The Boulder Valley school board agreed at a Tuesday special meeting to move forward with considering multiple small changes to school attendance boundaries while also wanting to consider “bolder” steps to address declining elementary and K-8 enrollment.

The school board about a year ago agreed to review school attendance area boundaries every five years, starting this year. It’s been more than 40 years since the district has undertaken a comprehensive review of its attendance areas. Areas for review included attendance boundaries with disconnected, non-contiguous areas; dual-enrollment areas; and split elementary-to-middle school feeder systems.

“We’re really trying to balance that resident student population,” said Rob Price, Boulder Valley’s assistant superintendent of operations.

Attendance areas matter because students are guaranteed a spot at their assigned neighborhood school, as well as generally provided transportation if they live a certain distance away. But, because of declining enrollment, Boulder Valley families generally are receiving their first choice when open enrolling to another school, with some exceptions for specific charter schools and “focus” schools. That may make boundary changes less likely to impact enrollment.

Evaluating enrollment-related policies, including attendance boundaries, was one of several recommendations made by the district’s Long Range Advisory Committee, which was tasked with developing guidelines for how to handle shrinking elementary schools as the district grapples with overall declining enrollment.

At Tuesday’s meeting. Boulder Valley Assistant Superintendent Robbyn Fernandez reminded the board that elementary schools were structured to support three classes, or rounds, at each grade level. But, over time, about a third of elementary schools have shrunk to support only one or two classes per grade. In a few cases, some schools need to combine two grades to make a full class.

At schools with fewer than three classes per grade, art, music and physical education teachers must travel to teach at other schools, limiting the schedule to when those teachers are available.

Fewer students means part-time counselors and programming limitations, which could include virtual instead of in-person advanced math classes or fewer options for instrumental music. Finding common times for teachers to collaborate also becomes more difficult.

The school board agreed to move forward with a proposal for “micro changes” to clean up several Boulder elementary school boundary irregularities, including non-contiguous attendance areas. Boulder has 18 district elementary schools with a total capacity of about 7,100 seats, but just about 65% of those seats are filled.

The proposed changes would impact about 150 resident students.

One change would move a small area in the Gunbarrel area east of Colo. 119 from Crest View’s attendance area to Heatherwood’s attendance area. A total of 52 elementary students live in that area, with 32 of those students now attending Crest View, five attending Heatherwood and the rest attending other schools.

Other changes would move 48 resident students from Creekside’s attendance area to Flatirons’ attendance area, as well as adjusting a dual-enrollment area where 37 resident students can attend either Bear Creek or Creekside and instead zone them only for Creekside.

Heatherwood was the first — and so far only — school to reach a small enough size that it was required to go through a community engagement process. An advisory group recommended an environmental STEM focus to attract more students to Heatherwood. The school plans to launch the new program in the fall.

No changes are recommended for the Lafayette and Erie elementary schools, while a potential change moving 54 resident students from Monarch K-8’s attendance area to Aspen Creek K-8’s area wouldn’t take effect until 2028 at the earliest. That’s because it would require the completion of a potential extension of Campus Drive.

Other potential changes would impact feeder middle and high schools for a small number of students at Whittier, Creekside and Crest View.

The board asked staff members to check in with families who would be directly impacted to get their feedback, then bring the changes back in September. The board’s goal is to approve any changes by October, before open enrollment opens in November for the next school year.

While supporting the smaller boundary changes, board members asked if bigger changes are possible. Board member Kitty Sargent asked how many elementary schools the district would need to close to have three classes at each grade level at every school, while the board asked if there are changes that would make a bigger impact faster.

Board member Beth Niznik said she’s getting more emails from parents at smaller schools upset about large class sizes because they don’t have enough students at a grade level to justify a second class or concerned about the loss of counseling or librarian hours.

“I worry that we’re not doing enough … we should go bigger,” she said. “It’s going to be painful. It’s going to be hard. But I really, really do believe that it’s in our communities’ best interest, both for the families, the staff and for the students. We can’t offer the kinds of things that we want to offer here in BVSD.”