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Voters in the Adams 14 school district are deciding on Tuesday whether to raise property tax rates for the school district for the first time in more than 10 years.
Voters have two measures to consider: a $113.9 million mill levy override to raise teacher pay and a $10 million bond question to build a new school.
If approved, Adams County’s 4A and 4B ballot questions would cost Adams 14 homeowners approximately $6.52 a month per $100,000 of home value. For a home valued at $400,000, that would be about $26.08 per month.
Measure 4A is the district’s request for a mill levy override to produce about $10 million per year to help pay for salary increases for teachers and classified staff.
Measure 4B is the district’s bond request to raise $113.9 million that the district wants to use to build a new middle school to house seventh and eighth graders from Kearney Middle School and Adams City Middle school. The district is planning to merge the schools but would like to build a new building instead of having to make costly repairs on one of the schools.
The district estimates it will take $77 million out of the $113.9 million bond request to build the new school building. That’s nearly as much as this year’s total general fund budget for the district, which is just over $99 million.
If approved, the rest of the bond money would help pay for security upgrades, HVAC system upgrades, and other maintenance as well as new furniture for classrooms.
The last time the district asked voters for a tax measure was in 2014 and 2013, and the measures failed both years.
The district enrolled about 5,484 students last school year. A majority of students come from low-income families, and about half of students are learning English as a new language.
Adams 14 has been the focus of state accountability measures for several years as it has struggled to raise student achievement enough to earn higher state ratings. But State Board members have stopped escalating state orders and are putting more trust in the district’s plans for improvement.
We’ll be updating this story with election results starting at 7 p.m.
Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.
