State legislators seem to be doing nothing to restore ongoing cuts to public school funding, Superintendent Troy Zabel reported to the Bayfield School Board on March 17.
He reported the Colorado Association of School Boards (CASB) is urging districts to ramp up efforts to get the legislature to restore funding levels dictated by Amendment 23, passed by voters in 2000. It required the legislature to increase per pupil funding each year.
Instead, school districts have had several years of take-backs of state funding, referred to as the Negative Factor. Districts began pushing for payback of these cuts a year ago, citing the improving state economy and state revenues.
But the state take-backs continued for this school year - expected to be $1.4 million for Bayfield, and $881,000 for Ignacio (estimate as of January).
According to a CASB memo dated March 17, halfway through the legislative session, "the prospect of buying down the negative factor is not something lawmakers are talking about."
The memo continues: "The $200 million buy down of the negative factor promised by Gov. Hickenlooper seems to have been forgotten. In fact, the legislature passed a motion to keep the negative factor flat."
CASB is urging school officials to contact legislators abut this.
According to figures from the School Finance Project, a group pushing to restore funding, state take-backs from the 2011-12 school year through 2013-14 totalled $4.74 million from Bayfield, $2.93 million from Ignacio, and $16.36 million from Durango.
Zabel said legislators aren't restoring funding cuts because of the TABOR Amendment passed by voters in 1992. TABOR dictates that if government revenue increases by more than a certain amount from year to year, the revenue above that limit is "excess" and must be refunded to taxpayers somehow.
Zabel objected, "We can't do the Negative Factor, but we're refunding tax money. They (legislators) are choosing not to fund Amendment 23 but to honor TABOR."
"We have to get proactive," he said, urging board members to contact State Rep. J. Paul Brown and State Sen. Ellen Roberts.
