DENVER — Denver Public Schools is projecting a $40 million structural deficit for the 2026-27 academic year, the district’s chief financial officer told the Board of Education at a Tuesday evening meeting at the Emily Griffith Campus on Welton Street — a shortfall driven primarily by a multi-year enrollment decline that has reduced per-pupil state funding and accelerating costs in special education services that are outpacing available revenue.
A preliminary list of potential cost reduction measures circulated to school principals last week has triggered organized opposition from parent and teacher groups at schools across the district. The list, obtained by Denver Weekly, includes eliminating arts specialist positions at 22 elementary schools, reducing library hours at 11 middle schools, and cutting assistant principal positions at four high schools including Manual High School in Cole and Lincoln High School in the Baker neighborhood.
“They’re going to take the arts teacher out of my kid’s school and then wonder why families keep leaving for charters,” said [Name], a parent at Columbine Elementary in the Valverde neighborhood, one of the schools identified for arts specialist elimination. “This is exactly backwards.”
The enrollment decline that is driving the budget pressure has been building for several years. DPS peaked at approximately 92,000 students in the early 2010s and is now serving about 71,000 — a drop that reflects both Denver’s rising cost of living pushing young families to suburbs and competing charter and private school options drawing students who might have stayed in district schools.
Special education costs have grown at roughly double the rate of the general budget over the past four years, a trend driven by both increasing identification rates and federal court requirements stemming from a 2021 consent decree related to the district’s services for students with severe disabilities. The consent decree obligations are not flexible, according to district administrators, and represent a fixed cost increase of approximately $12 million annually that the budget must absorb.
East High School in Capitol Hill — one of Denver’s highest-enrollment and highest-profile schools — is not on the preliminary cuts list but sits in a district that East parents say has been chronically underfunded relative to peer urban districts. East’s Parent Teacher Organization has begun organizing a school board candidate slate for the November 2026 election focused on budget transparency and equity in resource allocation.
DPS Superintendent [Name] said the district is exploring revenue options including a potential 2026 ballot measure to authorize a mill levy override — a property tax increase requiring voter approval — that could generate $20 to $30 million annually. Two previous mill levy measures have failed at the ballot.
“We are not going to solve this on the cuts side alone,” the superintendent said. “The community is going to have to decide whether it wants to fund these schools or watch this continue.”
The Board of Education is scheduled to vote on a preliminary budget framework in May. Final cuts and revenue decisions will come in the June budget adoption vote.