The long-awaited rewrite of Colorado’s 30-year-old school finance formula raises red flags for the state’s largest teacher union and some of its largest school districts.

However, House Speaker Julie McCluskie, D-Dillon, says amendments will address some of those concerns in the coming days.

House Bill 1448 is co-sponsored by Assistant House Majority Leader Rep. Jennifer Bacon of Denver, a former Denver Public Schools board member. In the Senate, it is championed by Sen. Rachel Zenzinger, D-Arvada and Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen, R-Monument, a former member of the state board of education.

During a recent press conference, McCluskie told reporters that the new formula is a “wholesale change to ensure that our approach is more student-focused, which includes our at-risk students, our language learners, and our students with special needs.”

HB 1448 starts with the base per-pupil funding, excluding high school students and online enrollment. Then, it adds in at-risk funding, money for English language learners, and special education. The cost-of-living factor would be applied after that, along with a locale factor, a district size factor, and then “extended” high school and online funding. The cost is estimated at around $500 million more, spread out over six years. 

This website shows what the first year (2025-26) under the new formula would look like and how much funding each district would receive.

Denver, according to the website, would see a 1% increase in total program funding. Many rural school districts’ percentage increases range from 3% to 5%.

However, an amendment to the bill McCluskie intends to offer will set a funding floor of at least 0.5%.

The concern raised by the Colorado Education Association was expressed in an alert sent earlier this week.

The alert references the American Exchange Leadership Council (ALEC), a free market think tank that produces model legislation used nationwide. Mentioning ALEC often provokes a knee-jerk reaction among Democrats based on the organization’s push for taxpayer-funded private school vouchers, among other things.

The issue with HB 1448 as it currently stands is two studies included in the bill that are intended to address accountability, to ensure the money gets to the at-risk, special education and English Language Learner students in each school. That language is based on model legislation from ALEC and was suggested by Lundeen.

He’s seen the CEA alert but told Colorado Politics he was OK with it coming out of the bill. There are other means available; both McCluskie and Lundeen said this week that the state Department of Education would be responsible for reporting on the formula’s success through SMART Act hearings. Those annual oversight hearings in January bring together the committees of reference (education, in this case) with state agencies, such as the Department of Education.

But are those hearings enough to prove the students who are supposed to be helped by the new formula get that help?

The whole purpose of the bill is to make the funding about students and the unique characteristics that at-risk English language learners and special education students have, Lundeen told Colorado Politics Thursday.

“The purpose is not to shuffle the deck chairs and just put the money to the various districts,” which is the current system. He said the study simply would have ensured that what the bill says is happening.

Lundeen said he believes there are layers of accountability in HB 1448 without the studies. The first is that the law says to fund the students, which he called a “moral burden” upon the districts. The second is the legislative intent, as expressed in HB 1448, and that’s crystal clear, Lundeen said. The third is financial data collected by the Department of Education, which should show how the law is being implemented.

The legislative declaration in HB 1448 states that state needs require all students, including underserved or those facing significant challenges, complete high school and are ready for a career or postsecondary education.

But the state’s current school funding formula “drastically underfunds” the most underserved students and the educational attainment gap for those students has only worsened since the pandemic, the bill says. The new funding prioritizes equity, prioritizing funding for low-income students, special education, or students needing English language skills. The legislative declaration adds that the formula is also adjusted to consider differences among school districts and related to size, location, and cost of living.

It’s not a perfect system; Lundeen said he harkens back to the words of President Ronald Reagan, who once said, “Trust but verify.” Lundeen wants a more robust accountability system, maybe one with more regular reports, but said the politics of the capitol don’t allow for that level of accountability. “I’ll take whatever I can get,” he said.

McCluskie also addressed the concerns raised by CEA. “I am committed to keeping public schools public, and it’s unfortunate that this was read as something other than it was,” she said Thursday.

McCluskie said, “My effort is to make sure those dollars get to the schools and the classrooms where those kids are learning” and driving more equity into the school finance formula. “It is not about privatization. It is about making sure our kids have the best chance at a bright and brilliant future,” she added.

Ensuring that money gets to the students who need it most is McCluskie’s biggest concern and the point of seeking the studies that will now come out of the bill. 

Both the Boulder and Cherry Creek school districts are already doing what HB 1448 intends by moving resources to the students who need them most (although both districts are listed as opposed to the bill).

She’s also bringing amendments that will drive significant funding to small rural schools, sometimes as much as 15% more once the formula is fully implemented.

McCluskie said the current formula is not equitable and has created winners and losers over the last 30 years.  Bigger districts have benefited from the current formula, McCluskie said.

McCluskie said, however, she doesn’t want those districts to lose out, so she has an amendment based on a request from Douglas County that every district, regardless of size, would get at least 0.5% more than with the current formula.

“Ultimately, this is shifting to a student-focused approach in how we fund education,” which will benefit the entire state.

One other conversation that’s surfaced since the bill was introduced is consolidation. The examples cited include El Paso County, which has 14 school districts, and some lawmakers have suggested consolidation would result in cost savings at the administrative level or even in much smaller Otero County, which has five districts.

McCluskie rejected any notion of consolidation. “I’ve heard of those conversations,” she said, “but I’m not entertaining that now…and not planning to bring anything forward around consolidation.”

McCluskie said she’s been working on a new version of the school finance formula for more than 10 years, dating back to her days in the office of Lt. Gov. Joe Garcia. She said they took a trip to the Center School District in Saguache County at the northern end of the San Luis Valley, a district with a high percentage of at-risk, low-income students. She said the district’s superintendent had successfully gotten a BEST grant and a new school that is the centerpiece of that community.

It was meeting the students and the families in a community meeting, and the change that the school and its leadership were calling for in programs they could not afford, and challenges with recruiting and retaining teachers. It’s vastly different from the experience of urban and suburban schools.

House Bill 1448’s next stop is the House Appropriations Committee, but no date has yet been announced.