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As polls closed Tuesday, early election results showed voters rejected both Adams 14 ballot questions and supported increasing school district funding.

Voters have two measures to consider. First, a $113.9 million mill levy repeal to increase teacher pay and a $10 million bond to build a new school. As of 7 p.m., both measures were defeated with around 6,000 votes counted.

The numbers are likely to change as officials continue counting votes throughout the night. As of Tuesday at 2 p.m., 194,689 ballots had been received in the district. Adams County has 354,391 registered voters, although not all would vote in the Adams 14 election.

If approved, Adams County’s 4A and 4B ballot questions would cost Adams 14 homeowners about $6.52 per month per $100,000 of home value. For a $400,000 home, that would be about $26.08 per month.

Measure 4A is the district’s request for a mill levy waiver to generate about $10 million a year to fund raises for teachers and classified staff.

Measure 4B is the district’s bond application to raise $113.9 million the district will use to build a new middle school to house seventh and eighth graders from Kearney Middle School and Adams City Middle School wants to use. The district plans to consolidate the schools, but would like to build a new building rather than have to make costly repairs to one of the schools.

The district estimates that construction of the new school building will require $77 million of the $113.9 million bond requested. That’s almost as much as this year’s total budget for the district, which is just over $99 million.

If approved, the remainder of the bond money would be used to fund safety improvements, upgrades to HVAC systems and other maintenance, as well as new furniture for classrooms.

The last time the district asked voters for a tax measure was in 2014 and 2013, and the measures failed both years.

The district enrolled about 5,484 students last school year. The majority of students come from low-income families and about half of the students are learning English as a new language.

Adams 14 has been at the center of state accountability efforts for several years as it struggles to raise student achievement enough to earn higher state ratings. But state board members have stopped escalating state orders and are more confident in the district’s improvement plans.

We will continue to update this story with election results.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at [email protected].