COMMENTARY | In the rural Colorado school district that my children attend, state education cuts have brought the staff down to the bare-bones number of teachers needed to meet standards in core classes. It’s a struggle for the district to keep up maintenance on aging buildings. Each year, there’s a new list of mandates to comply with and – recently – each year, there are thousands of dollars less to meet those mandates with. Recently, a Denver District Court Judge declared the funding of Colorado’s schools unconstitutional and “unconscionable” and ordered the state to come up with a way to provide an equal and thorough public education.
The state has vowed to appeal the ruling to the Colorado Supreme Court, insisting that Colorado’s K-12 public school funding is, in fact, equal and thorough. Having compared the schools in the district where my daughters attend to schools in richer areas, I can tell you that the funding isn’t equal. Property taxes as a portion of the funding mechanism for districts guarantees that funding won’t be equal. Further, the state’s own attempts at “equalization” – in which they try to make up for the funding gap in areas with lower property taxes – still doesn’t make for an equal education between the state’s tourist and well-off areas and its poorer, rural locations.
Last November, a ballot issue for a statewide tax increase for public education funding failed. And thus, the other component of the “perfect storm” of education woes in my state: a tough economy in which people don’t have extra money to put forward to improve the education system.
I don’t know what the solution for providing an equal and thorough education in Colorado would be, though. Currently, the state spends nearly half its general fund budget on K-12 education, with mediocre results. It seems, in one way, that throwing money at the situation hasn’t provided what I would consider results to rave about. As far as I know, Colorado isn’t exactly leading the nation in the quality of its public education system. On the other hand, I have seen firsthand the struggle that a small, rural district goes through in trying to recruit and retain competent teachers and also provide a decent facility and a choice of classes on a limited budget. There are never easy answers to the problem and the answers that the district comes up with never feel quite right.