Major changes could be coming to Academy School District 20, depending on the will of local voters this November.

Their general election ballot this year will include a question asking them to approve or deny an $83.14 million bond to address various facility needs for all of its non-charter and charter schools.

The bulk of the bond’s funding would go towards a complete rebuild of Air Academy High School at $49 million to match funding provided by the Department of Defense’s Public Schools on Military Installations program.

Beyond rebuilding Air Academy, other projects the approved bond would fund include a new CTE Center for Excellence at the high school, security upgrades, and LED lighting upgrades to comply with recent state law.

The bond measure has garnered public responses from community members, with advocacy groups forming both for and against.

Public Schools on Military Installations

Started in 2010, the Department of Defense began the PSMI program to help finance capacity and facility deficiencies in schools located on military installations that struggle to fund them alone.

Director of the Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation Patrick O’Brien has overseen the program since its inception and said it began after hearing from military families about the challenges they were facing at school.

“We had a lot of problems that basically, quite frankly, everyone said, ‘How can we afford to be sending our warfighters overseas, but we can’t do enough of a good job to take care of your loved ones back here,'” O’Brien said. “So, that gave rise to the program.”

To prevent the federal government from fully funding these projects, a 20% match from the local school districts was developed along with a requirement that the federal dollars wouldn’t supplant local funding for these types of projects.

In 2018, the Department of Defense completed an assessment of 161 public schools on military installations across the nation and prioritized the schools according to their level of deficiency, with the highest level of deficiency ranking at 1.

Air Academy High School and Douglass Valley Elementary School, both of which are located on the Air Force Academy Base, ranked 71 and 61 respectively.

In 2023, based on these rankings, the DoD invited D-20 to consider the PSMI program to fund improvements for both schools.

Matching the funds

Following a tour of Douglass Valley and Air Academy, the DOD determined, to ensure 30 years of use from both projects, that a complete rebuild would be needed for both schools.

A reserve fund was then created in the district’s general fund to match the costs of Douglass Valley’s rebuild. In 2024, D-20’s Chief Financial Officer and Deputy Superintendent Becky Allan presented the board with different possibilities for Air Academy’s match. In August, the D-20 board of education voted to approve a ballot initiative for a bond to match funds for Air Academy’s rebuild along with additional capital projects throughout the district.

These improvements would include converting every school’s lighting systems for LED lighting, security upgrades and additional space for the Classical Academy’s east campus.

D-20 Board President Aaron Salt told the Gazette in a statement that they opted for a district-wide ballot measure rather than one focused on Air Academy due to upcoming changes to the state’s school finance formula and mandates from the state legislature that the district doesn’t have accounted for in its annual budget.

“In order to meet the ongoing needs of the district, the Board of Education decided this year was an opportune time to help mitigate facility needs to better serve our students and staff,” Salt said. “One factor in the decision is with the reduction in existing bond service, we could provide additional benefit to our community while still realizing a reduction in overall tax load to our taxpayers.”

The lighting upgrades would be for the passage of HB23-1161’s “Clean Lighting Act,” which is phasing out the sale of general-purpose fluorescent light bulbs in the state, and because D-20’s schools currently aren’t equipped for LED lighting.

The Classical Academy’s Director of Communications Tisha Harris said the board first learned of the bond vote in May when the school’s chief financial officer spoke with Allan over the phone on May 8 about the potential bond. She added that this information was corroborated through phone records and personal testimony.

Harris explained that the school had experienced significant growth in recent years, currently accounting for nearly 14% of D-20’s students, and that the total amount of bond funding the school would receive was determined by student population. The projects were determined by capital improvement reports and accountability meetings from recent years.

If approved, TCA would build a new gym and new classroom and administrative space at TCA’s east campus. Since the campus currently houses its Cottage School Program, College Pathways and East Elementary, the current gym is shared between the three schools and is also utilized as cafeteria space which has resulted in functional and capacity challenges.

“So, I think that’s something that maybe people don’t always consider,” Harris said of the charter schools’ needs.

Those in favor and those opposed

Supporters have pointed to the fact that their annual tax wouldn’t increase and that every school in the district would benefit if it were to pass.

Spokesperson of the local parent, alumni and stakeholder group Advocates for D-20 Kids and Kris Garofalo said she especially appreciated the district-wide investments in ballistic film for windows to increase school safety.

“My daughter was a student at Pine Creek during the recent threats made against the school,” she said. “So, the fact that these schools would be adding a layer of protection is meaningful because it still affects her.”

D-20 board member Derrick Wilburn is listed along with Garofalo on the group’s website as a team member.

Opponents of the bond expressed concerns that not enough time, consideration or public communication had been put into properly assessing the needs of the entire district.

Rob Rogers, Vice Chair of the El Paso County Democrats and parent of a recent D-20 graduate, filed a complaint with the Secretary of State last month alleging that the district had broken campaign finance laws by using district funds to present favorable information of the bond rather than neutral information to the public.

He also voiced concerns that the district didn’t conduct a proper needs assessment of all its schools prior to approving the ballot measure like they did for the 2016 bond.

“There was a lot of due diligence that went into that bond and that’s what makes this one so striking,” he said. “Because none of that is available now.”

D-20 representatives declined to comment publicly on these concerns raised.

With limited time between approving the ballot measure and the general election, D-20 scheduled three public information sessions and conducted focus groups with likely voters. A breakdown of bond projects by school determined by the district’s deferred maintenance list was also made available to the public online.

O’Brien noted that construction costs, inflation rates and supply chain disruptions can’t be predicted and it remains possible that Congress could cut the program’s funding. He added the program has skipped over invited schools “once or twice” for failing to properly buy into the program.

“But, I’m also really reluctant to skip over schools because the ones that are usually impacted by skipping over them is not the electorate, it’s kids. It’s the students,” he said.

What if the bond fails?  

If the bond measure were to get rejected in November, D-20 would need to revisit alternative methods to raise matching funds, such as a certificate of participation, community fundraising, applying for the state’s BEST Grant program or a bank loan.

The district has previously discussed stocking up on fluorescent bulbs while they are still available for sale, until more funding for an LED conversion could be found.

Douglass Valley Elementary is on track to get rebuilt since that funding has already been approved by the district.

As for Air Academy, O’Brien maintained that they are willing to exercise patience with local efforts to get a school built regardless of how long it might take.

“It’s a complicated equation that we’ll work with the school district on,” he said. “And I don’t want to presume one way or the other on any local election or referendum, but we have to have the ability to continue to work to address these projects for those kids and that’s what we intend to do.”

More information on the bond can be found at D-20’s website.