Charter schools in Colorado often aren’t receiving an equal share, or any share, of local tax revenue generated by voter-approved property tax increases that are known as mill-levy overrides.
Voters have approved mill-levy overrides in more than 30 districts to fund schools over what the state sets as a limit for property assessment, and the time for districts to share that money with charter schools has come.
According to a survey conducted last year by the League of Charter Schools, a half-dozen of those school districts are already sharing all of the revenue from those tax increases. About another dozen are sharing less than 50 percent and some of those districts are giving none of that revenue to charter schools.
Senate Bill 61 would require districts to begin sharing those additional tax dollars equally with charter schools based on a per-student allocation. Charter schools would get roughly $19 million in additional funding under the plan, according to the League of Charter Schools’ survey.
In some districts, the gap in funding is enough money to say that the education of students in those public charter schools isn’t fair and equitable — or, for that matter, “thorough and uniform,” as mandated by the state constitution.
School districts are able to retain 5 percent of all other state and local funding for operational costs. It’s only the mill-levy override dollars where sharing with charter schools is discretionary.
SB 61 passed the Senate on its first floor vote Monday, over the vocal objections of several Democrats concerned that the bill would erode existing relationships between school districts and charter schools.
We share their concern. But we think the phased-in implementation over three years will provide enough time for district officials to plan for both the reduction in budgets and how the bill might interact with other funding agreements that are in place.
School districts should have been abundantly transparent in their ballot questions to voters, spelling out how the money would or would not be shared with charter schools. They frequently were not.
Given that lack of transparency and the existing gap in funding, SB 61 is a narrowly tailored fix to a specific problem.
School districts have another “out” in SB 61 too. They can simply ask voters whether the past mill-levy override dollars should be shared or not. If this bill is slated to have an insurmountable impact on a school district budget, the district would have three years before full implementation to ask voters their opinion on the issue.
And furthermore, any overrides that voters have already approved would be allotted to charter schools based on the language voters approved. Sen. Owen Hill, R-Colorado Springs, sponsor of SB 61, said money would only be shared with charter schools if they were part of the specific programs mentioned in ballot language or if the money was targeted to students enrolled in a specific charter school. An example would be if the money were intended for those learning English as a second language, and a charter school had those students enrolled.
Colorado’s mechanism to fund schools is a mess. The entire system is underfunded, but additionally there is disparity between districts. SB 61 is written with care to correct a major deficiency in how our schools are funded, and it should be passed.
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