Right now in Poudre School District, high school seniors outnumber kindergartners by about 1,000 kids. That gap is why the district just recommended closing 9 schools and merging 2 more, probably the biggest shakeup this district has ever seen. If you own a home in Fort Collins, or if you're thinking about buying or selling here, homes and schools go hand in hand, and their values are closely correlated.

I've got three kids in third, first, and preschool, so this hits home for me. I watched the process closely, and I'll be covering what the board decides on October 27th and what it means for your neighborhood. If you're buying, selling, or investing here in Northern Colorado, give my team and I a call, text, or email. We'd love to be an asset on your team, whether you're three months out or three years out.

Here's something that tells you a lot about how this worked out: one school that was on the chopping block two years ago is now one of the schools taking in more kids. That's the kind of reversal that shows how complicated, and how emotional, this process has been.

Table of Contents

• Fort Collins: How School Closures Are Reshaping Neighborhoods and Home Values
• Which 9 Schools Are Closing and Where Students Will Go
• How We Got Here: Enrollment Drops and Funding Shortfalls
• What the Research Says About Home Values After School Closures
• What This Means for Buyers and Sellers in Affected Neighborhoods
• Conclusion

Fort Collins: How School Closures Are Reshaping Neighborhoods and Home Values

Fort Collins is an amazing place to raise a family. You've got CSU, Old Town, trails, 300 days of sun, and a lifestyle that draws people from all over. But it's also expensive to live here, and that cost is part of why Poudre School District is now facing a decision that will reshape neighborhoods across the city.

Released on September 25th by PSD's Comprehensive Planning Committee, the recommendation is to close 9 schools and merge 2 more. Nothing is final yet, the board votes October 27th, 2024, and nothing changes until fall 2027 if approved. But the proposal is already raising questions for homeowners, buyers, and sellers: what happens to home values when a neighborhood school closes?

Only 23% of Fort Collins households have school-aged kids. Young families are finding more affordable areas like Johnstown, Timnath, and Severance, where new schools are being built. Meanwhile, people are aging in place in Fort Collins, limiting turnover and keeping inventory tight. Housing affordability is driving families out, and the district is feeling it. Enrollment peaked at 27,291 students in 2019-2020. Now it's down to about 25,013, a drop of roughly 2,300 students. In one year alone, PSD lost 513 students, and 479 of those were elementary-aged.

Kindergarten classes are about 25% smaller than they were six years ago. The district expects to keep losing hundreds of students a year for at least five more years. There are about 10,000 empty seats district-wide right now. Nine schools are at 50% capacity. Eight more are under two-thirds full. When you fund schools per pupil, those numbers force difficult decisions.

Which 9 Schools Are Closing and Where Students Will Go

Here's how the closures shake out. Beatty Elementary students go to Lopez or Bennett. Irish Elementary kids go to Cache La Poudre or Bauder, with multilingual learners offered Harris Bilingual Immersion School. Johnson Elementary students relocate to either Olander or McGraw. One of my good buddies has kids at Johnson, so I know this is hitting families hard. Putnam Elementary goes to Dunn or Tavelli. Timnath Elementary was a shocker to me, students go to either Linton or Bamford, with a small boundary tweak for Bacon Elementary as well.

All three mountain schools, Livermore, Red Feather Lakes, and Stove Prairie , are closing, and all those students are relocating to Cache La Poudre down the canyon. That's a long drive, and mountain communities are probably impacted the most. Research suggests that rural areas with a school see higher property values than those without, so this could be a real hit.

Blevins Middle School is the only middle school closing. Those kids go to either Weber or Lincoln. And finally, Centennial High School and Poudre Community Academy are merging into one school. The location of that merged school will be decided in early 2027.

Nothing is taking place this school year. If approved, these changes take effect in the fall of 2027. Superintendent Brian Kingsley said, "While the school building you attend may change for next school year, I can assure you the sense of belonging you feel in your school will not." I can only imagine. I've got a friend who moved neighborhoods just last year, so their kids already relocated from one school to another while in elementary. Now that neighborhood school is closing down, so they're going to have to move again. Those are big changes, emotional, economical, drive times. These are not small changes, and we have to take them very seriously.

How We Got Here: Enrollment Drops and Funding Shortfalls

Poudre School District has been pretty slow to close schools compared to everybody else. In fact, they voted on and passed an increased mill levy to kind of delay this decision. But in roughly 20 years, PSD has only closed one school, Moore Elementary, back in 2010. Over that same stretch, Denver Public Schools and Jeffco combined to close 62. Aurora closed 8, Boulder Valley 5, Thompson Loveland has closed 4 elementaries. Statewide, 118 of Colorado's 178 districts have closed neighborhood schools. The reality is Fort Collins and PSD really just held out longer than just about anybody.

In 2024, they tried to get this across the line, but maybe didn't do it in the best way. The district flagged in 2023 that declining enrollment was creating a funding shortfall. In the spring of 2024, consolidation scenarios included schools like Linton Elementary, Blevins, Boltz, and Preston. They got big pushback, student walkouts, hundreds protesting. Parents felt surprised, and it felt rushed and not well thought out. In May of 2024, the board voted unanimously to end that process. No closures for 2025-2026. The board said it wouldn't revisit this before 2027.

Then enrollment dropped faster than expected, so they said, hey, we've got to speed this thing back up. Remember Linton? That was on the chopping block in 2024, and now it's one of the schools receiving Timnath Elementary kids. Blevins was on the list then and it's still on the list now. Same as Beatty. A lot of these schools went through a lot of research and data this time around, but the reality is schools and kids and enrollment are just down. And when you get funding per pupil, you're going to have to make some difficult decisions.

