Your Voice: You can’t fund public education with bake sales

It felt a little like Ground Hog Day at the State Capitol last week as hundreds gathered alongside school district superintendents to call for a solution to the funding crisis surrounding Colorado’s public schools.  As our state prepares to issue TABOR refunds, they are also preparing to cut education funding – and increase the negative factor – AGAIN.  Democratic House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst echoed the concerns of citizens, stating, “We are going to have to cut education this year if we don’t find a solution.”

Sure enough, Governor John Hickenlooper’s proposed 2016-17 budget includes a $50 million cut in K-12 education funding.

As Colorado has continued to cut funding to public education, our PTAs and other parent groups have stepped up their fundraising efforts to try and fill that funding gap.  That gap is currently an $850 million massive hole – the amount our schools are underfunded by – and filling that hole with school fundraisers is an impossible feat.  Yet parents, desperate to make sure their children have a chance at a quality education, try.

National PTA and Colorado PTA have cautioned our members about using fundraising dollars to make up for school needs that the state and local school districts should be providing.  PTA itself has long been mistaken for being a fundraising arm of our schools.  Established in 1897, and nearly 5 million members strong, PTA is the oldest and largest child advocacy organization in the nation.  Moneys raised by PTAs are meant to provide enrichment to the educational experiences of our children and to promote parent and community involvement and engagement.

Though well-intended, fundraising by PTAs, and other parent organizations, is creating a huge disparity in funding and resources.  The inequities, as a result of parents trying to fund what the state won’t, grow each year.  Some school communities have the ability to raise $20,000, $40,000 or even $100,000 or more. Those schools, and the children who attend them, can survive and even flourish despite deep funding cuts by the state to their education.

Unfortunately, in those school communities where the majority of the student population is at or below the poverty level, and where many children are transient and homeless, the story is very different. Their ability to raise one-tenth of that raised by school communities with better resources and higher economic standing is almost non-existent.

A recent article from Chalkbeat highlights the inequities in our schools.  “This is the state not fulfilling the obligation to our kids,” said Lisa Weil, executive director of Great Education Colorado …” Colorado ranked 43rd among states and Washington, DC for per-pupil education funding, according to Education Week’s 2015 Quality Counts report, a wide-ranging look at education trends.

Our state constitution says Colorado will provide a “thorough and uniform” education for our children and Amendment 23, passed in 2000, requires education funding keep pace with inflation.

Then in 2008, when the recession hit, the state legislature reinterpreted Amendment 23 and found a back-door, known as the negative factor, that allows them to remove money from K-12 funding to distribute for other state needs.  The negative factor is now above $850 million and new budget projections increase the negative factor this year by $50 million.

 Colorado has one of the largest, most thriving economies in the country, so there doesn’t seem to be much excuse for this.  As House Speaker Hullinghorst’s noted 1/13/16: “…new Coloradans have come here because we are a leading state in bouncing back from the Great Recession.  Today, with a jobless rate of only three point six percent, we have an economy that’s the envy of 41 other states. And businesses in Colorado are enjoying record profits.”

But the issue, and our state constitution, are complicated.  Suffice it to say voters and legislators, together, have created serious unintended consequences that require the state to cut funding for education (and infrastructure) while simultaneously issuing refunds.

Moffat Consolidate School District #2 Superintendent Kirk Banghart stated it well at the Capital last Monday, Jan 11^th, “The state’s current budget situation, in which it is issuing taxpayer refunds but facing spending cuts, prevents schools from keeping pace with inflation and enrollment growth and from repaying the debt owed to students. Policy makers have the responsibility of restoring as much of the lost funding as possible.”

It is time for action.  In order to provide the quality education our children deserve and to meet the growing needs of our growing state, our legislators must address this problem in this year’s legislative session.  PTA members need to revisit their mission and all parents must refocus their energy into advocating for state-level change and to urge lawmakers to address the school funding crisis.  Despite good intentions, fundraising will not address the depth of this state-wide problem.

Colorado PTA encourages our legislators to work together to find a solution and to present that solution to voters in November.  The future of our children, and our state, deserve no less.

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