The Board of Education adopted the 2026-27 budget on June 22. It balances. That is the least interesting thing about it.
The arithmetic
Colorado funds districts largely per pupil, and D38’s funded pupil count is falling — from 6,197.9 to 6,040.4, a drop of about 158. Per-pupil revenue rose from $11,123 to $11,125.
That is an increase of two dollars.
Put the two together and total program funding falls about $1.7 million, or 2.5%, to $67.2 million. General-fund spending drops from $56.1 million to $53.3 million.
What closed the gap
The district needed roughly $2.9 million in savings to absorb the lost revenue and still fund an average pay change of 2.03%. Most of it came from people:
- About 35 regular positions go — roughly one job in twenty-three.
- Because elementary schools are absorbing most of the enrollment decline, they carry about two-thirds of the reductions.
- Lewis-Palmer Elementary is projected to lose 40 pupils, more than a tenth of its roll.
Why this one is different
Districts absorb enrollment decline all the time. What makes this budget worth reading is the line most people skip: the year-end general-fund reserve.
Two years ago it stood at $13.7 million. The 2026-27 plan holds it at about $6.0 million — roughly one month of general-fund operations.
That matters because it closes off the answer the district has leaned on since 2022. After the last override failed, D38 paid staff a one-time amount out of reserves, cut annual capital investment from $3 million to $2.5 million and moved the difference into compensation, and took $1.1 million through what it called “strategic personnel reductions, created by attrition.”
Each of those works once.
The honest counterargument
Falling enrollment genuinely does reduce what a district needs to spend, and some of those 35 positions are following students who are no longer there. Anyone telling you the cuts are purely a funding failure is skipping that.
But per-pupil funding is flat while costs are not, and the savings still had to come from somewhere. “Use the reserves” was a real answer in 2023. It is not one now.
Sources
Found an error? Every figure here has a source attached so it can be checked. If we got something wrong, tell us at [email protected] and we will correct it in public with a note saying what changed.