By Fort Collins, seen from Rotary Park near Horsetooth Reservoir. The Poudre School District board met in the city on Thursday.Photo: Runner1928, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Poudre School District Board of Education voted 4-3 on Thursday, Nov. 12, to take Blevins Middle School off the district’s closure list, two weeks after it had voted to shut the school. In a Nov. 12 district announcement, the board said the amendment keeps Blevins open for at least five years and directs up to $250,000 in dedicated funding over the next two school years for marketing and staffing. An advisory committee of Blevins families and district staff will work on enrollment and programming, the district said. The NoCo Herald reported the same 4-3 vote and the same terms.
KUNC reported that the reversal followed a mistake by a board member who said she had accidentally voted to close the school. Vice President Kevin Havelda told the board, “I think, collectively, we owe Blevins and our district an apology,” and said the last several weeks had lacked “the finality that we all agreed to do for a schedule.” KUNC also reported that the district says it has 10,000 empty classroom seats and that elementary enrollment is down 18 percent, with district-sponsored charter schools accounting for some of that drop.
The rest of the closure plan approved Oct. 27 remains in place, the district said. Beattie, Johnson and Putnam elementary schools are still scheduled to close July 1, 2027, and Centennial High School and Poudre Community Academy are still scheduled to consolidate that same day. Irish Escuela Bilingüe Elementary is scheduled to close July 1, 2028, with the board directing staff to develop a more unified dual-language program during the next two school years, to begin in 2028-29. Timnath Elementary is also scheduled to close July 1, 2028, unless the Town of Timnath secures funding for a new elementary school that would be owned and operated by the district before the first round of school-of-choice applications opens, no later than Nov. 5, 2027, and the two governments sign an intergovernmental agreement by Jan. 31, 2027. In a separate 7-0 vote Thursday, the board kept grid code 1254, now assigned to Bamford Elementary, inside the Bamford boundary for 2027-28 instead of moving it to Bacon Elementary.
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