BVSD was asked how High Peaks came to move. It sent the bond office's files.

Six days after BVSD proposed moving High Peaks into the Douglass building, a Boulder resident asked for every record of how the move was considered. On September 12 the district produced 78 files. None is about the move. They are the repair history of the building High Peaks shares with BCSIS and the bond office's working forecasts, and the forecasts show when construction was stopped at the schools in the proposal, and what had been spent on them by then.

The request

It went by email to cora@bvsd.org and communications@bvsd.org on Monday, August 31, 2026 at 10:40 a.m., six days after the proposal was presented. It covers January 1, 2025 to August 31, 2026.

The request also asks for an itemized cost estimate before any fee is incurred, for a fee waiver, and, where anything is withheld, for “a written privilege log citing the specific legal authority for each redaction”.

The folder holds 78 files: 55 emails turned into PDF, one of them the request itself, and 23 attachments, 16 of them Excel workbooks. It holds no letter from the district, no cost estimate and no log. The files cannot show whether any was sent.

What the 78 files are

The forecast, edition by edition

The 2022 bond expenditure forecast is one workbook, kept by the bond accountant and corrected by the bond director. Each row is a school, each column a quarter, and a notes column records what was settled at their working meetings. The figures below are dollars still to be spent, by fiscal year. Unassigned is budget the edition had not yet placed in any quarter. A shaded cell is where a school's construction was taken out or moved.

Four things changed between the March 3 and March 10 editions.

• Creekside and Mapleton gained the note “03.03.26 Working meeting with KS --> Project on Hold for BOE declining enrollment assessment”.
• Bear Creek, Creekside, Heatherwood and Mesa gained the mark “*(UA)” after their names. UA is the bond office's name for its universal-access playgrounds. The project dashboard lists the third and last group as Bear Creek, Creekside, Eldorado, Heatherwood, Mapleton and Mesa.
• At Birch and at eleven schools due for construction in summer 2027, the construction quarters were emptied and the balance left unassigned. What stayed in 2026-27 is $100,000 or less at each.
• The other three elementary projects set for summer 2026 kept their construction. At Whittier, Crest View and BCSIS and High Peaks the unassigned balances were moved into July to December 2026.

By April 22 two more things had changed. The unassigned balances at the twelve schools had been placed in the last quarter of 2027-28, April to June 2028. And the BCSIS and High Peaks work had moved from July to December 2026 to July to December 2027. The workbook gives no reason for either.

The August 18 edition is the bond director's “reconciled expenditure forecast”, sent a week before the proposal was presented. It carries the same notes and the same marks. Aug 18 email

What BVSD had said in public

The hold was not hidden. Four public statements bear on it.

• Oct 21, 2025
  work session
  Asked whether the enrollment work had “implications for the work that's begun” under the bond, Rob Price answered: “the trains left the track on some of that work … we have to order so far in advance … we're going to continue our bond work … but if there's adjustments … we could bring that to CBOC.” 2:38:32
• Feb 2026
  written report to the Board
  Summer 2026 projects were “preparing for construction to begin later this year”, and “we will also wrap up our final five Universal Access playground projects this summer”. Of the summer 2027 schools: “Despite this uncertainty about the future of some schools, we are proceeding with design … moving ahead with design will put us in a position to start construction in 2027, pending the Board's decisions in October.” BoardDocs
• May 26, 2026
  report to the Board
  “UA Playground phase III and BCSIS/High Peaks work put on hold pending BOE declining enrollment decisions”; “BCSIS/HP roof to be replaced under a manufacturer's warranty claim”; “UA Playground contracts on hold for work to be determined Summer 2027”. Birch is listed among the projects starting construction on May 22. For summer 2027 the contractors' prices “will go to the Board in November pending declining enrollment decisions in October”. BoardDocs
• Sept 15, 2026
  work session
  Bill Sutter, chief financial officer: facility changes of “somewhere in the 7.5 to $10 million range”, “slightly offset by about 3 million in savings from not investing in the closed schools”. Rob Price: “some of these projects are phase four projects. So we already have architects on board when we delayed some of these projects.” 2:51:48 3:03:55

What the production adds is the date, the list and the money. The hold entered the bond office's books on March 3, six weeks before the first regional engagement session on April 13 and twelve weeks before it was reported to the Board. It reached the building High Peaks is in by April 22. And the ledger shows what each school had received by then.

What the schools in the proposal had received

Two of the district's own reports are in the production: every 2014 bond project's spending to date, run on June 30, 2025, and the 2022 bond ledger as of July 31, 2026, inside the August 18 workbook. Under contract includes what has been paid. The forecast columns are the August 18 edition's. 2014 bond 2022 bond ledger, every edition

Three things stand out.

