SCHOOLS PLEAD FOR FUNDING
Superintendents from 167 of the state’s 178 districts urge lawmakers to step up support.
Superintendents from 167 of Colorado’s 178 school districts are urging state lawmakers to step up their financial support of schools.
“The time has come for Colorado’s elected representatives to provide strong leadership and restore Colorado’s reputation as a state where public schools are highly valued and stable and adequate funding are top priorities,” says a statement the superintendents released Monday.
Superintendents are asking legislators at the Capitol, just before the session starts this week, not to increase the state’s “negative factor.” The negative factor in the school funding formula allows the state to pay school districts less than the formula calculates they should get, based on a cap the legislature sets each year.
Since it was implemented in the 2009-10 school year, the negative factor has withheld more than $5 billion from Colorado school districts.
“As much as we would like the negative factor to decrease, we understand this might not be the year to do that, and so we’re advocating that it not increase,” said Bruce Messinger, superintendent of the Boulder Valley School District. The state’s top school officials started joining forces last year asking legislators for changes to how schools are funded. Legislators listened and applied some of what was requested.
But Gov. John Hickenlooper’s proposed 2017 budget, presented in November, would again increase the money taken out through the negative factor by $50 million.
“All we have done is demand for superintendents to cut money from schools,” said Lisa Weil, executive director of Great Education Colorado, a nonprofit education organization. “Great Education Colorado is standing with the superintendents and asking for urgency. School finance is not an equation; it is actually a moral obligation.”
Colorado voters have not supported, in recent years, measures to increase statewide school funding.
Superintendents are also asking legislators to use extra money that came in above projections from property taxes to give school districts more funding in amendments to the current budget.
But Messinger said they recognize other Colorado priorities.
“Higher ed, transportation — those are the big areas really feeling the pinch,” Messinger said. “It’s not about us trying to push other groups aside. We understand we all have to work together in the session.”