Poudre committee recommends closing nine schools; board vote set Oct. 27

Poudre School District’s Comprehensive Planning Committee has recommended closing nine schools, with the school board scheduled to vote on the proposal Oct. 27.

The proposed closures are Beatty, Irish, Johnson, Livermore, Red Feather Lakes, Stove Prairie, Putnam and Timnath elementary schools, and Blevins Middle School. The committee also recommended consolidating Centennial High School with Poudre Community Academy and changing boundaries affecting Bamford and Werner elementary schools in relation to Bacon Elementary. The committee reviewed 2025-26 and 2026-27 enrollment and trends toward 2027-28, the first year the proposal could be implemented, a committee presenter said.

The district has too many empty seats, a committee presenter said, describing the conclusion that launched the work. Schools below the committee’s initial targets of about 400 elementary students and 700 middle-school students could face service and staffing cuts, with larger classes, another presenter said. The proposal would close about 4,000 seats but still leave many empty, the presenter said.

A board member raised concerns that closing Irish and Putnam could disperse communities where families rely on bilingual services. “If these communities are dispersed, their culture will be diluted, their fear will grow,” the member said. Another board member said families from Irish and Putnam wanted to keep their school communities together. The member also raised concern about continuity of Irish’s dual-language program. Students legally entitled to the dual-language programming they received at Irish could receive it at Harris in 2027-28, a committee presenter said.

Under the proposed transition plan, registration and paperwork would carry forward automatically for students moving from a closing neighborhood school to their new neighborhood school. In-district students from closing schools would get first priority in the school-choice lottery. Out-of-district students from those schools would get the fifth priority, the highest out-of-district tier. The proposed priority adjustment would apply in 2027-28, subject to space, programming and staffing.

A board member cited the transportation model for a Timnath closure: an average bus ride of 31 minutes, up from 19 now, and a maximum of 50 minutes, up from 40. The longest modeled ride for students affected by the Mountain Schools consolidation would be 61 minutes, a transportation staff member said. A staff member said the district used student ID numbers and routing software to model the routes but had not manually reviewed them as it would for a school year.

A board member urged continued scrutiny of the recommendation and answers to community questions before the Oct. 27 vote. “Critique is not the opposite of progress,” the member said. One board member proposed another meeting to continue discussion, while another suggested revisiting the voting timeline there.