The Denver Public Schools board on Thursday unanimously voted to place a mill levy override on the November ballot that — if approved by voters — would raise taxes by $43.9 million annually, largely to fund employee raises.

The request comes as Denver taxpayers are already paying hundreds of millions of dollars annually through seven previous mill levy overrides, some of which were approved for similar purposes.

DPS collected $369.6 million last year from voter-approved overrides dating to 1988, according to figures provided by the district.

“All of our mill levy overrides are still in effect and will continue in perpetuity,” Bill Good, a DPS spokesperson, said in an email.

A mill levy override allows voters to authorize their school district to collect property tax revenue beyond what it could otherwise collect under Colorado’s school finance system.

Six of Denver’s existing overrides are operational levies subject to a statutory cap. Those generated about $267.5 million last year, according to district figures.

A seventh override, approved by voters in 2020, is classified by the school district as a special-revenue mill levy and is not included in that cap. It generated another $102.1 million last year, bringing total collections from the seven overrides to $369.6 million.

The district currently calculates its maximum operational mill levy override revenue at $288.9 million, according to a presentation to the board on Thursday. Changes in state law allow DPS, with voter approval, to increase that maximum to $332.9 million — an additional $44 million annually.

The proposed tax increase would provide:

• $25.8 million for raises for all district employees, amounting to $1,750 per employee

• $4 million to expand career and technical education in high-demand fields

• $4.9 million for mental health and special education support

• $9.3 million for charter schools

The Mill Levy Override Advisory Committee settled on a $1,750 base increase for all employees, which would give lower-paid workers a larger percentage raise, Chief Financial Officer Chuck Carpenter said.

“We have great people who deserve to be compensated in great ways,” said Vernon Jones Jr., co-chair of the advisory committee, which recommended the mill levy override.

Jones added, “We cannot be the district that we dream to be without this investment.”

Nearly a dozen speakers during public comment before the vote spoke in favor of the tax increase, many of them students and teachers.

Longtime DPS educator Amber Wilson, an English teacher at Thomas Jefferson High School, helped welcome new teachers to the district on Tuesday.

She said educators are constantly being asked to do more with less — teach increasingly crowded classrooms, give up more of their evenings and weekends and meet greater student needs with fewer supports — which makes teaching difficult to sustain as a career.

“We don’t have a shortage of qualified teachers,” Wilson said. “We have a shortage of the conditions that make them stay.”

Wilson urged the board to support the mill levy override to provide more competitive compensation.

‘A growing reliance on local taxes’

Some of the purposes identified in the proposed override have also appeared in previous mill levy questions approved by Denver voters.

In 2005, voters approved a $25 million annual override, adjusted for inflation, “solely and exclusively” to fund the district’s teacher compensation system known as ProComp. The measure included additional compensation for teachers working in hard-to-staff schools and hard-to-fill positions, as well as compensation tied to training and performance.

That override generated $41.5 million last year.

A $56.6 million override approved in 2016 included money for additional mental health professionals and school counselors, teacher recruitment and support and expanded college and career programs, including apprenticeships, work experience and career-focused curriculum. It generated $86.3 million last year.

Four years later, voters approved another override that included adding and maintaining mental health professionals and school counselors, increasing the minimum wage for school support staff and providing cost-of-living funds “to pay educators a living wage.”

The 2020 measure generated $102.1 million last year.

The proposed 2026 ballot language again identifies increasing educator pay, career and technical education, and student mental health among the purposes for which the new revenue could be spent.

The language says the money would be used for educational purposes “including, but not limited to” those areas.

“I want to thank our Denver voters, and I say that genuinely because they have always stepped up when it comes to education in Denver Public Schools,” Superintendent Alex Marrero said.

If voters approved the measure, DPS estimates the average Denver homeowner would pay an additional $72 annually.

Denver homeowners are already seeing substantially larger DPS property tax bills, driven largely by rising property values.

The DPS portion of the property tax bill for a typical Denver single-family home has increased nearly 54% since 2020, from $1,480 to a projected $2,276 in 2026, district figures show.

The latest request also comes less than two years after Denver voters approved a nearly $1 billion school bond. Officials told voters at the time that the bond would not increase the district’s tax rate.

If voters had rejected the $975 million bond, taxpayers would have saved about $20 million a year in “five or six years,” Carpenter has said.

District officials have blamed a tighter budget on shrinking state support.

The revenue mix supporting Colorado’s largest school district has changed significantly over the past two decades.

In 2005, a little more than one-third of DPS revenue came from the state, while about 58% came from local property taxes, a Denver Gazette review of district audits found. Twenty years later, the state’s share has fallen to about 17%, while property taxes account for roughly three-quarters of district revenue.

That shift largely reflects Colorado’s school finance formula: As local property tax collections rise, the amount the state must contribute toward funding the district declines.

Colorado’s school finance system, coupled with TABOR’s restrictions on tax increases, has left school districts increasingly reliant on voter-approved mill levy overrides and bonds to raise money beyond what they receive through the state funding formula.

And DPS may soon ask Denver voters for another bond.

District officials are already laying the groundwork for a future bond measure, potentially within the next two years.

Denver’s existing operational overrides illustrate how those local dollars have accumulated over time.

In addition to the measures approved in 2005, 2016 and 2020, voters approved overrides in 1988, 1998, 2003 and 2012. The 2012 measure, which generated $93.3 million last year, was approved for programs including art, music and physical education, tutoring and counseling, classroom technology and early childhood education.

The proposed override approved Thursday will go before voters in November and, if approved, would be collected beginning next year.