Source: 5280
If there’s one thing state legislators can agree on, no matter their party affiliation, it’s that the way schools are funded in Colorado should change. But the failure of Amendment 73—which would have increased taxes to fund P-12 education—in the 2018 midterms was a reminder that solutions are hard to come by. Education has been funded mostly the same way in Colorado since 1994, when the Public School Finance Act—which dictates how the state collects and distributes revenue for education—was adopted. “We’re still allocating in ways that are not demonstrably linked to achievement,” says Leslie Colwell, vice president of education initiatives at the Colorado Children’s Campaign, a nonprofit group that advocates for education and healthcare for kids. “We allocate more than $1 billion for the cost of living factor, and that overwhelming goes to districts where it’s expensive to live, but those are also districts that have the ability to raise funds locally.”