Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
Open your ballot. Scroll past the names. There it is, buried near the bottom, a school district asking you to pay more.
If you own a home anywhere in the Denver metro, odds are you have at least one of these on your Nov. 3 ballot. Denver Public Schools, Jeffco, Douglas County, Littleton. Four of the biggest districts on the Front Range, all with their hand out, all in the same year. And the amount they want ranges from about $72 to almost $400 a year on top of what you already pay.
Here is the thing most people do not realize. This is landing on top of property tax bills that already jumped 20% to 40% this year, partly because that temporary pandemic-era discount on your assessed value finally expired. So the timing is, let us say, not great.
A mill levy override, MLO for short, is a voter-approved property tax that gives a school district extra ongoing operating money. Not a one-time thing. Ongoing. It funds the day-to-day stuff, teacher pay, programs, the lights. That is different from a bond, which pays for buildings and gets paid off over time.
Every district points to the same three reasons for asking. Colorado changed its school funding formula. Enrollment is dropping. And it costs more to run a school than it did five years ago. Keep that in mind, because it shows up in all four of these.
Denver Public Schools was the first district in the whole state to put an MLO on this November's ballot. For a median-priced Denver home, it works out to about $72 more a year. The money goes to teacher salaries, career and technical education, and student mental-health support.
Seventy-two bucks is the gentle end of this. Buckle up, because it climbs fast from here.
Jeffco Public Schools is the second-largest district in Colorado, around 74,000 students. And they are not asking for one thing. They are asking for two.
Ballot Issue 5A is a $73 million general operating override. Ballot Issue 5B is a $60 million special-purpose mill for buildings, technology and maintenance. Combined, that is
Jeffco's own math says it runs about $3.50 a month per
Worth remembering the context here. Jeffco has lost more than 12,000 students in a decade. Their 2018 MLO was only $33 million. And back in 2016, voters told them no on both an override and a bond. So this is a district that has been turned down before and is coming back for a much bigger number.
Douglas County's Board of Education unanimously approved a $54 million MLO for November. And one board member said the quiet part out loud. Board secretary Kyrzia Parker put it plainly: "$300 a year,
That is a school board member saying it. Not a critic.
DougCo has a real track record on this. Voters rejected an MLO in 2022. Then approved a $60 million MLO in 2023. Then approved a $490 million bond in 2024. And now here they are again in 2026. The argument they make is about pay. The average Douglas County teacher makes about
Littleton Public Schools has Issue 4A, a
What I like about Littleton's ask is they are not hiding the ball. They went into the 2026-27 year with a
Superintendent Dr. Todd Lambert says the district has lost about 5,000 students in 15 years, from around 18,000 down to just under 13,000. Fewer kids, less state money per the formula. CFO Jonathan Levesque said it about as bluntly as a CFO can: the district needs "to grow revenue to match expenditures, even reduced expenditures." Per-pupil revenue in Littleton sits around
Look, this is not me telling you how to vote. It is me telling you what is actually on the paper in front of you.
If you own in Denver, that is about $72. Jeffco, somewhere between
And all of it stacks on a bill that already went up this year. If you are selling, buyers run the full tax number before they make an offer, so this matters for what your place is worth too. Read the whole ballot. The expensive part is at the bottom.