Last week, I found myself doing what I often do on a slow afternoon: following links and reading things I didn’t know I needed to see. I came across a website created by a group called Pagosa Citizens for Responsible Schools, and it stopped me in my tracks. The group’s central argument is simple but profound: education does not take place only in classrooms, between bells, inside school buildings. It happens in the rich, living community that surrounds those buildings. Children learn from the world around them—from the river they can touch, from the older people they can talk to, from the town they can walk through. The website makes the case that keeping public schools downtown isn’t just about nostalgia; it’s about the kind of education we want for our children. That’s why the group is asking voters to reject Ballot Measure 5A. The measure would create roughly $156 million in debt to partially fund a new PreK-8 campus on the far western end of town. The district would then abandon the existing elementary and middle schools downtown. That is a huge decision for a small community, and the group wants people to slow down and consider what would actually be lost. Their website asks a question that I couldn’t get out of my head: What if the extraordinary place we want for our children is already here? It’s a romantic question, sure, but it’s also practical. It asks us to see the town as a classroom, not just the buildings within it. It asks us to count the cost of moving children away from the very resources that could teach them the most.
On the website, the vision becomes concrete. The creators invite you to imagine a school not set apart from everything, but connected to an entire living community. In downtown Pagosa Springs, children would be close to the schools themselves, the expanded library, parks, athletic fields, the senior and community center, geothermal grow domes, trails, and the San Juan River. They could learn from nature, encounter different generations, and experience their town as part of their education. The river is described as the town’s jewel, and the website argues it can be more than scenery or an occasional field trip. Access to natural spaces has been shown to support children’s physical activity and mental well-being. Here, the river could be part of the landscape of childhood—not something you visit once a year on a bus, but something you grow up alongside. That idea has real power. It suggests that the best educational resource might not be a brand-new building on an isolated plot of land, but a neighborhood already filled with learning opportunities. A child can walk out of class and see how a community works: how a library operates, how a senior center connects generations, how food can be grown in a geothermal dome, how a river can be a place of peace and play. That kind of education is hard to measure on a standardized test, but it stays with you. The website doesn’t dismiss the need for good facilities. It argues that where those facilities are located matters as much as what’s inside them. Moving to the far western end of town might create a modern campus, but it would also separate children from the very community that could teach them so much. I thought about the places I remember best from my own school years: not just classrooms, but the walks to school, the field trips, the neighbors, the town itself. Those memories are part of education too.
All of this was on my mind when I stopped by a local bakery last week for a cup of coffee and a pastry. I glanced at the bulletin board, as I always do, because you never know what you’ll find there. Most of the time, the notices are honest. A poster says an event is happening on a certain date at a certain place, and you can trust it. The price on the poster matches the price at the door. It’s rare to find a poster that deliberately distorts the truth. But this time, I found one. The headline was “Why do we need a new school?” Below it, the poster explained that Archuleta School District had placed a bond issue—Ballot Measure 5A—on the November ballot. If passed, it would raise property taxes to help pay for a new PreK-8 school at the west end of town. The district would then abandon the existing elementary and middle schools downtown. The poster claimed that we know almost nothing about this facility, other than its location and its proposed cost. That may be an overstatement—the district has certainly shared some information—but it contains a legitimate point: the public is being asked to commit a vast amount of money based on relatively little detail. Meanwhile, we know a great deal about the existing schools. They have been serving the community’s public school needs for an average of 60 years. And by any reasonable measure, they have been serving those needs well. Last year, both the Elementary School and the Middle School received the highest rating given by the Colorado Department of Education: “Performance Plan.” That is not a small thing. It means the schools are doing what they should be doing. The poster left that out. It painted the existing schools as old and inadequate, but it didn’t mention the ratings, the experienced staff, or the fact that generations of children have learned and thrived in those buildings.
