When Colorado entered the union in 1876, the people of the United States gave our infant state a magnificent dowry — turning over 4 million acres of public lands to support the “thorough and uniform” public education guaranteed by our state constitution.
Over time, the population grew so large that the revenue from those school lands now provides just $85 million of the $4.1 billion in state, local and federal funds devoted to K-12 public education.
But that relatively small sum can have a big impact on thousands of kids if House Speaker Andrew Romanoff and Senate President Peter Groff have their way. The two lawmakers want to leverage the revenues from such school lands and channel them back to their original purpose — ensuring a “uniform” education by building new schools for students in impoverished districts who now are trapped in antiquated, inadequate and even dangerous facilities.
House Bill 1335 is necessary because Colorado hasn’t fully kept the promise it made in return for its dowry of public lands. The curriculum and quality of teaching in our 178 school districts is as equal as billions in state aid can make it. But the vast differences between classrooms, laboratories, libraries and other facilities in rich and poor districts mean that our system doesn’t even pretend to be “uniform” when it comes to physical plants.
More than 30 years ago, Colorado reformers partially modernized our state school finance system with a plan known as “power equalization.”
To oversimplify, if the state formula guarantees $5,000 per student and a 50-mill property tax in a poor district yields just $1,000 per student, the state will give that district the remaining $4,000. A neighboring rich district that raises $4,000 per student with that same tax rate would get just $1,000 in state aid. The goal is that a similar effort by taxpayers in rich and poor districts should produce similar funding per student.
But this far-sighted school finance law covers only operating costs. Districts are mostly on their own for capital construction — and many can’t pay for what they need.
State treasurer Cary Kennedy, a key architect of the Romanoff/Groff plan, reports that 80 Colorado school districts have such a small tax base that even if they issue the maximum amount of bonds they are permitted by law, they can’t raise enough money for even one new building.
“The result is that we have some 90- and 100 year-old schools that would make wonderful museums — but they don’t make adequate schools,” Kennedy concludes.
To resolve that problem, the Romanoff-Groff plan would assign 35 percent of the earnings on Colorado’s school lands, and an accompanying trust fund, to a special fund to help poor districts repair their facilities or build new ones.
Overall, the state would try to match local efforts 5 0/50, though a very poor district might get a 90 percent state match while a middle-income district might get 20 percent. The matching state and local funds leveraged by mortgage-like instruments known as “certificates of participation” should generate $625 million for new school construction in the next three years.
That’s great news for children shivering in drafty, leaky and even dangerous classrooms. And it also keeps a special “Colorado Promise” that we made back in 1876.