• Douglass. The 2014 bond spent $24,242,269 there, more than at any other elementary school in the table. On August 31 the district's communications chief called it “a newer building and well positioned on Baseline Road” in giving the reason High Peaks would have it. 0:42:32
• Birch. The construction contract was committed in February 2026 and $442,507 had been paid on it by July 31. It is not among the eight construction contracts the Board approved on November 18, and no agenda of a regular meeting from then to August 25 lists it.
• The “about 3 million”. Birch, Flatirons and Mesa had $3,603,590 of 2022 bond budget unspent on July 31, of which $1,086,500 was under contract and unpaid and $2,517,090 was free. Community Montessori's building had another $2,463,279 unspent. The August 18 forecast places $5,919,891 of the four buildings' money in 2027-28, the first year they would be closed. Nothing in the production shows how the district's figure was reached, or what happens to the rest.

The playgrounds

The last five universal-access playgrounds were to be built in summer 2026. The ledger shows a site-work contract at each by January and a first payment at each in February. By July 31 every payment is gone from both the project ledger and the general ledger, and the contracts remain.

The building High Peaks would leave

BCSIS and High Peaks share the Aurora 7 campus at 3995 Aurora Avenue, which staff call A7. Under the proposal High Peaks goes to Douglass and Community Montessori takes its place. Twenty-nine of the files are this building's paperwork.

• Aug 5, 2016
  Architect's agreement for “the renovation of BCSIS High Peaks Elementary” under the 2014 bond, construction budget $4,500,000. The 2014 bond's spending on the building came to $7,944,032. agreement
• Sept 26, 2018
  The roofing manufacturer's final inspection: “Approved pending punch list”. inspection
• Aug–Oct 2018
  Two air-quality reviews as the renovation finished. “With the exception of an active construction area, VOCs in both schools were less than indoor air quality guidelines.” In one BCSIS classroom carbon dioxide was “above recommended guidelines. This is not a health concern but an indicator that the amount of outside air brought in through the ventilation system should be increased.” both reviews
• May 29, 2024
  A consulting engineer to the district's project manager: “We met with Travis and Jason and its pretty mind blowing as to how bad the HVAC design is for these spaces.” The heating coils were not sized “adequately so there is no chance in meeting the space temperature requirements probably anytime the outside air temperature is below 35F”; one area has “block walls with little to no insulation” and “no baseboard heat”. thread
• June 11, 2024
  Change order, $15,000, for design “to alleviate the heating issues in the energy recovery ventilator areas”. change order
• July 17, 2024
  Maintenance, of the roof by door 15: “We didn't look inside, but looks pretty bad from the outside.” thread
• Aug 13, 2024
  A project manager, asked for the roof's warranty: “The contractor walked away from the project so we are light on the closeout documents.” email
• Feb 4–5, 2025
  Another project manager: “At BCSIS/High Peaks we're working on design for 2026 work. I heard that this is one of the schools on the list for an insurance claim.” A roofing consultant relays what a district project manager had said, that the manufacturer's items “were never completed and warranties never issued”. thread
• Mar 14, 2025
  The same project manager, having found closeout papers: “It seems we have an executed warranty though.” email
• Apr 22, 2025
  The state's facility report, from a survey on April 2 to 4: a building of 66,227 square feet from 1963, replacement value $25,695,478, needs of $8,335,705, an index of 0.32. report
• Aug 26, 2025
  Rob Price to the district's outside counsel, subject “BCSIS Roof Issue”: “As requested, attached is the architect's signed agreement. I've also included the folder where we are keeping all related files for this matter.” email
• Sept 24, 2025
  Change order for the heating coil controls, taking a $25,030 contract to $54,801. change order
• Nov 18, 2025
  The Board approves the construction contract on consent, 7 to 0: a guaranteed maximum price of $1,123,323, of which $522,375 is air conditioning for the cafeteria, “scheduled to commence May 26, 2026 with a substantial completion date of August 1, 2026”. exhibits amendment 1:21:17
• Mar 6, 2026
  Draft asbestos abatement manual for the summer's work, proposals due “until March 31, 2026 at 4:00pm”. manual
• Mar 10 to Apr 22, 2026
  The forecast moves the work from July to December 2026 to July to December 2027.
• May 26, 2026
  In public: the work is “on hold pending BOE declining enrollment decisions” and the roof is “to be replaced under a manufacturer's warranty claim”.
• June 11–15, 2026
  The BCSIS principal leaves Rob Price a 96-second voicemail. Price forwards it to the director of facilities: “please listen to Jenn's voicemail. Did we conduct a building assessment on A7 a few years ago?” The director finds “a lot of IAQ monitoring over the years. However, I don't believe any significant issues were identified”, sends the two 2018 reviews, and offers “a comprehensive building assessment”. The voicemail is not in the production. thread
• Aug 25, 2026
  The proposal: High Peaks to Douglass, Community Montessori to “the current High Peaks location or what we call the Aurora 7 campus”. 1:29:16

