Cherry Creek School District

a mill levy referral.

And I think I've voted for every single one of them the entire time I've lived in the Cherry Creek School District.

And the spirit of TABOR for me is making a case to the voters, to taxpayers about what you're gonna raise, how you're going to spend it.

I think there's sufficient detail in here.

Jared currently serves as chair of the OKE National Conference Choir Committee and frequently prepares children's chorale singers for these ensembles.

As a clinician, Jared has conducted the St. Vrain Valley Elementary Choral Festival, and this coming January, he will conduct the Cherry Creek School District Middle School Honor Choir.

Before moving to Colorado, Jared led a high school vocal music program in Ohio where he directed the choral ensembles, annual musicals, and taught electives such as adaptive music for differently abled students.

He's level three Kodály certified through the secondary choral track at Capital University and studied at the Zoltan Kodály Institute in Kecskemét, Hungary.

And we've got some problems in schools throughout the country.

One of those has been the Cherry Creek School District.

And on the phone with me is Molly Lamar, who has been a real watchdog on this, keeping us up to speed on what is happening.

Molly Lamar, welcome.

In representative government, these things really should be in the sunshine so that we can see these things.

And then legal counsel, also those many times that can be contracted out or they can be employees of the district.

How is that working for Cherry Creek? Is it contracted out or is this an employee of the Cherry Creek School District?

Our legal counsel is an employee who has a contract with You know, she's been receiving crazy amounts of money, um, uh, a car allowance.

A May survey of 188 school officials found that 40% had to adjust routes, 25% just cut them outright, 8% made students walk farther to reach the bus stop.

Axios looked at one school, uh, outside of Denver, the Cherry Creek Public Schools.

The district had budgeted $1.5 million for fuel this year but now expects to spend as much as $2.3 million, and it's also short about 40 bus drivers.

Yeah, there's also some reporting that, uh, increasingly, school districts are looking at electric buses.

I gotta run, but I wanna say this.

Voters in both districts should really learn from Cherry Creek Schools.

They got taxpayer money in 2024.

When I graduated from Grandview High School in 2008, Cherry Creek Schools earned its gold standard reputation, but no more.

For years, I've warned that Cherry Creek has been thriving on that antiquated reputation, but now thankfully, parents are waking up to a district that frankly is a shadow of its former self.

A new poll shows over half of Cherry Creek residents have a less favorable opinion of the district, with only 20% believing that district, the district budgets responsibly, and 27% saying that it conducts public business transparently.

Had revelations that drove a recent slew of top-level resignations in Cherry Creek Schools surfaced in 2024, maybe voters might not have handed Cherry Creek more money.

This year, with everything I'm laying out, and there's so much more we could spend the s- multiple shows just going over the nonsense and BS happening in Denver and JeffCo Schools, voters in those districts should spare themselves the same regret of voters in Cherry Creek Schools.

And just as you mentioned, there's an exodus out of the public school.

We're talking tens of thousands of of students um just recently I was doing a some investigative work into the Cherry Creek School District that you know continues to purport that they have they're serving 53 000 students back in 2021 when we removed our child our youngest out of Cherry Creek The numbers went from 57,000 down to about 53,000, and they're still saying they're serving about 53,000.

But if you take a look at their financials, they're serving about 47,000 students.

So they're not even being transparent with the public about the number of students that they're serving.

That's a difficult question and one that's extremely frustrating to me.

Running the Colorado Parent Advocacy Network, if you would have told me back in 2022 that it would come down to lawsuits, I would have thought that that would be crazy.

Because when I launched this organization, because of what was happening to my children in the Cherry Creek School District, I thought, my goodness, if people just know what's happening, they'll stand up to stop it.

But that didn't happen.

It's not just the DPS.

You see it in Jeffco, where they've had big problems, in the Cherry Creek School District, where we continue to find out how much they've spent.

And at the DPS, though, I would say maybe $1,000 might be a good payment right now if they can deal with the contract in advance, have an outside group do it instead of have a conflict within the DPS.

But meanwhile, that board has got to stop acting like kids and start thinking about the kids.

She's absent today because she's off on a client call.

She's been a longtime Tableau user as well, worked at the Cherry Creek School District, loves dogs, and loves going to live concerts.

But fortunately, we all have, instead of Stephanie, we have an excellent, what do we call Olivia? Should we call her a stand-in, not a replacement? But what would you like to be called, Olivia?

I'm going to replace Stephanie.