Proposed changes to how Colorado doles out state education funding have divided school districts, pit rival Democratic-leaning education groups against each other and built bipartisan coalitions on…
Denver Public School students at Ellis Elementary School follow their 1st grade teacher Megan Westmore to her classroom for the start of the 2022-23 school year on August 22, 2022, in Denver. have divided school districts, pit rival Democratic-leaning education groups against each other and built bipartisan coalitions on both sides of the fight.
“Funding following kids is a good principle. However, this bill doesn’t do that, or at least it doesn’t do that for my kids,” said Douglas County Schools Superintendent Erin Kane, who leads the third-largest district in the state. “Our funding would be virtually flat, and our 10,000 kids in poverty would not have extra funding go to them without me making cuts elsewhere.”
Remaining worries include that after the bill expires in six years, the funding would just drop off — a potent specter for a sector of government long roiled by, or money that the state has owed education under the constitution but long couldn’t afford. State officials celebrated paying off the factor during this year’s session after a decade-plus of short-changing school funding.Denver Public Schools backs the measure.
She paraphrased testimony from the Greeley School District superintendent, who supports the changes, that stuck with her: Everyone thinks the cure for cancer is in a Pfizer lab; in reality, it’s in a second-grade classroom, where a future pioneering scientist may be an English language learner. “The way the funding formula is set up, there already are winners and losers,” Ashour said. “This gives the state an opportunity to move away from the winners-and-losers mindset and is a step toward where we are thinking about the unique, individual needs and the unique, individual genius of the kids in the school-funding formula.”But, reflecting the division among school districts, HB-1448 lacks universal support from education groups.
She and other lawmakers pushed a failed amendment aimed at stopping money from going to charter school construction over worries it would benefit them over traditional public schools. The state also is working on a study to determine what adequate funding would look like — work she said it should finish before making dramatic changes.
“It’s ‘trust us, and then it’ll work out.’ And it doesn’t work out, and then it’s up to the districts to make it work out,” she said. “It’s the schools and the districts that end up dealing with the disappointed families and the humans who aren’t getting the services they were promised and they need.”
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