Colorado school districts could see a slight bump in the amount of state funding they receive per student next year under a bill introduced Friday by Democratic lawmakers, who also want to devote more money to rural school districts.
Senate Bill 188 marks the first school funding bill lawmakers have brought forward this legislative session. It was debuted ahead of the state budget, known as the long bill, which was introduced late Monday.
The legislation would increase the base amount of funding districts receive per student by about $420, up to $8,496, for the 2024-25 school year — largely because of the state’s commitment to paying off the debt it owes to schools this year, known as the budget stabilization factor. The jump in funding is also driven by inflation plus growth of Colorado’s student population.
Lawmakers are proposing the funding boost after Colorado has consistently ranked behind other states in the amount of per-pupil funding it dedicates to schools, falling $2,000 to $2,500 short of the national average in recent years, according to Tracie Rainey, executive director of the nonprofit Colorado School Finance Project.
It’s unclear how much the additional funding would close the gap between per-pupil funding levels in Colorado and other states.
“It’s hard to know where we’ll end up this year,” Rainey said. “My guess is we will not have changed very much.”
Legislators sponsoring the bill acknowledge that even with the additional money they want to give schools for each student they educate, it won’t meet schools’ needs. Instead, eliminating that debt — totaling $141 million — means education dollars will only go as far as they did in the late 1980s when accounting for inflation and enrollment growth.
“We are not fully funding schools,” said State Rep. Barbara McLachlan, a Durango Democrat who is sponsoring the bill.
“We have a lot of things that are really needed now that we didn’t need in 1989 as much,” McLachlan said, citing mental health resources and technology support. “So we need to change and address current issues instead of 1989 issues.”
Sen. Rachel Zenzinger, an Arvada Democrat who is also sponsoring the bill, said that the per-student funding amount of $8,496 is just an average. As in past years, districts would receive additional funding for specific groups of students who typically need more support, including kids from low-income families and students learning English.
Even with the extra money, Zenzinger said, state funding for schools is “still inadequate.”
Some lawmakers have been in behind-the-scenes talks with school districts and education advocates about more consequential changes to the state’s school funding formula — which has remained the same for 30 years — after a task force earlier this year released recommendations on how to improve the state’s approach to school funding.
Legislation advocating for more substantial changes to the funding formula — which would likely not go into effect during the next school year — has not yet been introduced.
McLachlan anticipates that proposals for more significant funding changes could cross lawmakers’ desks next year after results of two studies come out, both of which are calculating the precise amount of funding it takes to educate a Colorado student.
Extra support for rural districts and students with disabilities
Another major component of the school funding bill would route more money to rural school districts, many of which have fewer resources and fewer staff than districts in more dense parts of the state.
Rural districts have continually benefitted from one-time grant funding from the state, and lawmakers are now pushing to establish a permanent source of additional funding for districts. That share of funding would not be part of the state’s school funding formula but would exist as “a standalone factor” that would guarantee rural districts more reliable funding in the future, Zenzinger said.
“We have known for the last eight years that there is an equity gap within our formula whereby our rural schools are shortchanged, and so we have been plugging that hole for the last eight years with temporary money,” she told The Colorado Sun. “And we know it exists and if we continue to do it as one-time temporary money, then the districts can’t take full advantage of that funding because they can’t plan for it in the same way you can plan for money you know you are getting.”
Temporary funding can help districts invest in programs and resources that are helpful, Zenzinger added, “but it’s not the highest and best use of that funding.”
Under the bill, the state would allocate between $30 million and $35 million to rural districts as a permanent pool of funding in addition to per-pupil funding. In the past, the state has distributed that same amount to rural districts through a one-time, temporary basis.
About 56% of the money would go to small rural districts that serve fewer than 1,000 students. The rest would support larger rural districts that have up to 6,500 students.
Rural districts would each receive a minimum of $100,000, Zenzinger said. For 32 districts, that would mean an increase in funding they already receive for being rural, which would become permanent. Those districts previously netted less than $100,000 in temporary funding, she said.
The bill also addresses funding for at-risk students in the state. Lawmakers are not yet ready to move forward with a new definition of Colorado’s at-risk student population, although a working group convened by former Colorado Education Commissioner Katy Anthes under legislation set out to overhaul the way the state defines its most vulnerable students and introduce a more well-rounded approach to counting them.
Education advocates have argued that the way Colorado counts its at-risk students — solely by tallying the number of kids who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a federal indicator of poverty — does not account for all students who face hardships and would benefit from additional support.
“Kids need help and you can’t always tell from the poverty level that they need help,” McLachlan said. “It’s not necessarily just the aspect of family income that’s showing anything.”
The bill proposes pushing out a new definition for at-risk students to the 2025-26 budget year and calculating the amount of state funding districts get for their at-risk students the same way it was determined last year. Districts would get funding for all students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch and those who are directly certified, including students who receive government aid through SNAP, TANF and the Migrant Education Program as well as homeless students and children in foster care.
Districts would receive funding based on their at-risk funding amount for the 2023-24 budget year or the 2024-25 budget year — whichever ended up being more.
Meanwhile, the powerful Joint Budget Committee has recommended that the state increase its spending on students with disabilities by about $34.7 million — “the estimated amount needed to fully fund” special education according to state statute, a March 18 memo stated.
The increase in funding for students with special needs makes good on a law passed last year.
“I’m enormously pleased that we will finally meet our outstanding obligation to fully fund (special education) that we made back in 2006 when we established the funding levels,” Zenzinger wrote in a text message to The Colorado Sun.
She added that she hopes future lawmakers will continue to increase funding for other student populations “until they are all fully funded.”