Like many of Colorado’s school districts, particularly those in rural areas, Hinsdale County School District RE-1 in Lake City keeps its classrooms humming with a bare-bones, but scrappy, staff.
There’s the English teacher who also instructs AP courses and offers drama and personal finance classes; the social studies teacher who also teaches concurrent enrollment classes so high schoolers can earn college credits; and the school counselor who doubles as a licensed teacher, managing courses in cybersecurity, career and technical education and concurrent enrollment.
Not only is the district light on educators and school support staff. It is also staring down the barrel of a very tight budget year, as Gov. Jared Polis and lawmakers face the pinch of the state budget with an estimated $1.2 billion deficit demanding painful cuts.
Under projections from Polis’ most recent budget proposal, Hinsdale County School District would suffer a 13.8% hit to its $2 million budget, losing $284,177 in state funding. Other small districts in rural and urban parts of the state are up against similarly worrisome — or worse — funding slashes.
The governor’s budget proposal is just a request. The six-member Joint Budget Committee writes the final spending plan, and the rest of the legislature has final say. But while lawmakers say they want to minimize cuts to K-12, top Democrats have also signaled a willingness to incorporate some of Polis’ proposed cuts.
Plainview School District Re-2 on the eastern edge of Colorado would have to maneuver through a 49.2% hit to its budget. Vilas School District RE-5 in southeastern Colorado would see a 45.6% cut to its state funding. Idalia RJ-3 School District, also on the Eastern Plains, would endure a 9% budget reduction. And Sheridan School District No. 2, a high-poverty district south of Denver, would stand to lose nearly $2 million in state funding.
“At a $280,000 hit, something’s got to give,” said Susan Thompson, business manager and CFO for Hinsdale County School District. “I don’t know where we’re going to get that from. Is it cutting food service? Is it cutting all of our maintenance and cleaning? Is it cutting core classes? Is it cutting any elective classes or extracurricular activities for kids? Or is it a combination of all of it? I don’t know.”
School funding experts in the state say small districts, especially rural schools and those serving high numbers of students with significant learning needs, can’t easily absorb such steep funding cuts — not without sizable impacts to staff, programs and the surrounding community. And while district leaders acknowledge the difficult task in front of Polis and lawmakers as they try to balance a growing budget deficit, they also question why state leaders are once again turning to education to save money after schools went without $10 billion of funding owed to them since the Great Recession.
“(Funding cuts) would destroy the integrity of their programs, and especially in these smaller communities where the school is the center of their community, it could be very devastating,” said Tracie Rainey, executive director of the nonprofit Colorado School Finance Project. “They would have to make decisions on either cutting programs or cutting people. Those are your only two options.”
District leaders like those in Hinsdale County say they don’t know what options they have left to even contemplate trimming or axing altogether. The district of 75 students has long combined elementary school grades to save money, merging kindergarten and first grade, second and third grades, and fourth and fifth grades.
And in middle and high school grades, the district employs one teacher per subject in English, math, science, social studies and Spanish. That leaves little — if any — room to cut, particularly as the district tries to continue expanding electives and other opportunities so students have the same shot at college and careers as their peers.
“We’re already doing a lot with very little, and it’s just gut-wrenching to think that we’d be trying to do even less for our students because we have less money,” Hinsdale Superintendent Rebecca Hall said. “That’s not our vision here.”
Polis has proposed increasing school funding per student next year while also removing an averaging tool that protects districts facing declining enrollment from severe funding reductions. At a basic level, the state sends money to districts for every student they serve. Colorado has long used averaging, calculating funding for districts by averaging their student counts over the prior five years.
☀️ READ MORE
Under the state’s new school funding formula designed to begin next year, the state would pivot to averaging based on four years of enrollment. But Polis aims to shift away from averaging altogether and fund districts based on a one-year student count, arguing that the state is doling out money to districts for kids they no longer serve rather than funding schools based on the number of students currently in class seats. That would result in districts experiencing declining enrollment receiving less funding.
Top Democratic lawmakers have told The Sun they’re open to cuts for schools with declining enrollment — but they might not support going as far as Polis has proposed.
Sen. Jeff Bridges, who chairs the Joint Budget Committee, has suggested two- or three-year averaging as a compromise.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the governor called the state’s current approach of averaging and funding a district for students who don’t live there or attend a different district “an abuse of taxpayer money.”
“Gov. Polis is focused on funding students where they are actually in school,” spokesperson Eric Maruyama wrote in a statement. “This absurd situation shows why Colorado’s outdated school funding mechanism needs to be updated to support students where they are learning, instead of letting districts get away with taking state funding for students who are not learning in their schools and don’t even live in their district.”
Finding new ways to collaborate amid budget constraints
Vilas School District, close to Kansas and Oklahoma borders, could incur one of the most dramatic state funding cuts under Polis’ most recent budget proposal, with its budget halved to $1.3 million.
That’s a particular blow in the district, where enrollment took a dive from 361 students last year to 54 kids this year after the district lost a publicly funded virtual homeschool enrichment program that served students across the state.
