D60 to Initiate Rightsizing Process with Community

Along with many other school districts across our state and nation, Pueblo School District 60 has been experiencing a continued decline in enrollment, resulting in significantly underutilized school buildings. On average, District 60 buildings are only at 66% of their total capacity for enrollment, which causes already limited resources to be spread across schools instead of allowing the district to pool resources to better serve students. Additionally, some aging buildings may not be configured to provide the unique and innovative instructional programs that would better serve students. Finally, Pueblo District 60, like districts across the state, is faced with a lack of predictable revenue, further compounding budgetary implications of declining enrollment.

Therefore, our District is undertaking a deliberate and collaborative process to reimagine its schools as the district rightsizes to its current and projected enrollment, allowing the district to better serve its students and community far into the future, fulfilling the district’s vision of becoming a high-performing destination district that inspires community confidence.

The rightsizing process will include community sessions that will provide input and potential ideas to a Superintendent’s Advisory Committee comprised of representative members of all stakeholder groups. The goal is to present a final recommendation to the District 60 Board of Education in early October 2025 for approval. Upon approval, our district will then begin the planning and implementation phase, with slated implementation during the 2026-2027 school year.

District 60 has planned a series of community brainstorming sessions to begin the rightsizing process. For these sessions, all families, staff, and community members are invited to attend and provide grassroots input on potential ideas for consideration. Those options will include brainstorming around considerations to redesign schools and existing grade level structures, co-locate schools into the same facility, merge and/or relocate programs, and/or consolidate/close schools, all with the intent to enhance educational opportunities and programs for our district’s students.

As the rightsizing process progresses, our district is committed to transparent communications with all families, staff, and community members and has launched a continually updated website with updated information for our community to visit at www.pueblod60.org​. The community is encouraged to visit the site often to gain insight into the process and to find out how they can participate.

The schedule for the initial school grouping community brainstorming sessions is below:

March 3, 5:30-7 p.m. at Central High School. Group 1: Bessemer Academy, Columbian, Minnequa, Heritage, Corwin
March 4, 5:30-7 p.m. at East. Group 2: Haaff, Franklin, Belmont, Heaton

March 10, 5:30-7 p.m. at South. Group 3: South Park, Highland Park, Beulah Heights
March 12, 5:30-7 p.m. at South. Group 4: D60 Online, Dutch Clark Digital/Paragon, Goodnight, Sunset Park, Pueblo Academy of Arts
March 17, 5:30-7 p.m. at East. Group 5: Risley, Bradford, Park View, Fountain, Baca
March 18, 5:30-7 p.m. at Centennial. Group 6: Irving, Nettie S. Freed, Morton

Dr. Kimzey will make herself available on Monday, February 24, 2025 from 10:00-10:30 a.m. for interviews with the media.