Eagle County schools face local, state funding crisis even as property values, taxes increase
Zoe Goldstein/Vail Daily
Clarification: This story has been clarified with regard to the Eagle County School District’s school finance mill levy rate of 12.138% and the total mill rate of 21.614.
As Eagle County property taxes surge in the wake of increased valuations, the expiration of a state tax relief discount of $55,000 passed in 2024, and a slight 0.35% bump in the state’s school assessment rate, Eagle County Schools officials say they’re not seeing any additional funding.
In fact, the opposite is true, leading school officials to explore the possibility of a mill-levy override, or MLO, on the November ballot to raise funds for chronically underpaid Eagle County teachers.
“With Colorado ranking near the bottom nationally in K-12 education funding, projected state budget shortfalls, compounded by recent federal policy changes, are expected to place additional strain on K-12 education funding in the coming years,” Eagle County School District Chief Financial Officer Bryson Beaver wrote in a recent Vail Daily guest column.
Colorado public school funding ranks in the bottom 10 to 20 states nationally in terms of total investment in public education. The Colorado Education Association says the state runs between a $3.5 billion to $4 billion annual shortfall in public education funding, ranking 48th in the nation for starting teacher pay and funding relative to personal income in the state.
Support Local Journalism
And that was before federal funding cuts, exploding Medicaid costs and recent corporate tax cuts further constrained the state, which is seeing a $1.5 billion budget shortfall.
So while Eagle County property values and therefore property taxes went up this year, the school finance mill levy rate for the Eagle County School District stayed the same at 12.138% (total mill rate is 21.614) compared to, for instance, the Aspen School District, which in 2025 maxed out its mill-levy percentage rate for schools and passed two school sales tax measures to bring its per-pupil local funding to $13,000, compared to less than $3,000 per student in Eagle County.
12.138 is our school finance mill only. Our total mill rate is 21.614.
And as property tax revenues go up in Eagle County, the percentage of state funding for public education actually goes down in order to keep state funding equitable across districts, Beaver said in a phone interview. A surge in property tax revenue can actually mean less funding locally.
“We’re just very sensitive to anything that makes it look like we have money because we’re broke,” Eagle County School Chief Communications Officer Matthew Miano said on a recent call. “The main thing being the school finance formula in Colorado essentially means that in the case of this year, assessed values go up, but we kept our mill levy rate the exact same.”
While voters in recent years have passed bond issues for the Eagle County School District, those funds by law can only be spent on capital improvements such as buildings, grounds and other infrastructure. Beaver said a mill-levy override is really the only way to increase teacher salaries in Eagle County Schools, where the 2026-27 school year will see a cut of 45 full-time-equivalent staff positions district-wide due to the current funding squeeze.
Local school officials have ruled out going the sales tax route because communities such as Aspen and Steamboat that have approved sales tax increases for schools serve as pass-through entities to the school district via an education fund, Beaver said.
“Schools don’t actually have legal jurisdiction to issue a sales tax. It has to be a county or a municipality,” Beaver said. “School districts get sideways with their towns or with their counties, and the towns or the counties have the right to pull the plug on their funding with a sales tax, whereas an MLO, they can’t do that.”
The other factor weighing against a sales tax increase is resistance from the beleaguered business community in the wake of declining revenues and sales tax receipts for municipalities given the low snowpack and slow ski season. Local businesses support increased funding for public schools, but generally not through local sales or lodging tax increases, Beaver said.
“Also, we’re spread out over what, eight different municipalities?” Beaver said. “And so getting all of those municipalities to agree on a sales tax is difficult, and doing it at the county level is tricky.”
For those reasons, the school district is reaching out to stakeholders, conducting surveys and generally getting feedback on the possibility of a mill-levy override on the November ballot, with an August deadline of deciding on whether to go to voters and at what percentage rate increase.
Anyone with questions on local public-school financing and the possibility of a mill-levy override on the November ballot can email Beaver at bryson.beaver@eagleschools.net.
