“Do not adopt the proposal as presented.”

South Boulder Little League

P.O. Box 3318, Boulder, CO 80307 · southboulderll@gmail.com · southboulderll.org

September 17, 2026

Board of EducationBoulder Valley School District6500 E. Arapahoe RoadBoulder, CO 80303

Re: Impact of the Resilient Schools Proposal on the South Boulder Little League community

President Rajpal, Members of the Board, and Superintendent Dr. Anderson:

I write on behalf of South Boulder Little League (SBLL), the volunteer-run youth baseball organization that serves families across the South and East Boulder County neighborhoods. Our board, coaches, and parents are writing because the Resilient Schools Proposal before you would do real and lasting damage to a youth community that has taken years of neighborhood effort to build, and because we do not believe the plan as presented achieves what the District is trying to achieve.

What SBLL is, and what it gives these kids

SBLL is not simply a sports league. It is one of the few places left where children from across South and East Boulder County meet each other outside of school, stay together year after year, and grow up knowing their neighbors. Our teams are built from the same elementary attendance areas the District drew. A child who starts in T-ball at five years old plays alongside the same friends at seven, ten, and thirteen. Those friendships carry into school hallways, back yards, and the rest of these kids’ childhoods.

Youth baseball does for children what the research on youth sports consistently shows. It builds persistence through failure, teaches kids accountability to teammates, keeps them outdoors and physically active, and gives them adults outside their own family who know their name and believe in them. In a sport where the best hitters fail seven times out of ten, our players learn how to handle failure and master the art of mental recovery.

These teams represent Boulder well beyond our own fields. Our players compete in District, State, and National tournaments, and this year the SBLL 11U All-Star team won the Colorado State Little League Championship. Unfortunately, this group of teammates would be forced to disband under the changes proposed; unable to compete for a spot in the Little League World Series next year as a 12U team.

What our volunteers put in

Everything above is produced by volunteers, not staff. Each year our community contributes hundreds of volunteer hours to registration, scheduling, field maintenance, umpiring, board work, and coaching. We run summer camp opportunities so that kids continue to have a safe place to be and something to work on when school is out. We currently offer T-ball at no cost to every family, because we believe the entry point to this community should never be a question of what a household can afford. That free T-ball program is the front end of the pipeline that fills every division above it.

We say this not to ask for credit, but to be clear about what is at stake. This is a community asset built by families, and it depends entirely on neighborhood geography holding together.

How the proposal breaks what we built

We understand that BVSD faces a genuine enrollment problem. Declining birth rates, housing costs, and aging demographics are real, and we do not envy the Board’s position. But the plan presented on August 25 does not meet its own stated goals, and it imposes concentrated harm on the very neighborhood communities the District’s own engagement sessions identified as a priority, including walkability and neighborhood schools.

• Douglass Elementary. Closing Douglass and dividing its attendance area among Coal Creek, Eisenhower, and Heatherwood force South Boulder LL players out of the league. Heatherwood is in Gunbarrel (North Boulder Little League) and Coal Creek is in Louisville (Monarch Little League). Both sit entirely outside the SBLL footprint. Children who played together since T-ball would be separated.
• Douglass students reverting to Lafayette. We further understand that a substantial number of students currently at Douglass would revert to schools in Lafayette (Coal Creek Little League), which is also well outside our boundaries and outside the community these families chose in East Boulder County.
• Flatirons Elementary. Closing Flatirons and dividing its attendance area between Whittier and Foothill does the same thing. Both Whittier (North Boulder Little League) and Foothill (North Boulder Little League) are outside of our district. Those families would be pulled north, away from our community program.

In each case, the pattern is the same. Children are moved out of their neighborhood attendance zones and into attendance zones outside of the community they have been part of since kindergarten. Rebuilding a youth league across three or four disconnected geographies is not a matter of redrawing a map. It means the loss of teams, the loss of volunteer coaches who signed up because their own child’s friends were on the roster, and the loss of the free T-ball pipeline that depends on community focused neighborhoods to recruit from.

The uncertainty itself is causing harm

We are hearing from our own families, in real time, that the uncertainty this plan leaves behind is pushing people to consider leaving BVSD altogether. Families who have committed a decade to these neighborhoods are now asking whether their younger children will be moved again in coming years, and whether it is worth staying to find out. Others outside the district who were considering moving in have told us they are waiting to see what happens.

We would ask the Board to sit with the irony in that. A proposal intended to address declining enrollment is, right now, giving current families a reason to leave and prospective families a reason to hesitate. We see this plan accelerating departures from BVSD school; not increasing enticing future enrollment.

What we ask

1. Do not adopt the proposal as presented on September 22. The Board has not been given a plan that demonstrably meets its own goals, and the cost falls disproportionately on South Boulder, East Boulder, and Lafayette’s neighborhood communities. Important community stakeholders, like Boulder Country Commissioners and Lafayette City Council, were not consulted on a proposal that strongly impacts numerous communities beyond BVSD’s jurisdiction.
2. Keep attendance areas neighborhood-based and community focused. If reassignment is unavoidable, children should be moved as a community together. Sending South Boulder LL student athletes to Gunbarrel, Louisville, or North Boulder fails the neighborhood-school principles the District’s own engagement process surfaced.
3. Publish the long-range plan. Families need to know what the next five years look like, not just the next year. Ending the uncertainty is itself an enrollment retention strategy.
4. Consider the community infrastructure in your analysis. Enrollment models count seats and buildings. They do not count the leagues, community organizations, and neighborhood networks that make families want to stay. Those are part of what makes this district worth choosing, and they are not easily rebuilt once broken.

We welcome the chance to meet with Board members or District staff and share what we see from the field, including our registration data by attendance area. Our volunteers have spent years investing in these children and these neighborhoods, and we want to keep doing it. We are asking you not to make that harder.