Support is building for a child-advocacy group that plans to sue Colorado over how it funds public schools.
The “state is failing to meet its constitutional mandate to provide a ‘thorough and uniform education to each and every child in the state,”‘ Boulder-based Children’s Voices Inc. said in a letter Monday to Sen. Sue Windels, chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee. “We intend to initiate litigation challenging the constitutionality of the current system.”
Windels, D-Arvada, and Rep. Mike Merrifield, chairman of the House Education Committee, say they hope the group will delay a decision on litigation until after this summer, when an interim school-finance committee is expected to study school funding.
“I certainly think they have a legitimate complaint,” Merrifield, D-Manitou Springs, said Wednesday. “There’s not a district in the state that’s not having to make some cuts.”
He said Amendment 23, a ballot measure voters approved in 2000 that required the state to fund public schools through 2011 at the rate of inflation plus 1 percent, was only a temporary fix.
More than a dozen school districts have thrown their support behind a lawsuit, said Alexander Halpern, an attorney for Children’s Voices. And two of the state’s largest education organizations – the Colorado Education Association teachers union and the Colorado Association of School Executives – also support litigation.
The lawsuit’s plaintiffs would include parents and students from eight or nine school districts, including the Aurora, Boulder, Adams 50 and Adams 14 districts, said Halpern.
Under the state constitution, “the General Assembly is required to provide all students in the state with an equal opportunity for a quality education,” he said.
Instead, “due to lack of funding, schools are unable to provide” a proper education, Hal pern said. “Teacher salaries are substandard. … Schools are unable to provide curriculum and materials.”
School funding in Colorado is based on the Public School Finance Act, last updated in 1994. Backers of the litigation say the act has not kept up with today’s education demands, inflation or the needs of special education, English-learners and other groups.
But Rep. Keith King, who would serve on this summer’s interim finance committee, said state funding has jumped from $7,300 per student in 2000 to about $9,000 this year, thanks to Amendment 23.
In addition, the Colorado Springs Republican said, “federal funding is up dramatically” for education.
Staff writer Karen Rouse can be reached at 303-820-1684 or krouse@denverpost.com.
