06/10/2026
Academy District 20's finalized FY 2026-2027 budget package is now in front of the board for adoption and a vote tomorrow night.
The headline number is big. About $686 million in total appropriations, or about $620 million once interfund transfers are backed out. But the real story is in the General Fund, where daily school operations live.
D20 projects $360.7 million in General Fund revenue.
It also budgets $367.9 million in expenditures and transfers.
That leaves a $7.23 million gap covered with beginning fund balance.
That doesn’t mean the sky is falling. Districts can use reserves, and D20 says part of this is tied to already-saved PSMI money for Douglass Valley Elementary. Credit where it’s due, the district doesn’t completely bury the gap. It puts the number in the materials.
But naming a drawdown isn’t the same as explaining the tradeoff.
And there’s another issue sitting right there in the fluorescent glow of the spreadsheet.
The budget includes a $4.84 million General Fund Security Services line. It also includes compensation schedules for security positions, including Director for Security. Rich Payne is D20’s Director for Security. Susan Payne sits on the Board of Education.
That does not, by itself, prove wrongdoing.
It does raise a very obvious public-governance question. If a board member is voting on a budget that includes a meaningful line item for a department run by her spouse, and if that employment brings income into her household, why is the public not getting a clear disclosure, conflict analysis, and recusal explanation before the vote?
Then there’s DAC.
Colorado’s accountability structure doesn't treat the District Accountability Committee as decorative civic wallpaper. DAC is supposed to recommend priorities to the board for spending district money. D20’s own budget packet says the DAC gathered school resource priorities through SAC consultation.
Good. That part matters.
But the budget doesn't give the public a meaningful crosswalk showing what happened next. Which DAC priorities were funded. Which were partly funded. Which were deferred. Which were politely placed in the ceremonial binder of community input and sent to live on a shelf.
That’s the missing piece.
The budget funds real things people care about. Staff compensation. Health premium support. Special education needs. Instruction and student support. Those are not fake priorities, and they shouldn’t be waved away.
But the public deserves plain answers to plain questions.
What exactly are we buying, what are we deferring, who benefits directly, how did DAC feedback shape the final choices, and what happens if the optimistic assumptions don’t behave?
Parents, teachers, staff, and students shouldn’t have to excavate those answers from a 1,200-page packet *the night before the vote*. Public trust gets built when the tradeoffs are visible before the gavel comes down, not translated afterward by whoever has the strongest stomach for PDF archaeology.
D20 can still do the responsible thing here.
Before adoption, the board should require plain-English reporting on reserves, staffing, special education costs, school-level impacts, one-time spending, DAC priority incorporation, and any board-member conflict or recusal issues tied to budget lines.
Because “balanced” shouldn’t mean “technically balanced after we spend down fund balance and hope the forecast holds.”
And “transparent” shouldn’t mean “we put it somewhere in the packet, good luck peasants.”
It should mean the public can see the balance for themselves.
