Reporting by Kelly Lyell, Fort Collins Coloradoan
An overflow crowd of about 250 people packed Livermore Community Hall the evening of Oct. 6, urging the Board of Education to reject a committee’s recommendation to close all three of Poudre School District’s mountain schools.
About 45 people took the opportunity to speak directly to Superintendent Brian Kingsley and the five school board members in attendance at the first of five listening sessions to gather feedback on a planning committee’s recommendation for the closure and consolidation of public schools prior to a scheduled Oct. 27 vote.
Additional Board of Education listening sessions, all from 6-7:30 p.m., are scheduled for:
- Oct. 12 — Timnath Middle-High School auditorium, 4700 E. Prospect Road, Timnath
- Oct. 14 — Rocky Mountain High School media center, 1300 W. Swallow Road, Fort Collins
- Oct. 15 — Poudre High School event center, 201 N. Impala Drive, Fort Collins
- Oct. 19 — Fort Collins High School theater, 3400 Lambkin Way, Fort Collins
Mountain schools not the same as city schools, residents say
That recommendation, released publicly Sept. 25, calls for the closures of nine schools, including Livermore, Red Feather Lakes and Stove Prairie elementaries, and the consolidation of two others to address declining enrollment and its impacts on district finances and school staffing and support services.
Closing elementary schools in Fort Collins, though, is a lot different than closing schools that serve as community hubs for families living in the mountains to the north and west, several speakers pointed out.
“I can’t even believe we have to be here fighting for our kids’ education,” Georgia Robedeau, co-owner of the Red Feather Trading Post, said, drawing loud applause and a few hoots and hollers from the audience. “You all better figure it out and take a cut in pay or whatever you have to do to find a way to keep our mountain schools open. They’re an important part of the community. The community needs them, we need them.
“We are mountain strong, and we’re going to fight tooth and nail!”
The pay-cut remark was directed at Kingsley, who sat behind a table on stage alongside Board of Education members Kevin Havelda, Ozlem Gurkan, Karla Baise, Scott Schoenbauer and Andrew Spain. School board members are volunteers, Havelda reminded the crowd at the start of the three-hour meeting that was scheduled to run 90 minutes.
The superintendent and board members listened intently, taking notes, as people stepped up to the microphone to give impassioned pleas about the impact closing those schools would have on the district’s mountain communities, stretching north to the Wyoming border and west to the Continental Divide at the top of Cameron Pass.
“Growing up in a small town, this really hit home for me, because it reminded me of exactly where I came from,” said Schoenbauer, who grew up in a rural community in New Hampshire. “Town-hall meetings is how we decided everything. Hearing people speak their minds unfiltered is what we need to hear as a school board, and I think we heard that loud and clear tonight.”
People’s comments addressed a wide range of concerns. But the most prevalent centered on transportation, student safety and the longterm demographic impacts on the mountain communities.
Long bus rides for young children a significant concern
If the board votes to approve the recommendation in full, students now in the attendance areas of the three mountain schools would be bused to Cache la Poudre Elementary, which shares a campus in Laporte with the middle school that mountain school students now attend from grades 6-8.
Students as young as 5, several parents said, would be subjected to school bus rides of up to 90 minutes a day each way to get from their homes to Cache la Poudre Elementary, disputing the Comprehensive Planning Committee’s claim that bus rides would be increased by 6-43 minutes, with no student’s commute time longer than 59 minutes one way.
Google Maps showed the drive time at 3 p.m. Oct. 8, a dry, sunny day, as 47 minutes for the 39-mile trip from Red Feather Lakes Elementary, the most distant of the mountain elementaries, to Cache la Poudre Elementary with no stops.
Kailee Harvey, a pediatric nurse and mother of five children, including three attending Livermore Elementary, asked how early a young child would have to wake up in the morning to eat breakfast before getting on a school bus for that long ride and how late in the day they would return home.
When, she asked, would that child have time to eat dinner, do homework, bathe and still have time to play outdoors, spend time with their parents and siblings, “and be a kid,” all of which are critical to a child’s development.
“And what about the child who needs a bathroom, gets motion sick or struggles with anxiety or sensory needs?” Harvey said. “A ride like that looks manageable on a spreadsheet but feels very different to that child.”
Additional commute primarily along ‘Highway of Death’
The additional miles would be almost entirely along a stretch of U.S. Highway 287 that is among the deadliest in Colorado, State Rep. Lori Garcia Sander, Cherokee Park Dude Ranch co-owner Emeline Prince and others noted.
Several people spoke of friends who died in fatal car accidents along that stretch of road, sometimes called the “Highway of Death.” Fifteen people were killed on U.S. 287 between Ted’s Place, where the Poudre Canyon Highway branches off to the west, and the Wyoming border from 2012-2023, according to previous Coloradoan reporting and statistics Sander shared during her turn at the microphone.
“The life of one child; what is that worth to you?” asked Jennie Craft, a retired PSD teacher.
Many fear loss of families if public schools close
People also spoke passionately about the impact closing the three mountain schools would have on the communities themselves. The schools aren’t just an important gathering place, they’re also the lifeline of Livermore, Red Feather Lakes and Stove Prairie, they said.
Cavender Andrews, general manager of Glacier View Meadows, suggested that families won’t move to these communities if there aren’t schools for their children to attend. They’ll become retirement communities instead, he said, significantly changing their character.
“We’re a self-seeding community,” said Prince, who with her twin brother now runs the family ranch where they were raised. “We went to school here. Our families are going to school here. Our hope is that their families go to school here. That’s our plan.”
Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, x.com/KellyLyell, threads.net/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news.
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan.
Related: Plan your visit to these 7 charming mountain towns in Colorado
