Adams County voters pass first mill and bond campaign in two decades
By Jack Spiegel
December 8, 2024
Thirty-three of Colorado’s school districts asked voters for a record $7 billion in public funding in the 2024 election.For the first time in at least eighteen years, voters in Colorado school districts that serve half of all Pre-K through 12th-grade students approved ballot initiatives to increase funding by nearly $6 billion for overhead and capital infrastructure improvements.
Twenty districts across the state approved 24 Bond requests and Mill Levy Overrides. Bonds are a one-time grant to districts for the purpose of building new schools, or large-scale maintenance projects. Mill Levy Overrides alter property tax rates to open more funding for teacher salaries and day-to-day operations.
Adams County School District 14 which sits just north of Denver and within Colorado’s eighth Congressional District approved a $113 million bond and a $10 million mill levy by 109 votes and 241 votes, respectively. CO-08 was also the site of one of the nation’s closest congressional races this year between incumbent Yadira Caraveo, and Gabe Evans.
Evans unseated Caraveo by a margin of less than 4,000 votes.
“I think this is a situation where a Congressional campaign had a real impact on a down ballot race in a low turnout year,” Democratic Political Consultant, John Britz, said.
The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter tracks nationwide political trends and concurred Britz’s asserdion. Voter turnout in Colorado was down 2% from 2020’s record number.
“I think people are frustrated. I think they're fed up with politics,” Britz hypothesized on why turnout was low.
Even though Caraveo lost her race, her campign’s impact on down-ballot candidates and questions was strong.
“The fact that they were willing to coordinate literature drops, helping get out yard signs — the people power that Caraveo put on the ground, combined with what the district did really was what I think got it across the finish line,” Britz said. “I think the tying of the two efforts together really was a smart move.”
Adams 14 was founded in 1906 with their first school being for grammar. It now has 12 schools serving over 5,000 students.
The cost of the new funding for homeowners is expected to be $6.52 per month, per $100,000 of home value. For the average home in Commerce City, CO ($500,000) residents will be paying an additional $390 per year in property taxes.
Seventy-seven million dollars of the new bond money will go towards opening a new junior high school for 750 students. As of publication, the school is nameless, but it will replace the aging Adams City Middle School and Kearney Middle School, which the district says the cost of maintenance exceeds the cost of replacement.
“I still have chalkboards in my classroom - we’re obviously past a world where we're using chalkboards, but I can't take them off the wall to replace them with dry erase, because there's asbestos in the wall,” Eighth-grade math teacher at Adams City Middle School, Lacey Muller-Taschdjian said.
Built in 1959, Adams City Middle school was outfitted with the latest furniture and learning materials. Today, Muller-Taschdjian feels like her school hasn’t physically evolved.
“Essentially, we have one white lady up front in a room with kids sitting in a desk with papers and pencils. That's wild,” Muller-Taschdjian said. “It’s as if time somehow froze and the entire world is going rapid paced out the window.
This issue isn’t unique to Adams City Middle School.
“Where my son and daughter went to elementary school — Dupont Elementary — I literally can walk to the school with my eyes closed, because that's where I went to elementary school, and it hasn’t changed,” James Amador, father of two in Adams 14 said. “I was in the school in the eighties. It's now the 2020s. And my son is in the same exact school that I went to with no changes.”
Muller-Taschdjian says — with no hard feelings — comments like those are not compliments.
Outdated learning environments were not the only challenge Adams 14 has faced over the past decade.
In 2018, the state board of education ordered the district to hire an external company to run the district after years of poor academic performance. In 2021, the district fired the external firm after an audit found that the private firm, MGT Consulting, wasted nearly $500,000 of taxpayer dollars during their time in control of the district.
Amador, who also serves on the Adams 14 board of education as its treasurer, spearheaded the movement to fire MGT Consulting. As a result of that decision, in 2022, the state board tapped a group of local officials to explore reorganizing or dissolving the district in part or whole.
“We've spent the last — well — four years literally in litigation with the State of Colorado, the state board of education to gain back control of [the district],” Amador said. “All the surrounding districts actually got together with us and said, ‘no, we don't want to do that.’”
With the passing of the mill and bond campaign, the district can now begin to allocate funds designed to improve the quality of education. Among the changes are modern technology integration, updated furniture for classrooms and teacher salaries will be raised to remain “competitive in our market,”.
According to the National Education Association, the average entry salary for a teacher is $39,000 - ranking No. 46 in the United States.
In late November, President-elect Donald Trump tapped Linda McMahon to lead the U.S. Department of Education. Questions remain about what the future of education will look like under the Trump administration after he repeatedly vowed to eliminate the Department of Education during his campaign.
The Lyndon B. Johnson Department of Education Building in Washington, DC.Thomas Hawk/Flickr John Britz says that a closure of the department is unlikely.
“I think he's gonna strip it. I don't think he's gonna shut it down. I think he's going to do a legitimate analysis and find out, congressionally, it will be very difficult,” Britz said. “However, he can militarize it. I think that’s exactly what he’ll do.”
Shutting down the Department of Education requires congressional approval, which will be an uphill battle for the Trump administration.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Critical Race Theory and LGBTQ+ rights are all items that Britz thinks Trump could leverage for funding.
“He might decide to make it a bit of a police state and have [the department] go into school districts all over the country and say, ‘Hey, you're doing this. You're doing that. We're going to penalize you by taking away Federal dollars.’”
Teachers in Adams 14 are not only concerned about the changes to the Department of Education, but also about changes to immigration policy.
Per the United States Census Bureau, about 48% of Commerce City’s 68,000 residents identify as hispanic/latino and 14% identify as two or more races compared to the state numbers of 23% and 4%, respectively.
“It's not unusual for our students to have undocumented parents, and so wondering if they're going to be home when you get home every day is a pretty terrifying thing that not all kids in America have to experience,” Muller-Taschdjian said.
That fear Muller-Taschdjian described is not hyperbole. The New York Times reported that Trump, “Plans to scour the country for unauthorized immigrants and deport people by the millions per year.”
Even with the changes coming to public education, both Amador and Muller-Taschdjian are hopeful for this recent win for Adams 14 students and families.
“This will impact our community for decades. And that's far bigger than [my pride for the school],” Muller-Taschdjian said. “And I'm okay with that because progress is good, and investing in Commerce city makes me feel like there's like a rebirth for the future of Commerce City.”