The poster then made a statement that I can only call a barefaced lie. It said, “Our Elementary and Middle Schools average 60 years old and are unsafe.” That is the kind of statement that sounds alarming until you stop and think. If those schools were genuinely unsafe, parents in Archuleta County would not allow their children to walk through the doors, year after year. The district would never allow children into buildings that pose a real danger; the liability alone would be unthinkable. Inviting 450 to 500 children into an unsafe building every day would be a scandal, and that hasn’t happened. The buildings have inconveniences, yes. Some classrooms don’t have windows. I remember attending Stanford in the 1970s, and some of my classrooms didn’t have windows either. I don’t believe the lack of windows necessarily produced a worse educational outcome. A windowless room may not be ideal, but it is not the same as being unsafe. The poster also repeated a claim about renovations costing $88 million and not addressing “can’t fix” issues. That figure has been thrown around by supporters of 5A, but it has no connection to what the schools actually need. Of course, school buildings need to be properly maintained. But they don’t need $88 million in renovations to continue providing a decent education. In fact, a district official reported to the school board not long ago that maintenance needed over the next ten years, on both campuses, would amount to about $17.4 million. That’s still real money, but it’s a far cry from $88 million. As for “can’t fix” issues, the phrase is almost nonsensical. If something can’t be fixed, then by definition no amount of money will fix it. But the district might need around $1.7 million a year from taxpayers to keep the schools properly maintained and earning high ratings. That’s a damn sight less than the $6.7 million a year, for twenty-five years, that the bond would demand. And all of that would come from a town of about 14,000 people.
The most misleading part of the poster was about cost. It said a new PreK-8 school would cost taxpayers $79.9 million after receipt of a BEST grant. But that is not what voters will see on the ballot. The ballot measure asks a question in capital letters: “SHALL ARCHULETA COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 50JT DEBT BE INCREASED BY UP TO $79,900,000, WITH A REPAYMENT COST OF UP TO $156,500,000?” That second number is the one that matters. If the bond passes, taxpayers will pay back up to $156.5 million. That is the true amount, once interest and financing are included. $156.5 million is not the same as $79.9 million. The difference is more than $76 million. For a small town, that is an enormous burden. It would be one thing if voters were being asked to approve a straightforward grant-enhanced project. But they are being asked to take on debt—debt that will be repaid over decades, with interest, by the people who live and work and raise families in Archuleta County. The poster did contain a few true facts. It told readers they could visit the proponents’ website, CitizensforASD.org, to find additional information—though that information may or may not be truthful. And the notice at the very bottom of the poster was almost certainly truthful: “Paid for by Citizens for ASD, Lisa Scott, Campaign Chair.” In Colorado, that kind of disclosure is legally required, and lying about it would violate state law. So the designers of the poster were careful enough to include the legal disclaimer, but not careful with the substantive claims. That tells you something about how they want to be judged—not by the facts, but by the fear they can create. Voters deserve better. They deserve honest numbers and honest reasons for asking the community to take on so much debt.
Bill Hudson, the man who wrote the original piece, has been sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post since 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He likes to say that in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one. There’s a lot of truth in that. But this debate is bigger than one opinion or one pickup truck. It’s about how a community makes decisions about its children’s future. The bond measure isn’t just about whether we need a new school. It’s about whether we trust the schools we already have, whether we value the downtown fabric that has held the community together, and whether we can afford to borrow $156.5 million when the district’s own maintenance estimates are so much lower. The proponents may be sincere. They may genuinely believe that a new campus is the best way forward. But sincerity is not the same as honesty, and a bond campaign should not rely on exaggerated fear and misleading numbers. The citizens group’s website asks us to imagine what our children could learn if they stayed connected to the town—the river, the library, the parks, the senior center, the trails, the people. That vision may not be as shiny as a brand-new building, but it is rooted in something real. Maybe the extraordinary place we want for our children is already here. We should not trade it away without counting the true cost—both in dollars and in community. When I go to vote, I’ll remember that poster on the bakery bulletin board, and I’ll remember to ask the simplest questions: How much will this really cost? What will we really gain? And what might we lose if we walk away from the place that already holds our children’s past, present, and future? That’s not just a local issue. It’s a human one.