Update regarding Governor's proposal to cut funding

Dear Five Star Community,

Given the Governor's proposal to cut K-12 funding for next school year, we're facing the most difficult budgeting year since the Great Recession. During that time, we were forced to cut tens of millions of dollars from our budget, making it incredibly challenging to meet our students’ needs.

The reality for Adams 12 Five Star Schools is that the governor's proposal would reduce our funding for next year by $13.2 million. Here's what a cut of that magnitude could mean: 

• Loss of 130 teachers and other staff members
• Larger class sizes
• Less academic and mental health support for students
• Fewer academic and extracurricular options for students

Below I share the "why" behind how serious this is for our school communities; as well as some steps you can take to advocate for our students so we don’t take a huge step backwards.

State Funding + Governor's Proposal
According to the findings of two recent school finance adequacy studies, which were mandated and funded by Colorado Senate Bill 23-287, the state already underfunds the Five Star District by upwards of $272 million. In response, our Board of Education recently adopted a resolution urging the legislature to allocate more funding for Colorado schools consistent with these studies.  

The governor’s proposal would make that funding gap even larger for 138 of the 178 school districts in Colorado. All 138 districts are experiencing declining enrollment and would be impacted by his proposal to remove averaging.

In January, I wrote to the governor and legislative leaders to share concerns about next year's funding proposal, including facts about how his proposal would require significant class size increases and program reductions. This isn’t unique to our school district, and media outlets have been sharing similar stories from others across the state for months. Unfortunately, the governor's office has doubled down, ignoring that Colorado schools are grossly underfunded. Schools are funded on a per-pupil basis, but costs are not incurred on a per-pupil basis. For example, a school could lose 10 students each in grades 3, 4 and 5, but that’s not enough to change the number of teachers, custodians, cafeteria staff or bus drivers, and certainly not enough to close a school.

The Myth and Reality of School Funding.
Colorado's Constitution requires the state to provide a "thorough and uniform" system of public education. Unfortunately, the legislature has ignored this responsibility. Over the past 30 years, the legislature has passed multiple measures that now allow high property wealth districts to increase their funding by up to 50 percent through local property tax measures called mill levy overrides. Low property wealth districts, like Five Star Schools and one third of all Colorado school districts, find themselves funded $80 million+ lower than high property wealth school districts that can raise money through more modest tax increases.

Last year, the legislature adopted a new school finance formula that was designed to 1) provide small rural school districts with the money they need to offer reasonable programming for students and better wages for staff, and 2) provide resources to support students with high needs. These are good things, but there are two big problems with the way the formula was designed: 

• This new school finance formula does not come close to making up for the $13 million cut to our school district or the cuts to other districts across the state.
• Even if it were enough to make up for this gap, the state does not have enough money to pay for it long-term. The money will run out in six or seven years, if not sooner, leaving Colorado schools in an even worse position.

The Solution
I empathize with state lawmakers, as they're working to fill a more than $1 billion hole in the state budget. In these difficult circumstances, however, it doesn't make sense to cut funding to the majority of Colorado school districts.

There is currently more than $1 billion in the State Education Fund (SEF). During prior fiscal challenges our lawmakers have drawn from this account to reduce cuts to K-12 funding. That's the reasonable path forward for next year. Our elected officials should keep the current School Finance Act, with the declining enrollment funding mechanism that the governor and legislative leaders promised last year, and pay for it from the State Education Fund (SEF).

Take Action
It's not too late to find a reasonable funding solution for Colorado's schools for next year. If you find the points made here concerning, please reach out to your state legislators and the governor to share your thoughts about the proposed funding plan. Here is a short letter you can quickly and easily send. Please feel free to add your personal perspective and experience as a parent, student or staff member.

Sincerely,

Chris Gdowski
Superintendent