DCSD Funding Challenges

Douglas County School District is home to 63,000 students who attend 89 public schools. Covering 850 total square miles, our school district is the third-largest in Colorado. We have a lot to celebrate in DCSD!

However, DCSD faces many funding challenges that can only be solved with voter-approved measures. We must address funding needs to ensure that our students continue to have access to the best possible public education within safe and comfortable learning environments.

We need your help to stay competitive with other districts and ensure DCSD remains a strong school district for years to come.

Additional Funding Would Help DCSD to Provide:


Competitive Pay	Building Upgrade and Maintenance	School Security	New Schools

Competitive Pay for Teachers and Staff
Each school district can request additional local funding through a local Mill Levy Override (MLO). This funding is generally used for operations, including salaries, staffing, and student programming. Providing competitive pay is essential to teacher and staff retention.

graph showing difference in MLO rate and teacher pay in multiple school districts
Currently, teachers in neighboring school districts make about $19,000 more per year compared to DCSD.

A Greater Investment in our Communities
Schools are an integral part of our neighborhoods, our economies, and our lives. An investment in our students and schools is an investment in our community.

Investing in our school district will improve children’s safety and security.
Paying teachers a competitive salary helps them build a bright future for our kids and residents.

Did you know? Douglas County's population has grown 30% since 2010 - the last year that a new neighborhood school was built.

Safe, Efficient, Quality Learning Environments
We need to update and repair our school buildings to provide safe, efficient, quality learning environments for our students and staff. Passing a bond measure to pay for these necessary updates will help kids learn in a safe and secure environment, as well as provide more career and technical training opportunities.

New Neighborhood Schools
Increased funding will allow us to construct new neighborhood elementary schools and create additions to existing middle schools to reduce crowding and plan for growth.

How Our Schools are Funded

The state sets total funding for each school district each year. Think of our funding as a bucket filled with state and local funding.

School funding is made up of two parts: local taxes and state contributions. When local tax contributions increase, the state's contribution decreases.

As you can see, an increase in local funding due to economic growth and rising property taxes does NOT provide our schools with more money (does NOT increase the size of the bucket) - it just means the state contributes less.The bucket only gets larger if voters approve additional local funding via Mill Levy Overrides and Bonds.

Mill Levy Overrides
Each school district can request additional local funding (up to 25% more) through a local Mill Levy Override (MLO). This funding is generally used for operations, including salaries, staffing, and student programming.

DCSD currently receives 12% additional funding thanks to previous MLOs. However, neighboring school districts are closer to or at the full 25% making it difficult for us to compete for staff. We are losing our teachers to districts that are able to pay more competitive wages.

Compared to other neighboring school districts, Douglas County receives less per pupil funding

Bonds
Local voter-approved bonds are used by school districts for:

School safety and security upgrades
Career and technical education
Student programming investments
New construction for high growth areas
Facility maintenance and upgrades

The bond passed by Douglas County voters in 2018 allowed DCSD to cover maintenance that had been delayed for many years. We need additional funding to continue maintenance and repairs and to construct new schools in fast-growing areas of the county.