If the Douglas County School Board of Education votes Tuesday to place a $450 million bond issue and $60 million Mill Levy Override before voters on the November ballot it will have 42 days to convince a highly skeptical audience that, after a tumultuous year of infighting, the seven members are finally in agreement on at least one issue: the district will lose more teachers if salaries aren’t increased and students’ education will suffer if new elementary schools aren’t built.

Board President Mike Peterson noted that the unified effort is “a part of us coming together and working efficiently as a board to regain trust.”

The board has good reason to have a kumbaya moment. Recent polling showed that Douglas County residents are hesitant about opening their pocketbooks after six months of the embattled board’s bickering over ideology during public meetings, secret gatherings over firing previous superintendent Corey Wise, and teacher and student walkouts.

Dismal results from a New Bridge Strategy Poll conducted last May showed that only 39% of the poll’s 400 Douglas County respondents would vote for funding in the upcoming election and the 43% who indicated they were not in favor of spending the money said that they would not change their minds even if they were given more information as to why the district needs it.

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The $60 million Mill Levy Override would mean that Douglas County homeowners would pay an extra $250 per year on a $500,000 home. According to the latest numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, the average price of a home in the state’s wealthiest county is $493,500. If passed, the Mill Levy Override would translate to a 9% increase in teacher pay. 

On average, a teacher in Douglas County makes $57,919, compared to the annual salary of an educator in the Cherry Creek School District, which is $76,050. Passing the Mill Levy Override would help solve that disparity.

As of Friday, there were 400 staff openings in Douglas County including around 100 teaching positions.

Kevin D. Pasquale, president of the Douglas Federation, also known as the Douglas County teacher’s union, said that the combination of non-competitive pay and what’s seen as low respect for educators is going to make it hard to retain them.

“Even in a school district the size of Douglas County, we used to have people clamoring to come teach here,” he said. Whether teachers will stay in Douglas County’s public schools is, he said, “is the million dollar question.”

The $450 million bond would go toward improvements for 111 buildings and for building elementary schools in three exploding communities. Superintendent Erin Kane, who took over leadership in the wake of Wise’s firing at the end of March, said that “kids are being bused to schools in other communities and then those communities will get the overspill.”

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One hopeful note lies in the poll’s one in five voters who said that they are still undecided on whether or not the district deserves money after such a chaotic year.

Board Member David Ray acknowledged that regaining the trust of Douglas County voters is an uphill battle.

“There’s been a huge disruption to the process. We are in deficit mode when it comes to trust because of that,” he said. “Our teachers need to be competitively paid. Our schools and neighborhoods are growing. When voters see a group of people who haven’t gotten along showing one voice to support this, we have a better chance of earning back trust.”

The poll had a plus or minus margin of error ratio of plus or minus 4.94%.

When the Mill Bond Exploratory Committee’s Brad Geiger gave a presentation to the Board about New Strategy’s poll numbers in June, he estimated that the district would need 107,000-117,000 positive votes for the issue to pass. “That’s a lot of people,” he said. “This can cannot be kicked further down the road.”