What does it cost to educate a student in Colorado?
Depends on where you live.
Denver Public Schools spent an average of $12,939 last year, according to an analysis of data collected by the Colorado Department of Education on how districts spend state, local and federal money on instruction, administration, facilities and other services.
Just a few miles away, Jefferson County Public Schools spent an average of $9,374 per student.
That’s no insignificant disparity in funding, and in the metro area it’s about to become more acute.
Voters in Denver approved a $56.6 million tax increase to support operational expenditures.
Voters in Jefferson County rejected their district’s proposed tax increase, known as a mill-levy override, for $33 million. Voters also rejected a bond proposal for facility maintenance and expansion in Jefferson County similar to a $572 million bond approved in Denver.
“It absolutely means differences in compensation for staff, it means differences in resources in schools for kids, it means differences in facilities,” said Jefferson County Superintendent Daniel McMinimee. “As a result of not having those, we fall further behind.”
On Nov. 8, 25 school districts in Colorado asked voters to increase their operational funding through mill-levy overrides. Fourteen passed, according to the Colorado School Finance Project.
Another 26 school districts also asked voters to approve long-term loans known as bonds to fund construction and facility maintenance projects. Some included tax increases and others did not. Of those, 16 passed.
For the districts on the losing side of the measures, there’s now both the disappointment of not having increased funding and the realization that it will become increasingly difficult to compete with their neighbors for teachers and staff.
Colorado lawmakers need to revisit the state’s outdated, complicated and inequitable funding rules in the School Finance Act and figure out a better way to fund public schools.
It’s not from a lack of trying that we got to this point. In 2012, voters soundly rejected a plan that would have increased income taxes by about $1 billion and triggered the implementation of a new and more equitable school finance act. Even some ardent supporters of public schools voted against that expensive plan.
State revenue accounts for more than 60 percent of school funding today. The Colorado School Finance Act was written to try and distribute state dollars based on need. Schools with little taxable value in their districts get more state funding. Students who are low-income get more state funding.
And schools where voters are willing to approve mill-levy overrides to increase local taxes above the threshold set by law can get additional funding too.
Glenn Gustafson, deputy superintendent of Colorado Springs School District 11, said he’s heard estimates the breaking point will come in 2020, when state resources become stretched so thin that schools will start to feel the pain and be forced to make recession-like cuts again or get voter approval for tax increases.
The inner-city district in Colorado Springs asked voters for both a mill-levy override and a bond issue this year, and both failed. Neighboring Falcon District 49 had success in a small, $7.6 million mill-levy override. According to expenditure data, Colorado Springs schools spent $9,374 per student and Falcon spent $11,882 per student even before the election outcomes.
Greeley-Evans District 6 is the largest school system in the state without a mill-levy override; voters there rejected a $12 million proposal this month. That district spent about $10,000 per student last year.
There’s something appealing about allowing local voters to determine funding levels for school districts. Local voters know better what a community can afford and whether a school is using resources wisely.
But this patchwork system of school funding is leaving some schools and students and teachers behind. There’s got to be a way to reward communities for investing in their schools while providing state revenue to those in need, even if it’s educating voters about how the tax system works.
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