"Boulder's Different Direction When Enrollment Drops"

Sidebar to "School Portfolio Change Amid Declining Enrollments" by Angela King Smith, Education Resource Strategies. School Administrator (AASA), September 1, 2025. By Rob Anderson.

With student enrollment and birth rate graphs showing rollercoaster-like plunges, many school districts respond by closing schools. We have gone a different direction in the Boulder Valley School District in Colorado.

While districtwide enrollment has dropped an average rate of 2.3 percent a year since 2020-21, we decided we did not want to repeat history. (The district's enrollment of nearly 30,000 pre-pandemic is about 27,000 today.)

School closures tend to be cyclical, and the last time Boulder Valley faced them was 20 years ago. Back then, district administrators followed the traditional playbook, moving directly to close a subset of schools with limited community engagement in the decision making. To this day, people still talk about how horrible that process made them feel, so we did something different.

We launched a multi-phased approach by:

• Creating a long-range advisory committee to provide community voice and participate in planning;
• Changing school board policies, including adding an enrollment preference for families who commute to work in the district;
• Organizing a large choice fair so prospective families can learn more about all of our schools; and
• Better tracking of declining enrollment so we can support schools most in need.

A Co-Designed Solution

While only nine of our district's 56 schools are on our radar for declining enrollment, we recognized that one school, Heatherwood Elementary in Boulder, needed help immediately. Families in the area were choosing to enroll their kids in other nearby schools — in our district, a neighboring school district and private schools. Enrollment at Heatherwood, a K-5 school, had dropped from a high of 296 to 224.

While the district could have proposed its own solutions, we decided to listen to our community instead. We met with parents and teachers and did some polling of the community to understand why they haven't been sending their children to Heatherwood and what might change that.

It wasn't an easy process. In the first community engagement meeting, parents and staff were understandably worried about the worst-case scenario — school closure. After assuring them we were there to do everything possible to keep Heatherwood open, I asked, "How many of you know somebody who doesn't go to the school?" Most of the roughly 100 parents and community members raised hands.

My response: "Well, so that's the first problem we've got to fix. Right? If we're here wanting to keep the school open, yet nobody here is willing to talk to their neighbor about how great the school is and encourage them to come, then how is the school going to stay open?"

Out of that meeting we recruited a core group of representatives from the school community. Together we co-designed a solution.

The core group agreed that Heatherwood was an amazing place to learn with great teachers, a great community and a beautiful campus surrounded by nature. Members believed the school could attract more students by promoting and enhancing their existing instruction, while also leaning into the community's interest in the environment.

Ultimately, the group proposed creating an Environmental STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) focus. The district provided seed money and helped develop a new curriculum and marketing support.

A Hopeful Model

While we are early in the process, the first signs are promising. In our first open-enrollment period, Heatherwood's enrollment stabilized. Families are choosing the school again. This fall the school begins rolling out its new E-STEAM programming.

The enrollment this fall is 263. Additionally, all families involved in 2024-25 whose children didn't graduate to middle school chose to stay at Heatherwood this school year.

Unquestionably, turning immediately to school closures as our response to declining enrollment would have divided our community. Instead, we are piloting a community-focused process that allows the school community to co-design the solution. While that may look different from school to school, my firm belief is that by pulling together good, smart, hard-working people, we can find solutions that will keep our schools thriving.

We hope it is a model we can replicate throughout our school district moving forward.

Rob Anderson is superintendent of Boulder Valley School District in Boulder, Colo.