School district starts conversation about better funding teacher salaries in 2026
Teachers may need to temporarily freeze raises in pursuit of $10 million mill levy override
Robert Tann/Vail Daily archive
The Eagle County School District is spending money faster than it can take it in. To amend that deficit, the school board is considering putting a mill levy override before voters that could add $10 million per year to the district’s budget.
While a final decision does not need to be made until August, the district and school board are leaning toward asking for the maximum mill levy override, $10.5 million, in the November 2026 election. The majority of the funds will be allocated to staff compensation, which has begun to lag behind similar districts in the state.
The school board discussed the plan at its Dec. 11 offsite meeting in Colorado Springs.
“I do strongly believe … that we need to have an MLO (mill levy override) question on the ballot in November for sustainability of the organization,” said Philip Qualman, district superintendent. “There is no way we’re going to be competitive if we don’t do it, and there are going to be some really challenging financial times ahead if we don’t do it.”
A ‘maddening’ school funding schedule
The district has been spending down its fund balance for years. The district is on track to end this school year with just shy of $7 million in its fund balance, $3 million less than last year.
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This is due in part to spending more on raising teacher salaries than the district makes in revenue increases each year, with salaries and benefits making up the district’s largest expenditures at close to 80% of the total budget. An average of the last two years shows the district’s revenue has increased by 1.1% per year, while the district raises teacher salaries through step increases by around 3.2% annually.
Planning for the mill levy override ballot question began in November, immediately following the election.
“The ball is already rolling on this,” Qualman said.
The district has so far set aside $30,000 to engage professional support to conduct community surveys and guide messaging, beginning with conducting a survey of district leadership to determine the amount and purpose of the mill levy override. Separately, the nonprofit Education Foundation of Eagle County invested $25,000 to hire Kristin Kenney Williams as a campaign consultant.
Survey results showed district leadership believes the mill levy override needs to be primarily designated for compensation. Teachers will be surveyed next.
The mill levy override conversations started early because the potential ballot question — and the likelihood of its success — inform staffing decisions that principals begin planning for when they build their schedules for the following school year in January. With the current direction of the district’s budget, without a significant financial boost, the district will need to make staffing cuts.
“If we don’t give them an accurate number in January, they waste time designing a schedule, making grade-level assignments that then have to change later … we’ve missed the hiring window that happens in March/April, and we lose great candidates,” Qualman said.
Colorado’s schools are funded through the School Finance Act, most recently revised in 2025. According to the most recent version of the act, regardless of how many dollars Eagle County School District raises in taxes, the portion of its funding that comes from the state will be the amount calculated by combining the funded pupil count, at-risk and ELL funding, and multi-district online funding plus 30% of the difference between the new funding formula and the old formula.
The district finalizes its budget using projections from the state in June, but the state’s final funding number does not arrive until late August.
“The whole way this system is set up is maddening,” Qualman said.
District eyes restructuring salary schedule
The Eagle County School District’s base salary is $50,500. Neighboring Summit County and Roaring Fork School Districts both have salary schedules that start at $54,000 or higher.
In 2024-25, Eagle County ranked 30th in the state, and below the overall average, for average teacher salary.
These factors make it difficult to recruit new teachers.
Teachers in Eagle County receive pay increases through two avenues: Steps and lanes. 3.2% step increases come annually for all teachers, while lane increases are provided upon completion of additional training exercises, some of which are provided by the district.
“I think there are two big flaws in our salary schedule,” Qualman said. “The first is that steps, every year, the increase is about 3%, which is high. It’s comparatively high.”
Other school districts have step increases of 1.5 to 2%, Qualman said, allowing them to provide higher base salaries for new teachers.
“That doesn’t sound like a lot,” Qualman said. “But it is, because it takes everything we have to try to get to that 3%, and we haven’t been able to invest anything on the base to stay competitive. We’re just barely able to provide what teachers perceive as a promised raise every year, which, parenthetically, is not a promised raise by our salary structure.”
Reducing the step increase would give the district more money to increase the base salary.
“We’ve got to dial back the step, or we will never be able to make that adjustment to the base every year so that we stay competitive,” Qualman said.
The district’s salary schedule was adopted about eight years ago. For about 20 years prior to that, the district provided a “pay for performance” raises, meaning teachers with the same experience were making different amounts “because their raises were correlated to student performance and evaluation scores,” Qualman said.
But it was determined that structure did not motivate teachers to become better, and the salary schedule was built.
“A 3% step increase seemed great at the time, and that salary schedule was competitive. We were in the top 10 of base pay for several years,” Qualman said. “But by trying to always meet that 3%, we lost our ability to invest in the base, and now our base is not competitive at all.”
Something the district is doing is working: At 14.6%, the district’s 2024-25 teacher turnover rate is lower than the state’s at 17%.
A peek into the district’s 2026-27 budget
Bryson Beaver, the district’s chief financial officer, has been working on a preliminary budget for next school year. The bottom line: Without significant changes, the district will burn through its dollars within the next few years.
One of the key factors that determines state funding is the funded pupil count: Literally the number of students in school in October. The district’s enrollment has been declining for years.
According to Beaver, in the best-case scenario, the district loses 150 students. In this case, the district’s budget would increase by 1.3%, or about $1 million in revenue.
But this year, the district lost 250 students. If that happens again, revenue will increase by 0.9%, significantly less than what is needed to accommodate inflation and the district’s 3.2% step increase.
“It isn’t a very sustainable business model when you’re only increasing your revenue every year by 1% and your expenses are increasing roughly 3%,” Beaver said.
If the district plans to provide 3.2% step increases to staff as it has done over the last eight years, it needs to cut $4.6 million to produce a balanced budget next year.
If the district accepts increasing the student to teacher ratio by 0.75, this would mean cutting 38 personnel and 10% from non-staffing budgets.
“I don’t think that we can make greater than a 10% cut to our non-staffing budgets,” Beaver said. “To be honest, I think a 10% cut to our non-staffing budgets would be extremely difficult.”
Cutting jobs is also a risky move, as it is difficult to return from a change in FTE student to staff ratio.
To avoid cutting jobs and show the need for the mill levy override, the district is considering freezing step raises for the next year. A pay freeze would save $1.5-1.6 million, or 15-16 jobs, in the coming year.
It is also a way to convince teachers, and the people who care about them, to show up at the polls.
“We position ourselves strategically better in November if we come into that election with everyone having a pay freeze,” Qualman said. “I know that sucks. I know it sounds horrible. But what a pay freeze shows is that we are really struggling.”
If a $10.5 million mill levy override passes in November, the district can provide staff with a significant bonus retroactively — dollars equivalent to an 8% raise.
“Short-term pain in a pay freeze in August could result in long-term gain at the ballot in November, and motivate (staff) to show up (at the polls),” Qualman said.
The mill levy funds, which would be added to the district’s budget, would remain available annually to raise teacher salaries and keep them competitive over the next several years.
“It could be really life-changing for what we do,” Qualman said.
