DENVER – An experiment in incentive funding for schools died before it could get off the ground Wednesday at the Legislature.
Senate Bill 200, which would have created an incentive funding program for high performing schools, was killed by the House Education Committee on a 8-5 vote with Rep. Land Sias, R-Arvada, joining Democrats against the measure.
While the concept of rewarding excellence within Colorado’s schools sounded like a good idea, the bill’s mechanism doomed it.
SB 200 proposed pulling one percent of total state funding from each district, amounting to an estimated $66.3 million, and redistributing it to the top 6 performing districts in small rural and non-rural categories.
That would have resulted in an median revenue loss for schools of $50,000.
In return, the top performing schools would be rewarded $498,000 plus a cut of the $56.4 million distributed on a per pupil basis
To ensure a fair competition, the bill would have directed the Colorado Department of Education to define each of the 178 school districts in Colorado based on size, and then further break them down by demographics so that similar schools would be competing against each other, said Rep. Clarice Navarro, R-Pueblo.
“We want to reward excellence funding to those districts that show excellent student performance when compared to their peer districts,” Navarro said.
For Durango School District 9-R, the reduction in funding would have resulted in a loss of roughly $455,000 based on its 2016-17 budget.
Julie Popp, spokesperson for 9-R, said the Durango district would be less affected than some others because of the county’s commitment to funding it through mill levies, but was concerned by the impact such legislation could have.
“Any cut in funding to the district would be detrimental to efforts, especially since the district has experienced huge losses in funding thanks to the negative factor and the disparity in per pupil funding throughout the state,” Popp said in an email. Rather than seeing innovation and success promoted by an across-the-board reduction, Popp said the money should come from a new source.
Luke Ragland, president of Ready Colorado, a Republican run non-profit focused on education reform, was the only person to testify in favor of SB 200.
Ragland said the bill gave lawmakers an opportunity to focus on what was going well in K-12 education instead of highlighting what was not.
Among those who spoke against the bill was Cathy Kipp, president of the Poudre School District Board of Education, who said she found SB 200 offensive.
“It implies that we can make districts better by withholding money from them,” Kipp said. “It implies we are holding back the best we can do for our students until we are given some sort of financial incentive.”
lperkins@durangoherald.com
