The latest high-stakes legal fight over school finance in Colorado took a step closer to a trial Wednesday when a Denver District Court judge denied the state’s attempt to dismiss the case.
A group of parents and school districts alleging that Colorado violated Amendment 23, a voter-passed constitutional provision that required the state to increase its investment in education each year by at least the rate of inflation.
The lawsuit challenges a workaround created by lawmakers during the economic downturn. That workaround, known as the negative factor, allowed the state to provide the constitutionally mandated increases off the base funding that schools receive, rather than on the total funding that includes additional money for at-risk students.
School districts have lost out on nearly $1 billion in funding as a result.
Judge Herbert Stern , finding that the plaintiffs have legal standing.
“Admittedly, we have to prove all the facts still,” said Kathleen Gebhardt, part of the plaintiffs’ legal team. “But I am confident we will be able to prove the negative factor violates Amendment 23.”
The state attorney general’s office did not have a comment Wednesday.
The lawsuit is the most recent in a long line of attempts to bolster financing of Colorado public schools and involves some of the same players as a previous case, Lobato vs. State of Colorado.
Last year, the Colorado Supreme Court declared the state’s system of funding schools constitutional in the Lobato case, which argued the state was not adequately funding public education or spreading the money equitably among 178 school districts.
