JeffCo School Population Declines

In the last twenty years, the student body has declined from 90,000 to 60,000. Despite the population of Jefferson County exploding. I think this has to mostly be due to lower birthrates, but parents home schooling and Zoom schooling with national programs also has to be one of the reasons. I do wonder if some parents were giving their children gap years until the pandemic ended. I know of an extended family in Douglas County which contained immuno-compromised members. So to be safe, everyone is working from home and doing their schooling nationally. (Arvada Press)

Coincidentally, I happened to be driving through Evergreen after reading your post. I looked at the growth of the area, let alone the Lakewood area and wondered what happened to all the families with kids that are of school age.
I talked with some parents, they said home schooling, private schools, religious, etc have made significant inroads into the public school population, regardless of the Covid period.
Would be interesting to know what the staffing numbers in that time period were.

Time to shutter under populated schools and sell the land to developers. Jettison the lowest 10% of faculty and administrators.

After what I’ve heard and read over the last few years, I’d think long and hard about putting my kids in any public school (if they were still kids). The tables are turning a bit though as more conservative parents get on school boards. This progressive push has proven itself to be an epic failure, especially in large cities.

For me, parental involvement is key. If it can said that there was any good in the school shutdowns due to Covid, it was the opportunity for parents to see what was being taught to children via their ZOOM classes. I believe that monitoring of these classes has led to significantly more parental involvement and the switch to alternatives to public education, i.e. charter schools (the next target of Slo Joe's administration), home schooling, pod schooling, religious schools, etc.

I agree 100%. Since teachers work for us and we pay their salaries, I think it's perfectly reasonable to monitor what kids are taught at all times. We now demand that cops all wear body cams so we can witness how they do their jobs, so I think it's just as important for teachers to be held accountable as well. If not cameras, there should at east be an audio feed that parents can listen to and decide if their kids are being taught the essentials, or if they are being taught the ideology of the teacher. Kids don't need to know who a teacher sleeps with or whether or not they are confused about what gender they are. I knew nothing about my teachers' personal lives when I was a kid and I'm not sure why that had to change.