Jefferson County’s school board has voted to sell a school building for $2 million, ending a 16-month examination of the district’s facility use that spawned dozens of meetings and elicited intense emotions.
The board voted unanimously last week to sell the 55-year-old Russell Elementary School to the county for use as a Head Start facility. Closing the school next to the Arvada Costco is expected to save the district about $563,000 a year.
“It is the first time in decades that we closed a school,” said Superintendent Cindy Stevenson, who added that the district has begun an examination of all its facilities.
“We contracted with a private company to do an evaluation of every building in the district,” she said. “They are looking at systems and at educational appropriateness.”
The information will be used to create a master plan for the district that could become the data behind any bond requests put to voters, she said.
Russell served mostly poor children who will now attend a newly created K-8 school in Arvada.
The district convened a facility-usage committee, made up of 30 community members, that was tasked with figuring out how to deal with enrollment disparity throughout sprawling suburban Jefferson County.
The district has about 11,000 empty seats and faces $40 million in cuts over the next two years.
The committee recommended the closure of at least eight schools to save the district up to $6 million a year in maintenance and other costs.
However, facing withering criticism from the public over possible closures, the board chose to shutter only Russell. It also agreed to consolidate two preschool buildings and remove dozens of temporary structures and cottages throughout the district.
Communities that would have been affected by school closures applauded the move, but others criticized the board for failing to heed recommendations from the facilities committee.
Stevenson said the entire process helped change the mind-set about facilities.
“In the short-term, not all of the committee’s recommendations were adopted,” she said, “but in the long term, the committee created a shift and a different way of thinking about things.”
Jeremy P. Meyer: 303-954-1367 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com
