Poudre School District's closure recommendation, on the map

Last updated September 30, 2026. An independent look using public data. Not produced by or affiliated with Poudre School District. This is a personal project, pursued in my own time, and I currently have a child enrolled in PSD.

On September 25, 2026, PSD's Comprehensive Planning Committee recommended closing nine schools and consolidating two, starting in the 2027-28 school year. The Board of Education will hear the recommendation on October 13 and vote on October 27 (district announcement).

These maps are my attempt to see what the recommendation looks like on the ground. They are not an argument for or against it. The committee worked on this for seventeen months, according to the announcement, and its executive summary weighs things a map cannot show, such as programming at small schools, staffing, safety, and building condition. Where the district gives a reason, the maps quote it directly and cite the page.

9schools recommended to close
2schools to consolidate into one (Centennial and PCA)
12schools named to receive students
$7.9Mestimated decrease in day-to-day operating costs a year
School counts are from the district announcement; the savings figure adds the per-school estimates in the executive summary.

1. The district today

This map is for orientation. It shows PSD's current attendance zones, every school by level, and how the number of children living in each elementary zone changed across the 2000, 2010 and 2020 censuses. Use the layer menu in the top-right corner to switch between elementary, middle, and high school zones and to turn layers on or off.

Look for this button in the top-right corner of each map. Hover over it, or tap it on a phone, to open the layer menu. From there you can switch between elementary, middle and high school zones, show or hide school types, and choose a census comparison.

Scroll to zoom, and click a zone or school for details. The buttons at top left jump to the whole of Poudre School District R-1 or to the Fort Collins city limits.

How to read this map

  • Color shows school level. Blue is elementary, orange is middle, and green is high school. Timnath and Wellington are middle-high campuses serving grades 6 to 12; they are green with an orange ring and appear under both middle and high schools.
  • Gray points are schools without a neighborhood zone. Families apply or enroll directly, so no area on the map feeds them. They include charter schools (Fort Collins Montessori, Liberty Common, Mountain Sage, and Ridgeview Classical), district choice schools built around a particular program (such as Harris Bilingual Immersion, Kinard, Polaris Expeditionary Learning, Traut, and PSD Global Academy), the alternative high schools Centennial and Poudre Community Academy, and early childhood centers such as Fullana.
  • Zone outlines are the district's current neighborhood attendance boundaries. Only one level is shown at a time because the levels overlap.
  • The census layers shade each elementary zone by the percentage change in residents under 18 between censuses: 2000 to 2020, 2000 to 2010, or 2010 to 2020. They use elementary school boundaries because eight of the nine recommended closures are elementary schools. Brown means fewer children, teal means more, and pale gray means little change. One census layer shows at a time. Hover over a zone to see the counts behind its percentage.
  • District-wide, the child population grew more slowly than the adult population. Residents under 18 rose about 19%, from roughly 35,600 in 2000 to 42,500 in 2020. Residents 18 and older rose about 46% over the same area and years, from roughly 122,500 to 178,500. As a result, children's share of the population fell from 22.5% to 19.2%.

What this map cannot tell you

  • Where children live is not where they go to school. Families can choose schools outside their zone, and charter schools have no zones. School enrollment and zone population measure different things.
  • "Under 18" is broader than school age. It includes toddlers and teenagers, so it is a rough guide to elementary demand, not a count of it.
  • School boundaries and census boundaries do not line up. The Census Bureau reports population for its own small areas, called blocks, not for school attendance zones. So any census count for a school zone involves some estimation. This map uses an area-weighted method. Each block's population is assigned to the zones it touches in proportion to how much of the block's area falls in each zone. For example, a block with 40 residents that lies 75% in one zone and 25% in another adds 30 residents to the first and 10 to the second. This assumes people are spread evenly within a block. About 94% of populated blocks sit entirely inside one elementary zone, holding over 90% of residents, so only blocks on a zone's edge are split. Each census year uses its own block map, and 2020 counts also include small amounts of deliberate privacy noise added by the Census Bureau.
  • Large percentages usually mean a small starting point. Areas that were mostly undeveloped in 2000 or 2010, such as the Bethke and Zach zones, had few children then, so even ordinary growth shows as hundreds or thousands of percent. The mountain zones have small populations, so a change of a few dozen children moves their percentage a lot.
  • Enrollment for 2000-01 comes from federal data. Pop-ups show it from the National Center for Education Statistics with preschool removed; later years come from PSD. The two sources agree within 3% for 40 of 41 schools in 2010-11. In 2000, PSD's elementary schools served kindergarten through grade 6 and junior highs served grades 7 to 9, so elementary figures drop grade 6 to match today's K-5 schools. Middle and high schools show their 2000 grade span beside the number and are not directly comparable.

