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One wing of Bradford Elementary in Pueblo School District 60 is dead silent in the middle of the school day. A darkened classroom at the end of the hallway doubles as a storage room, with a wooden play oven peeping over a jumble of furniture and boxes.
The lifeless hallway is a sign of declining enrollment in the district but also represents one of the building blocks of an ambitious — and at times contentious — plan to repurpose several school buildings for new uses, including preschool.
Bradford, which this year has one preschool classroom and 215 students, will cease being an elementary school next fall and re-open as a preschool center and community resource hub. Four miles away, Heritage Elementary will house a second new preschool center while continuing to serve kindergarten through fifth grade students. Both buildings will get renovations this summer.
Like most Colorado communities, Pueblo County has a shortage of licensed child care. There are only enough seats for just over a quarter of children under 6, according to a 2025 report from Common Sense Institute.
Pueblo 60, which has about 13,500 students, isn’t alone in its early childhood expansion aspirations. A number of Colorado districts, including large ones like Cherry Creek and small ones like Garfield RE-2 and Weld RE-8, have recently added or plan to add new preschool slots.
Especially since the 2023 launch of Colorado’s universal preschool program, scaling up preschool can help districts take advantage of vacant space, stem enrollment losses, and give children a jump start on early reading and math skills.
Pueblo 60 Superintendent Barbara Kimzey said, “I tell our staff this all the time, graduation rates begin the moment that preschooler walks in the door.”
The state’s $349 million universal preschool program, funded partly through a voter-approved nicotine tax, offers tuition-free preschool to all 4-year-olds.
This year, Pueblo 60 has 16 preschool classrooms offering free half-day classes. Next year, there will be 21 classrooms — at Bradford, Heritage, and some other district schools — and 80 new preschool seats. Bradford and Heritage will offer free full-day programming.
Kimzey said the district’s planned preschool expansion, along with other elements of the district’s “right-serving” facilities plan, aims to turn the tide on declining enrollment.
“Over the last 12 years, we’ve lost over a quarter of our enrollment,” she said. “We realize it’s a heavy lift, but we’re here for it, and we truly believe that we can … not only stem the decline, but really work on building back our district.”
In addition to Bradford, two other buildings will cease being elementary schools next year. Beulah Heights, which has about 250 students this year, will become a staff training center. Bessemer Academy, which has about 225 students this year, will become a family resource hub offering after-school enrichment, tutoring, and other programming.
The now-closed Hyde Park campus will reopen next year, housing a pre-collegiate middle school, the district’s online middle school program, and a community resource hub.
District-run preschool offers stability
Pueblo mother Randi Addington supports the addition of new full-day preschool seats in the district, especially since her 4-year-old’s private preschool closed abruptly last fall.
“They closed overnight in October … literally with no warning.” she said. “It was such a giant disruption to us.”
Addington, who works remotely, was able to secure the last available preschool seat at the district’s South Park Elementary after the closure. It was only a half-day program and wasn’t at the school her first grade son attends, but it was something.
She believes school districts have more safeguards against sudden closures than private preschools.
“I was like, this wouldn’t happen with the district. They’d give you warning a year in advance if they were going to close something,” she said.
Addington, who served on the district’s facilities plan steering committee, said as a working parent she’s happy the district will move back to full-day preschool next year. The reason she’d decided to enroll her son at the preschool that closed at the start of the school year was because it offered more daily hours than the school district.
“That was not sustainable for us as working professional parents,” she said of the half-day schedule.
Kimzey said the district previously offered full-day preschool but slimmed it down to half-day this year because of scheduling difficulties related to its four-day school week and teacher contract requirements. The new preschool centers will allow the district to offer full-day classes again, she said.
Addington said she believes attending district-run preschool helps children get ready for kindergarten. She’s watched her own son acclimate to the elementary school setting at South Park.
“Mama, there’s big kids here. There’s not babies here,” she recalled him saying after he started.
Correction: March 27, 2026: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the planned uses for Beulah Heights Elementary and Bessemer Academy next year.
Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.