Heatherwood

The only other state report in the production is Heatherwood's, of November 5, 2025. It gives a building of 60,797 square feet from 1971, a replacement value of $26,121,926 and needs of $11,102,719, an index of 0.43. Heating and ventilation score 0.83, with $4,193,481 of needs against a system worth $5,042,380, and electrical 0.72. The 2022 bond budgets $4,096,614 for the school. On September 15 Rob Price said the district could “accommodate some of the special education modifications within the phase 4 work that's already planned out there”. The same emails show the state had also reported on Birch, Flatirons and Community Montessori in 2025; those reports were not produced. report 2:59:44

What the accountability committee was told

The District Accountability Committee is required by state law, and each school sends it a representative. On March 25, 2026 the superintendent's office sent a new representative the last three agendas and sets of minutes, copied to the BCSIS principal, and that email is in the production. The minutes are notes taken by committee members, not a transcript.

February 3 is a month before the bond office's first hold. The yellow stage in the question from the floor is the committee framework's Enrollment Advisory phase. The thresholds memo

How the production was put together

The copies on this page

Seventy of the 78 files are served as they were received. Five are served as copies with something blacked out, and three are held back. The files as received are in the working group's document store, and the inventory gives the SHA-256 of each.

• The request, with the requester's street address, telephone number and email address blacked out.
• Four PDFs with the plans the district blacked out elsewhere blacked out here as well: the floor plan on one page, and the two roof sheets in three files, replaced with the district's own blacked-out sheets.
• Held back: the High Peaks newsletter and the 2019 maintenance plan, which carry photographs of students, and the board packet of the district's foundation, which carries its directors' personal email addresses. None bears on the findings.

What another request returned

Another requester asked BVSD for records on Douglass and High Peaks from January 1, 2025 to August 25, 2026, inside the dates this request covers. The district produced 35 files. Twenty-six of their 34 PDFs carry the stamp of the same email converter as the 78, every one on Friday, September 11, 2026, between 4:07 and 4:12 p.m., the afternoon before the 78 were made; the other eight are marked redacted and carry none. None of the 35 is among the 78.

Six more files in that production, all of August 25, refer to the move: the district's letter to all families and staff, which lists “Move High Peaks Elementary to the former Douglass Elementary campus”; its letters to the Douglass and Community Montessori communities; the liaison's note to the Community Montessori principal and her reply; and the chief communications officer's note that night to the district leadership list. all families Douglass Community Montessori liaison reply leadership list

The 78 files do include emails addressed to the High Peaks principal, on a recess programme in January 2025 and on classroom observations in February 2026. Neither production holds a calendar invitation of any kind. The production made for Boulder Reporting Lab, whose request asked for calendar invitations too, holds none either. that production

Whether the search for this request found the twelve and left them out, or never reached them, the files cannot show. The privilege log the request asked for, or BVSD's account of the search it ran, would.

What cuts the other way

• A keyword return is not an inventory. The files show what one search brought back. They cannot show that no email, text, chat or calendar entry about the move exists, and the memo does not say so.
• The request's list of names is partly wrong. It asks for the members of the Board “including” seven named directors, three of whom are not on the Board, and it misspells the senior planner's name. A search run on the names as written would leave out three directors and the planner.
• Relocating focus programs was a public option from January 27. The Board's deck lists it beside closure and consolidation. The move of High Peaks was one way of doing something the district had said it might do.
• The hold was general, and it was reported. Construction came out at every elementary school in the bond's last phase outside the mountains, which is what an owner studying closures would be expected to do. The February report said design would go on “pending the Board's decisions”, and the May report named the holds. That the August proposal touches all twelve schools follows partly from which schools were in that phase.
• A forecast is a planning sheet. Parking a balance in the last quarter of 2027-28 records that the money is unspent, not a decision to spend it on a closed building.
• Birch's contract was signed before any proposal existed. The chief financial officer said on September 15 that the district had allowed for “potential costs for preschool at Birch if the location is ultimately needed”, so the building may stay in use. 2:53:30
• The roof emails include hearsay. That warranties were “never issued” is an account passed on by a consultant. A project manager later found “an executed warranty”, and the May report describes a warranty claim in progress.
• Minutes are notes. The committee's minutes paraphrase. The words in quotation marks above are the minute-taker's.
• Two of the twelve went to every High Peaks family. The principal's letter and the district's letter were sent to the school's families and staff on the evening of August 25, and the four replies answer the letter. The requester may have had them already. Their absence from the 78 bears on the search, not on what families were told.
• A different search could account for part of the gap. A search run on terms other than the request's, or confined to the custodians its list names, would miss records the request describes. The list does not name the chief communications officer, the assistant superintendent of schools, the network directors or the Douglass principal, though the request opens with “district administrators”, so a search of the listed custodians alone would not reach the five records among them. The other seven are to or from the High Peaks principal, whom the list names by role.
• The twelve show the move being announced, not decided. The earliest is August 19, six days before the proposal. Neither production shows who decided to move High Peaks, when, or on what analysis.