2. What the recommendation changes

This map focuses on the schools the recommendation affects. Closing zones are shaded dark gray, receiving zones blue, and Bacon's boundary change yellow. A dashed line runs from each closing school to each school named to receive its students. Click a closing or consolidating school for the district's stated reason, quoted from its executive summary. Every school's pop-up also shows enrollment and capacity figures.

Switch between elementary and middle school changes in the top-right control. The two consolidating schools, Centennial and Poudre Community Academy, are alternative high schools without neighborhood zones. They appear as the largest points, with a dark ring.

How to read this map

  • Dashed lines are not routes or final assignments. Most closing zones will be split between two receivers, and the district has not yet published where the split falls. The board packet due to be posted October 6 may include it.
  • This page does not estimate how many students each receiver gains. That depends on where each closing zone is divided, which the district has not yet published. The receiving-school table shows each school as it is today.
  • Capacity uses the district's working measure. See "Capacity, in plain words" below.

What this map cannot tell you

  • Savings are only half of the ledger. The executive summary estimates savings from lower day-to-day operating costs and from deferred maintenance that would no longer be needed. Carrying out the changes will also cost money, for example at receiving schools, for a site for the combined Centennial and PCA school, for added transportation, and for the transition itself. Those costs are not yet estimated, and the published documents do not give enough detail to estimate them.
  • Bacon's boundary change is not drawn. The district describes two small areas moving to Bacon from Bamford and Werner, identified by planning grid codes that are not published as map data.
  • Harris is optional. A cohort of multilingual learners from Irish will be offered places at Harris Bilingual Immersion; other Irish students go to Cache La Poudre or Bauder (announcement).
  • Enrollment counts differ. The executive summary counts 12 to 39 fewer students at Beattie, Irish, Johnson, and Putnam than PSD's 2024-25 figures used here, so its use of working capacity for those schools runs 3 to 7 points lower.

Schools recommended to close or consolidate

Reasons, deferred maintenance, and page numbers come from the executive summary. The reasons here are shortened in my words; each school's pop-up quotes the district directly. Enrollment is PSD's 2024-25 count. Use of working capacity divides that enrollment by the district's working capacity (my calculation). For another view of how enrollment has changed over time, the district publishes PSD's interactive planning dashboard (Power BI, opens in a new tab). It cannot be downloaded or linked school by school, so no figure on this page is taken from it.

SchoolStudents go toEnrollmentUse of working capacityDistrict's main stated reasonDeferred maintenance
Beattie ElementaryLopez, Bennett24361%Enrollment, low utilization, building design, nearby schools (p. 1)$1.8M
Irish ElementaryCache La Poudre, Bauder31158%Declining enrollment; more programming and staff at receivers (p. 5)$1.9M
Johnson ElementaryOlander, McGraw30361%Ranked first of five southwest schools on a combined enrollment, utilization and facility score (p. 9)$4.5M
Putnam ElementaryDunn, Tavelli20344%Declining enrollment, projected 98 students by 2030-31 (p. 17)$5.0M
Livermore ElementaryCache La Poudre3645%Remote location, emergency access; more programming at CLP (p. 13)$1.4M
Red Feather ElementaryCache La Poudre2228%Remote location, emergency access; more programming at CLP (p. 13)$0.4M
Stove Prairie ElementaryCache La Poudre3038%Remote location, emergency access; more programming at CLP (p. 13)$0.3M
Timnath ElementaryLinton, Bamford42795%Building condition and accessibility (not ADA compliant) (p. 21)$6.5M
Blevins MiddleWebber, Lincoln36241%Low projected enrollment and utilization; two nearby middle schools (p. 25)$1.9M
Centennial HSNew combined campus (site TBD)11334%Combine two small alternative programs; more staff and electives (p. 29)$1.8M
Poudre Community AcademyNew combined campus (site TBD)12751%Combine two small alternative programs; more staff and electives (p. 29)$1.2M