Colorado funds schools per student. Fewer kids equals fewer dollars, about $7 million lost for every 500 students. PSD projects an $8 to $17 million funding reduction for 2026-2027. The state is phasing out enrollment averaging, which used to smooth out the drops over several years. Now the hit is going to land faster. Staffing at PSD is 85% of the budget. In February, the board authorized possible teacher reductions.

PSD spends about $8.4 million a year propping up small schools across 33 schools. One of the smallest schools gets about $18,946 per student, and the largest school gets only $6,542 on average per student. The math is ugly.

How PSD Decided Which Schools to Close

So how did they decide which 9? That's the part people are going to get fired up about, and hopefully they can understand the process. They built a comprehensive planning committee, parents, teachers, principals, staff from each employee association, and community members, not just central office. The criteria was board-approved, using policies FCB and FCBR presented this past May.

What they looked at: building utilization (how full is the school?), current and projected enrollment, facility conditions (AC, how much would it cost to retrofit?), transportation and walkability, and program availability, keeping services continuous for kids. The targets: schools at about 80% capacity. Elementary, ideally 400+ kids. Middle school, 700+. Below that, specialists, art, music, library, counselors, start getting cut out of the program.

Basically, the superintendent's pitch was we can do more and do it better in fewer schools because we can concentrate our resources. The community wasn't quiet about it. There were about 7,519 survey responses, nearly 50 feedback sessions, and 11 board sessions.

What's next? There are a few more listening sessions on October 12th, 14th, and 15th at four different locations. There's a formal presentation to the board in October, and finally a board vote on October 27th. Changes take effect fall of 2027. School of Choice families at a closing school are going to have to reapply for non-assigned schools. Neighborhood families get auto-assigned. If you have an opinion or want more information, go to one of these listening sessions. That's how 2024 got changed. I'm not saying they're going to change it, but maybe they're open to hearing your input.

What the Research Says About Home Values After School Closures

Does this tank your home value? Let's talk about it. Obviously, there are a lot of fair housing rules, so I can't tell you which school is better or really steer you anywhere. But I can tell you what the research and the market say.

A Michigan State study in 2021 found about a 13% drop in nearby home values after a school closed. An Iowa study in 2017 found that a neighborhood school accounted for about a 6.8% increase of home values in its zone. But what was interesting: in upstate New York, the negative effect of a consolidation reversed after about 2.5 years, and the values were back to normal within 5 years.

Those are other markets, and Fort Collins has a lot more holding it up, CSU, jobs, Old Town, the trails, lifestyle, 300 days of sun. But walk-to-school is a real amenity, and some buyers are paying for it and moving to specific neighborhoods specifically for those elementary and middle schools. The walk-to-school premium may shift, and that is going to be a real impact.

You're going to want to watch what happens to that building. PSD says it doesn't intend to sell those, looking at early childhood programs, nonprofits, government partners, lease or sale only if there is no district use. A park, a preschool, or a community hub next door is a very different story than an empty building.

What This Means for Buyers and Sellers in Affected Neighborhoods

If you're in one of these neighborhoods and you're wondering what this means for your house specifically, my team and I are putting together numbers on this right now. Call, text, or email. We're happy to just talk through it. No pressure.

Nothing is final yet, so don't panic-sell. Nothing changes until fall of 2027, and the vote's not until later this month in October. Here's one thing you're definitely going to want to make sure you do the research on and know for sure: don't trust what school is listed on a listing. Verify with PSD's school locator, and know the boundaries can change. Colorado has school of choice, so the neighborhood school isn't the only option.

As a buyer, there might be some opportunity. Some sellers are probably getting nervous, and uncertainty means some negotiating room. For sellers in these areas, here's probably some of the most important information for you. If you were listing in the spring of 2027, the decision will have been made final by then. Just lean into what is true about the neighborhood, the lot, the updates, the location, what's going for it. But be accurate with the school info in the marketing. Meet it head-on. Help people understand what the path to that new school might be. A lot of these aren't very far in the first place. It might not necessarily be in the same subdivision, but it might be just a couple of blocks further, is the reality.

Fort Collins has a lot of local schools, and I do believe that consolidating schools and bringing all of the amenities in those schools could foster a better educational experience rather than one that's having to cut specials, arts, music, all of those fun things that kids need and want in a school.

Conclusion

Quick recap: 9 closures, 1 consolidation, about 10,000 empty seats. The vote happens late October, with changes taking effect fall of 2027. This is tough, and it was emotional and scary for me. My wife asked me multiple times, do you think that Werner's going to be on the chopping block? I said, I don't know, it could be. There has to be an equitable portion about this.

Fort Collins is an amazing place to raise a family, and I wouldn't move them anywhere else. But I will say these neighborhoods are going to go through the next two, three, five years of kind of figuring out what it means to not have that neighborhood school. Comment down below if you're going to go to a listening session, I'd love to hear what you hear there.

If you're three months out, this is a great time to call us to prepare to buy or sell. And especially if you're three years out, reach out to us. We'd love to start preparing and planning during that timeline. Whether you're reading this thinking, hey, we're considering relocating to Northern Colorado, or you're already here and trying to figure out what this means for your home, talk to us. We understand how to find some of this information and are happy to help you. Call/text me at 970-893-3533 or book a FREE consultation here.