As a taxpaying citizen of Jefferson County, I recognize that the school board has faced some very tough decisions lately. Ending up only closing down one school in the drastically under-capacity district, as the board did last night, is admittedly a token move that won’t solve the core budget problems.

But given the loud public statement made by students and other members of the community to leave alone Wheat Ridge Middle School and others, how can I say I would have acted differently? (It certainly would have swayed my vote more than a letter from the Congressman urging the board to save a school he attended more than 40 years ago. Sound policy is forged from better things.)

As Nancy Mitchell’s story captures well, the debate in Jeffco isn’t done. It merely has moved forward to a new phase. At least one board member (disclosure: whom I personally supported in the recent election) gets it:

“To every person in this district – wake up,” board member Laura Boggs told the ultimately happy crowd on Thursday. “We have too many seats for the number of children that we currently have and that we project to have … we need to fix the capacity problem in our district.”

And while board chair Dave Thomas raised alternative solutions to balancing the budget that might include furlough days, salary freezes, and/or layoffs, the local union leadership is left in its own difficult (and unrealistic) position:

[JCEA president Kerrie] Dallman, who addressed board members early in the evening Thursday, urged them to “provide us the leadership this district deserves in a time of crisis” by putting a tax increase on the November ballot.

The district “is trying to run a champagne program on a beer budget,” she told the board.

If by “beer budget” you mean a $1 billion budget supporting 14,000 employees to serve 84,000 students, then so be it. But now that Jeffco Public Schools has taken the very laudable step of pushing the envelope on financial transparency as a way to rebuild community trust, my fellow citizens and I will have to decide whether our families can more easily afford to pay more each month in property taxes or whether the district can find a way to be leaner in accomplishing its mission.

Right now, I’m leaning against the tax hike idea. Sorry, school board, but I see more very tough choices coming down the pike.

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