By Sari Levy, Senior Advisor for A+ Denver and a federal policy consultant for DFER
Colorado, like most other states, has a school finance system that resembles a tangled knot. Few understand exactly how money is allocated. Funding streams pile in, get distributed by antiquated and somewhat irrational formulas, and trickle out to districts. In many cases, this convoluted system of funding shortchanges the very children most in need of high-quality instruction.
It is puzzling to many, for example, why a district in a northern rural county would be allocated $6,200 per pupil and a neighboring district would receive $15,000. (Denver and Aurora, the poorest urban districts, get about $6,800 per pupil.) Some of the disparity can be explained by economies of scale (or lack thereof in rural counties). Nevertheless, reformers insist that even though districts with a high percentage of at-risk students do get some extra money, it isn’t enough to close Colorado’s persistent achievement gap. Education reform advocates have been calling for a re-write of Colorado’s antiquated school finance act, which has been untouched since 1994. That’s the same year Tonya Harding got attacked by Nancy Kerrigan and Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House.
In response to the pressing need to improve achievement, especially among poor and minority students, Colorado Senators Mike Johnston and Rollie Heath, along with House Rep. Millie Hamner have introduced a bold bill to revamp school funding. Their bill has been called “the most important education legislation of the 2013 session.” As the Denver Post Editorial Board put it, “The bill was an effort to bring equity and adequacy to the children of this state who have been shortchanged by an outdated formula warped by state budget constraints, constitutional strictures and the lack of political will to do better by them.” DFER agrees and is supporting the bill.
Should this bill be approved, Colorado would become the first state in the country (aside from Hawaii, which is a single district state) mandating that money follow students to the school level—making it the closest to actual “backpack” funding in the country. The weighted formulas – supported by many reformers – would mean that schools with more at-risk students, including low-income students, would receive more resources.
The new law would also fund full-day Kindergarten (and pre-school for low-income families); and, give public charter schools a more equal piece of the pie. Furthermore, it would change formulas so that some seat time requirements could be replaced by academic mastery, reducing education costs and making room for blended learning, concurrent enrollment, or other non-traditional classrooms. Lastly, it expands the tax base for schools in Colorado where 70% of funding comes from the state. This new finance system would go into effect if a statewide ballot measure to raise taxes passes in the fall.
Over a dozen major education and business groups have agreed to the principles underlying the bill. It’s hard to argue that full-day kindergarten, preschool for low-income kids, and additional resources for at-risk students aren’t good for public education. However, once it came time to endorse the legislation, even some of the groups that said they liked the basic tenants would not support it. The reason for this is that even though redistributing the money is probably the best thing for kids, once powerful districts begin to lose funding, they will fight to keep the status quo. This fight played out over several days last week in committee meetings, hearings and backroom meetings.
“The point isn’t that we’d lose money as a district,” said one opposing suburban superintendent and former Colorado Association of School Executives (CASE) president, as he testified in front of the Senate Education Committee. Except, that was precisely his point. His district, a Denver suburb, gets $11,900 per student while neighboring Sheridan gets $7,500 per student.