Lawsuit filed against DPS on behalf of special education students; what about the pot money?

Although more tax dollars are derived from marijuana sold within Denver’s city limits than in any other place in Colorado, very little of it actually makes its way into classrooms there or anywhere else in the state.

That’s because the system legislators created to distribute marijuana tax revenues did not intend for the money to be used for things such as a teacher’s salary.

Instead, the nearly $200 million that’s collected each year — the number has steadily increased since legalized marijuana sales began in 2014 — is earmarked for a variety of school-related expenses. Those include construction and rehabilitation of buildings, and programs to prevent marijuana use and bullying, lower dropout rates, and boost early literacy. But not teachers. “Amendment 64 never promised to fully resolve the state’s education funding woes,” organizer and attorney Brian Vicente told The Denver Post in an email. “The idea to direct the (first $40 million in) funds to the state’s public school construction fund instead of to teachers and classrooms came from the Colorado Education Association, which pointed out how little funding was being directed toward it.”

The legislature last year got to dole out about $120 million to a host of recipients that included the Colorado State Fair, mental health services, juvenile justice diversion programs, law enforcement against marijuana’s gray market, affordable housing programs, and substance abuse programs.

But not teachers.

And with Denver teachers on strike for the first time in a quarter century, primarily over issues of pay, parents and onlookers are quick to ask: “What about all that marijuana money?”

“Marijuana revenue is directed to various programs as outlined by law,” Jennifer Oakes, the CEO of the Colorado Department of Education, said in an email to The Post. “The majority of marijuana tax revenues directed to K-12 education is distributed in the form of grant programs, including capital funding for school buildings.”

In the past two years, records show DPS has gotten about $2.8 million for programs to end bullying, lower dropout rates, promote literacy and hire more nurses.

Aside from the grant money, the only marijuana tax income that actually makes it into the coffers of Denver Public Schools is a small bit intermingled with funds the state pays each district, known as the equalization payment.

“Some marijuana tax revenue is deposited in the State Public School Fund, which is one of the sources for the state share of total program funding through the School Finance Act,” Oakes said in the email.

Last fiscal year, Denver got about $279 million from the state, or roughly 20 percent of its overall operating budget. Of that piece, marijuana tax dollars make up about 1/100th of it — roughly 1 cent for every dollar in the DPS allotment. Because it’s all blended together, there’s no way to see where any one dollar actually goes.

And even though the city of Denver last year collected more than $30 million in marijuana sales tax revenue — $26 million of it from its own local sales taxes — it’s unlikely those dollars would be transferred from municipal government to the school system.

Much of the reason why marijuana tax dollars have not been targeted toward teacher salaries is the mercurial nature of the funding stream. Raises dependent on marijuana sales would be as precarious as the funding itself.