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Will Eagle County School District pursue another mill levy override this November?

After it failed in 2023, district is gauging community and staff sentiment before the school board makes a ‘go or no-go decision’ in July

Eagle County School District is considering whether to pursue a mill levy override in November 2024 or future elections, following failure of a similar initiative in 2023.
Eagle County School District/Courtesy Photo

In the November 2023 election, the Eagle County School District’s effort to pass a mill levy override was defeated by around 500 votes. The initiative, which asked voters if property taxes could be increased by $3.5 million in 2024, sought additional local funding for the district to support teacher salaries as well as other programmatic needs.

While the district successfully passed a $100 million bond issue in the same election, the mill levy override would have provided much-needed revenue to support those needs.

Now, the school district is determining whether or not to pursue another mill levy override in the upcoming November 2024 election cycle.



“We have a lower voter-approved mill levy in Eagle County than most of our neighbors, and especially some of those districts that we try to compete with in the Front Range,” said Superintendent Philip Qualman at the Wednesday, June 12, Board of Education meeting.

“We need to seriously consider a mill levy override as a community in the future, or we’re going to have a hard time being competitive with those communities that have higher voter-approved mills than we do,” Qualman later added.

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The school board discussed the potential mill levy override in an afternoon work session with Tessa Kirchner, the vice president of the Education Foundation of Eagle County and a former school board member. However, the need for the override also came up in evening discussions around negotiations with its teachers union and budget.

With election deadlines coming up for the Nov. 5, 2024 election, the board of education will need to make a “go or no-go decision” at its July 17 meeting, Qualman said.

Polling for the override

To give the board some data points for that July decision, the district is in the midst of a polling process to understand where the community might land on another mill levy override.

“It’s going to give us some really solid numbers on where the community is, what the community knows and what the possibility of it passing in November is,” Kirchner said.

The community poll is scheduled to begin this week and will be conducted by research firm New Bridge Strategy. It will consist of 400 phone calls asking questions that will gauge the community’s sentiment around a mill levy override as well as around public education.

According to Kirchner, favorability would need to be “in the mid-to-high 60s in order for you to feel pretty confident that if you put it on the ballot, it’s going to win.”

Should the results come back unfavorably, the results will still give the district good information to build toward ballot initiatives beyond this election cycle, she added.

“If they don’t come back favorably, there’s going to be some really great information in there to help the district start to work on that community development and communication and relationship building,” Kirchner said.

This survey supplements an internal survey conducted by the school district this spring. The survey consisted of seven questions to gauge staff members’ thoughts on a potential mill levy override. The district received around 550 responses and “The staff showed overwhelming support with the hopes that it would lead to higher retention rates and better salaries,” according to Matt Miano, the district’s chief communications officer.

Hurdles to overcome and consider

In addition to understanding staff and community sentiment around pursuing the ballot issue, Qualman and Kirchner shared other factors the board would need to consider when deciding about November.

With it being a presidential election year with a lot more campaign noise as well as competing with other potential state and local ballot initiatives, Qualman warned “We will be a small fish in that electoral pond fighting for attention in campaign effort.”

Additionally, Qualman listed a couple of “PR issues” relating to school funding and finance. Chief among them is the notion that schools are “fully funded this year for the first time in 14 years,” referring to the state’s elimination of a budget stabilization factor this spring, he said.

“I’m sure that those who are opposed to higher taxes, property taxes for the school district will echo that move by the state legislature and the governor’s budget that we are fully funded and that because we’re fully funded, there’s some windfall,” Qualman said.

“We’ve seen through the negotiation process and budget process this year that that’s not necessarily the case,” he added

Alongside this is the legislature’s passage of a new school funding formula — the first new formula in 14 years — which will go into effect for the 2025-26 school year.

Eagle County School District will benefit “to the tune of about a 1.5% increase in our budget per year for six years” from this new formula due to its “high proportion of students who are English language learners and free and reduced lunch students,” Qualman said.

“Those who are opposed to additional school funding will point to that as the reason why we don’t need to support it,” he said.

Perhaps primary among the concerning factors is the high stakes of failure for another mill levy override.

“We were unsuccessful with the mill and to put it on again I think says something about where we’re at, and you know where we’re at is a really tough position,” Kirchner said.  “But If we lose, I think you have to be very careful about what those long-term consequences can be.”

“I don’t believe that you can afford to lose them. I just think that that can be so damaging,” she added.

Should the district pursue an override this fall, both Qualman and Kirchner emphasized the importance of staff and board member engagement to help overcome some of these hurdles.

“We need to see more active engagement by everybody in this room and by our staff if we expect to see that happen,” Qualman said.

This includes telling the story of Colorado school funding and what’s happening in the classrooms, Kirchner added.

“It’s a compelling story of what’s happening in our classrooms, what’s happening to the staff that we’re hiring, and what’s happening with our students’ daily lives. To better understand that larger picture, I think you can start to tell that story and then start to ask and engage with your community,” she said.

How schools are funded

This story predominantly includes why the funding is needed in the first place, Kirchner reiterated. 

“It’s not a local issue. It’s a state funding issue, and that’s really unique to Colorado,” Kirchner said, adding that part of any campaign will need to center around “helping people to understand that when putting these initiatives on the ballot, we are taking local responsibility for what we can do.”

The bulk (72% this year) of Eagle County School District’s revenue comes from the state’s School Finance Act. Each year, Colorado’s legislators allocate this revenue on a per-pupil basis and based on a funding formula. The formula takes into account — and distributes funding based on local property taxes, state-equalized specific ownership taxes and state funds. All of this funding is allocated to the district’s general fund.

For the upcoming school year, this act allocates $11,905 per pupil to the district, according to the 2024-25 budget presented on Wednesday.

Local taxes — predominantly the current mill levy — account for around 20% of the district’s revenue, with a few other sources (such as state categorical funding) comprising the remaining 8%.

“We don’t really have a lot of flexibility in increasing our revenues above and beyond what we get through the state Finance Act or mill levy,” said Sandy Farrell, the district’s chief operating officer. “Even though assessed values went up this past year, it didn’t generate a windfall of dollars to the school district. All it did was increase the share of local (funds) and decrease the state share.”

In April, during a recruiting and retention update, Adele Wilson, the district’s chief human resources officer said she “would support us going for another MLO to look to support salaries.”

“We need some support because as we know Colorado and our funding is not nearly what we need to take care of our people,” Wilson added.


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