Superintendent Abby Pettinger said the district has built up reserves and worked to control expenses in anticipation of the enrollment drop related to losing its homeschooling program.
Pettinger said she understands that the state budget hole is creating financial pressures across state agencies, but she also worries about how districts like hers can ride out a shift from averaging student counts to looking at a single year of enrollment.
“It is incredibly hard to run any organization with adjustments that are made last minute that can have really catastrophic effects,” she said.
Small districts face a particularly tricky reality when it comes to funding schools based on the number of kids they serve. Both Pettinger and Vilas School District Board President John Wittler are quick to point out that small fluctuations in student enrollment in their district can have outsize impacts on the district’s budget. A family with five children who move out of the community, for instance, can cost the district about $100,000 — equal to two staff positions.
Averaging student tallies is “the only tool that allows us to respond in a thoughtful and measured approach rather than having to make quick responses on a year-to-year basis,” Wittler said.
And no matter which direction enrollment swings, he noted, the district’s fixed costs around operating the building remain rigid.
“It leaves you really in a place where there’s just not a lot of room to make changes in your expenditures other than staffing,” Wittler said. “It really hampers us to respond.”
Losing half its budget next year would force the district to pull from its reserves to cover staff pay and benefits while also reducing opportunities that prepare kids for higher education and the workforce, Pettinger said.
That could mean scaling back internships, apprenticeships, and college classes, she said, along with holding off on facility maintenance and pay increases to keep up with the cost of living and remain competitive with other districts.
“We have weathered some really hard things,” Pettinger said. “The part that is hard to swallow at this point is that we have built our district and we are on an amazing trajectory offering kids some innovative opportunities and it does feel like we’re getting stuck.”
But for all the challenges that come with budget constraints, Pettinger said the moment is also ripe for innovation as her district continues applying for grants that could bolster programs and looking for new ways to collaborate with other districts.
“This is a time that is hard for everybody, but instead of us looking to fight each other this could be a time that we could work together,” she said. “So in a way, we could actually come closer out of necessity along different partnerships and in different avenues and industries.”
“Cutting people, I don’t know how we can function”
Timing behind state budgeting only further complicates districts’ planning efforts for the upcoming school year, said Rainey, of the Colorado School Finance Project. By March and April, districts are determining staff they will need for the following school year while lawmakers are still deep into debating the state budget.
“This is going to be very difficult and disruptive for districts who are kind of in this limbo,” Rainey said. “At this particular point, you’re talking about a dramatic difference in their funding. So for them, I think it really limits them in being able to retain the staff that they have, to be able to talk about what compensation changes they’re going to make because they can’t put offers out to people or structure different things if they aren’t going to have the revenue.”
Leaders in the Sheridan District, which includes Sheridan and parts of Englewood and Littleton, have similarly pressing questions around how to forge ahead with significantly less state funding. Superintendent Gionni Thompson said the district, which he describes as having “a rural makeup” with its 1,018 students, would likely have to lay off 15 to 18 staff positions if lawmakers accept Polis’ budget proposal.
“We don’t want to lay anybody off,” said Thompson, whose district has been impacted by declining enrollment with a drop of 341 students over the past five years. “We want to keep all that we can. These are individuals that are part of our community. These are people who have invested a lot of time in education.”
Funding cuts challenge schools in ways different than other public agencies, he noted. Regardless of how much or little funding they receive, schools must serve students who show up. They can’t simply turn a student away at the door, no matter how far they’re already stretching their dollars, Thompson said.
Bracing for potential funding losses next year, Thompson said he is most concerned about insulating instruction from any sacrifices in the district — where nearly 86% of students qualify for free and reduced lunch, a federal metric of poverty. Other cost-saving measures could include implementing pay cuts, not filling all vacant positions, curbing how much the district maintains buildings and school grounds, turning down the heat on weekends and reining in the long distances teams travel for away games.
“I hear a lot of people talking about kids are our future and education is key to our future as human beings,” Thompson said. “And yet every time we talk about finances or budgets, K-12 is the first to get cut. It’s frustrating to hear that once again K-12 education is getting cut.”
For other district leaders, it’s also bewildering. Hinsdale County School District, the tiny rural district in one of the most remote parts of the country, could draw from its $1.6 million in reserves to float through the school year, district leaders said. But that would begin to deplete a fund balance they have built up over decades, leaving the district without any emergency capital to cover building repairs or replace outdated technology.
The district can’t sustain continued funding cuts into the future, said Thompson, the district’s CFO. She noted that the closest neighboring district is 55 miles away, leaving students without another school option near home.
“It’s been kind of keeping me up at night wondering what more I can do, what more I can squeeze out of anyone because everyone here wears so many hats and it’s not like you just do one job,” Thompson said. “Cutting people, I don’t know how we can function.”
Staff writer Brian Eason contributed to this report.
Colorado’s premiere, must-read politics and policy newsletter.
The Colorado Sun’s award-winning politics team gives you breaking news, explainers and behind-the-scenes analysis you won’t find anywhere else. Subscribe to The Unaffiliated.