Editor’s note: John Stroud is a Roaring Fork High School track and field coach and a substitute teacher at several Roaring Fork School District schools.
Voters in the Roaring Fork School District (RFSD) communities of Basalt, Carbondale and Glenwood Springs will decide whether to offset state funding decreases with a local mill levy override.
The RFSD Board of Education voted unanimously at its first regular meeting of the 2026-27 school year on Aug. 26 to place the property tax question on the Nov. 3 ballot.
If approved, the measure would generate an additional $5.6 million a year, which the district intends to put toward teacher and staff pay as the cost of living in the Roaring Fork Valley continues to go up.
“Investing in staff is investing in students, and that is what we are attempting to do with this,” board member Lindsay Defrates said in casting her vote of approval.
“Our district is demanding that we … increase achievement across all sectors, and to do that we must have educated, experienced professionals in our buildings, and we have to retain them,” she said.
In a memo to the board, Superintendent Anna Cole noted that changes in Colorado’s school finance formula will mean fewer per-pupil dollars coming from the state. However, state law gives local districts until June 2030 to ask their voters to approve a mill levy override (MLO) of up to 30% of their district’s total program funding in order to offset that decrease, she said.
“For RFSD, the urgency of this moment is hard to overstate,” Cole wrote, citing a 2026 State Legislature study that reported an 18.66% increase in the cost of living within RFSD since 2023, making it the fourth-most expensive school district in Colorado in which to live and work.
According to the tax proposal, the increase would be $17.18 per $100,000 of actual home value, per year; or $85.88 per $500,000 of home value. Sixty-seven percent of the MLO would be allocated to certified staff (teachers and principals) and 33% to classified (support) staff.
Funds could not be used for district office staff or administrators, under the proposal.
Several teachers spoke in favor of the proposal during the public comments portion of the meeting, and in written comments provided to the board.
“I am in full support of this,” board member Kathryn Kuhlenberg said. “And I believe that leaving this money on the table would be a tragedy for our staff and our district.”
Meeting schedule change
The board unanimously approved a resolution revising its regular meeting schedule for the coming year.
Instead of two regular school board meetings and a pre-meeting work session each month, the board will now have a work session and only one regular meeting. These will typically take place back-to-back on the second and third Wednesdays of each month, except the holiday months of November and December and months with five Wednesdays. The full schedule can be found on the district website, at rfsd.k12.co.us/en-US
Language disparity
Superintendent Cole’s regular report to the board included a look at the Back-to-School Kick-Off presentation that was given for staff at each of the district schools during August before classes began.
In it, she notes that there continues to be a disparity between student groups in terms of achievement, where students who are still learning English lag behind their native English-speaking counterparts.
The district’s five-year strategic plan emphasizes closing that so-called achievement gap, Cole said.
Budget
Budgetarily, the district enters this school year with a balanced budget and is in better shape than in recent years as enrollment and corresponding state funding have declined. “We are not on our heels this year,” she said.
Meanwhile, school efficiencies studies have focused on ways to run smaller schools better, rather than reorganizing or merging schools, Cole said.
While some school districts have approached revenue declines in that manner, “we’re not there yet,” she said. If the conversation were to move in that direction in the future, it would involve a lengthy public process, and “you would hear it from us first,” Cole said.