Schools named to receive students

Each receiving school as it is today. Enrollment is PSD's 2024-25 count; working capacity and its use are my calculation from district data (see "Capacity, in plain words"). Harris, which takes only an optional cohort, is left out. How many students each school gains will depend on boundary splits the district has not yet published.

SchoolReceives fromEnrollment, 2024-25Working capacityUse of working capacity
Bamford ElementaryTimnath28558549%
Bauder ElementaryIrish40160666%
Bennett ElementaryBeattie34653265%
Cache La Poudre ElementaryIrish, Livermore, Red Feather, Stove Prairie26747456%
Dunn ElementaryPutnam39240298%
Lincoln MiddleBlevins55089761%
Linton ElementaryTimnath26550552%
Lopez ElementaryBeattie31955458%
McGraw ElementaryJohnson34944379%
Olander ElementaryJohnson29448061%
Tavelli ElementaryPutnam49459084%
Webber MiddleBlevins72999473%

District-wide context

This section steps back from the schools in the two tables above. It looks at all 47 district-run schools that have a working capacity figure. Charter schools and a few sites without a comparable capacity figure are left out. "Open seats" means room for more students before a school reaches its working capacity (see "Capacity, in plain words" below).

The district's figure. The district counts 10,539 open seats. That is its working capacity minus the enrollment it projects, on average, for 2025 to 2030 (slides, p. 20).

The same count with today's enrollment. From here on, the figures are my calculation using the district's method. With actual 2024-25 enrollment in place of projections, PSD has about 9,000 open seats, and 73% of its working capacity is in use. The district's figure is higher, as you would expect if its projections assume fewer students than today.

What the closures change. The nine closing schools have about 3,500 seats of working capacity between them. Closing them removes those seats, but their students stay in PSD and move to other schools. So open seats fall to about 5,500, and the share of working capacity in use rises to 82%. This does not depend on how the closing zones are divided, because it uses only district totals. The Centennial and PCA consolidation is not included, since the campus to be kept has not been chosen.

Working capacity (seats)StudentsOpen seatsUse of working capacity
Today (2024-25)33,67424,6709,00473%
After the nine closures30,21324,6705,54382%

Where the open seats remain. After the closures, high schools hold the most open seats of any level, about 2,200. The recommendation does not close or change any high school.

School levelOpen seats todayOpen seats after the closures
Elementary4,4181,835
Middle2,1431,265
High2,2252,225
Grades 6-12 and alternative218218

Capacity, in plain words

Working capacity (the district's "National Standard Capacity")
The number of students a building can hold while keeping space for programs such as early childhood and center-based special education. The district describes it as 80% of capacity (slides, p. 20). In the district's boundary map data the ratio is 80% for elementary schools, 75% for middle schools, and 85% for high schools (my calculation).
Full capacity
The district's larger capacity figure, labeled "RIC". The slides say the number of open seats "would be higher (RIC) if we didn't choose to provide space for those specialized programs" (p. 20). Whether any receiving school would exceed its full capacity depends on where the closing zones are divided, which the district has not yet published.
A note on derived capacities
The executive summary quotes capacity for the closing schools. For other schools, I worked out capacity from the utilization percentages on the district's public boundary map layer. For a few schools, including Eyestone, Poudre High, Preston, and Boltz, those derived figures are well above the district's older capacity records, so treat single-school figures for them with care. Harris, Traut, and Kinard have no percentage on that layer, so their capacity is estimated from the older records.

Sources