What would settle it

• The district's written response to the request: the mailboxes and terms searched, what was withheld and under what authority, and what was charged.
• The privilege log the request asked for, which would show whether this search found the twelve records produced to the other requester and, if it did, on what authority they were left out.
• Notes and calendar entries of the meetings with the impacted principals on August 20, and of the meeting on the morning of August 25 that the liaison's note to the High Peaks principal follows.
• The calendars of the superintendent, the assistant superintendent of operational services and the two principals at Aurora 7, for any visit to Douglass or Heatherwood between January 2025 and August 2026.
• Who directed the March 3 hold, and the stop on the BCSIS and High Peaks contract between March 10 and April 22: the instruction, the notice to the contractor, and the oversight committee's written summary of May 6.
• The entries that removed $389,111 of playground payments from the ledger, and what happened to the five contracts.
• The Board action that covers the Birch construction contract.
• The working behind “about 3 million in savings from not investing in the closed schools”.
• The state's facility reports on Birch, Flatirons and Community Montessori, which the district received in 2025.
• The survey of High Peaks families that Alex Medler described before the vote on September 22. 2:52:41

Timeline

• Oct 21, 2025
  Work session on declining enrollment. Rob Price: “we're going to continue our bond work”.
• Nov 18, 2025
  The Board approves eight construction contracts for summer 2026 on consent, BCSIS and High Peaks among them at $1,123,323.
• Jan 27, 2026
  The engagement plan goes to the Board. Its options include “Relocate focus programs”.
• Jan 29, 2026
  The superintendent meets the BCSIS and High Peaks principals.
• Feb 3, 2026
  The accountability committee is told principals and teachers are being asked to rank reconfiguration, consolidation and closure.
• February 2026
  Birch's construction contract is committed, $943,227. First payments are made on five playgrounds. The bond office reports to the Board that design for summer 2027 continues “despite this uncertainty about the future of some schools”.
• Mar 3, 2026
  Working meeting of the bond accountant and the bond director. Creekside and Mapleton: “Project on Hold for BOE declining enrollment assessment”.
• Mar 6, 2026
  Draft abatement bid manual for the BCSIS and High Peaks work, proposals due March 31.
• Mar 10, 2026
  The bond director's revision takes construction out at Birch and eleven schools due for summer 2027.
• Apr 13–22, 2026
  Regional engagement sessions.
• Apr 22, 2026
  The forecast has the BCSIS and High Peaks work a year later, and the twelve schools' balances in April to June 2028.
• May 22, 2026
  Summer construction starts, Birch included.
• May 26, 2026
  The bond office reports the playground and BCSIS and High Peaks holds to the Board.
• June 11–15, 2026
  The BCSIS principal's voicemail; the assistant superintendent asks whether the building was ever assessed.
• July 31, 2026
  Ledger date. Birch: $442,507 paid on the construction contract. The five playground payments are gone.
• Aug 18, 2026
  The bond director's reconciled forecast.
• Aug 19–20, 2026
  The network directors are briefed for meetings with the impacted principals, and each school's letter, talking points and one-sheet are prepared. The folder shared with the Douglass principal is named “Close Douglass, Relocate High Peaks, Relocate Community Montessori, …”.
• Aug 25, 2026
  The proposal is presented: four buildings close, High Peaks and Community Montessori move.
• Aug 25, 2026, evening
  The district's letter to High Peaks families, and at 8:00 p.m. the principal's: the school would be “relocated to the site of Douglass Elementary School”.
• Aug 31, 2026
  The request.
• Sept 11, 2026
  BVSD makes the files for another request, the principal's letter among them.
• Sept 12, 2026
  The production.
• Sept 15, 2026
  Work session: “about 3 million in savings from not investing in the closed schools”.
• Sept 22, 2026
  The Board approves the plan, 5 to 2.

Documents

The production

From the other production

Worked from the production

production-inventory.csv, the 78 files with dates, senders and checksums · bond-forecast-by-edition.csv, every row of the seven editions by quarter · bond-ledger-by-edition.csv, budget, commitments and payments for every project at each ledger date · bond-ledger-accounts-selected-schools.csv, the same by account for the schools in the proposal.

On the district's systems

Reports of the bond office to the Board: October 28, 2025 · February 2026 · May 26, 2026.

The BCSIS and High Peaks contract: first amendment, on the agenda of November 18, 2025 as item 8.6.

Meetings in the working group's transcripts: October 21, 2025 · November 18, 2025 · January 27, 2026 · August 25, 2026 · August 31, 2026 · September 15, 2026 · September 22, 2026.

All records pages