to preserve as many resources that directly support students as possible,” Superintendent Tracy Dorland said at the Nov. 13 meeting.

The plan, as of now, would be to reduce 8-11% of budgets that support staff and schools more indirectly — like salaries for general administration, materials and supplies for school administration and capital outlay. This would likely also include some positions being cut.

There would be a 2-4% reduction in budgets that directly serves students — like general instructor salaries, supplies for operational maintenance and service accounts for transportation.

The goal would be to reduce $45 million overall of the over $1 billion budget, with the other $15 million being made up in new revenue.

“By no means is our work done on any of this,” Copeland said.

The revenue side is where challenges remain, according to Dorland.

Despite being the second largest school district in the state, Jeffco Public Schools saw around 5% decline in enrollment over the last four years, or around 4,259 students. With per-pupil funding by the Colorado Department of Education, fewer students means less budget revenue.

“The gap is widening,” Dorland said in comparison to other districts in the area. “Year-over-year these other districts continue to increase and approve additional mill levy overrides.”

For example, Denver School District has around 85,000 students compared to Jeffco’s 74,000. Its general purpose mill levy override — or portion of property tax going to the district — is $3,407 per student with an additional special mill levy override of $1,188 per student. Jeffco’s general mill levy is $2,120 per student with no special additional override.

“It is really putting a lot of pressure on us to keep pace with competitive salaries, wages and benefits for our employees,” Dorland said. “It’s a real burden, in addition to the programing that we’re able to offer students.”

“The voters need to have more trust in the district and a better understanding of what the district is doing and why before they’re going to support something like (mill levy overrides),” Peter Gibbins, the new District 2 board member, told The Denver Gazette after winning the election on Nov. 4.

While Gibbins has not been sworn in yet, he will have to face budget decisions for next year.

“There are cuts coming,” he continued. “We’re going to have to get in there and do everything we can to keep those cuts as far away from the classroom as possible.”

The other elects, Tina Moeinian and Denine Echevarria, also recognized that the biggest issue coming to their plates is the budget.

“Every kid, when they go to school, something there inspires them and gets them to return the next day,” Echevarria said. “We can’t cut those programs. That’s what’s giving them passion and excitement to show up every day.”

“We have the deficit in the budget that we need to address ASAP. In anything that we seek to accomplish here, we are going to need the trust of the community, the faith of the community,” Moeinian said.

Still, decisions have yet to be made and surveys will continue on how to approach the challenges.

More information can be found at Jeffcopublicschools.org.