For state Sen. Mike Johnston, school isn’t out for summer.
On Tuesday, the Denver Democrat made an exhaustive tour of Durango – the first of many stops on his drive back to Denver – where he made a forceful, if not yet bumper sticker-ready case for the School Finance Act.
The stakes are high for the bill, which Gov. John Hickenlooper already has signed. The bill’s passage triggered a process that will end in November’s election, when voters will embrace or deny a $900 million tax increase to fund schools.
Besides the added $900 million for schools, voter approval would funnel $2 billion to state schools.
It’s the first bid to comprehensively reform school finance in 20 years that has a chance of succeeding.
Johnston touted the act first at Fort Lewis College, which is in the midst of hosting a conference of 500 educators, including the superintendents of Durango, Ignacio and Bayfield schools. He then addressed a gathering at Durango Public Library, then The Durango Herald’s editorial board and finally to a crowd at Carver Brewing Co.
Johnston told every crowd that schools across Colorado would benefit from voter approval.
Colorado, he said, now spends $3,000 fewer per pupil than “what the average state in America spends, and $10,000 per pupil below what the highest state spends.”
Given the failure of the Lobato lawsuit, which would have required massive new amounts of dollars for poor school districts, he said “our only real avenue is the ballot.”
A snub by voters in November, he said, would be crippling immediately and in the long term. “If we don’t pass this, we’ll be back to each year fighting for scraps at the budget table,” he said.
Voter approval would return Colorado to prerecession levels of spending on K-12 education while introducing a host of reforms that teachers unions and principals say are desperately necessary.
Throughout his day, Johnston described problems in various districts. He said while a constitutional amendment forced Durango School District 9-R to reduce its mill levy, in Fort Morgan, he recently visited a school in which 80 percent of the students didn’t speak English; their parents had emigrated from Somalia to work in a meat-packing plant. Other districts’ infrastructure, he said, was in shambles.
Johnston said the bill would address each of these problems and more, including chronic cash shortages for special-needs programs that are mandated but woefully underfunded by both the state and federal government.
Pointing to research that shows terrific returns on investment in early-childhood education, Johnston told educators at FLC the act finally would guarantee full day care and kindergarten for every child.
One woman raised her hand and announced that anyone could add his or her name to an email list to volunteer as a signature collector – 100,000 signatures are needed to get the act on November’s ballot.
Johnston acknowledged Coloradans’ perennial skepticism of new taxes but said, “One of the reasons I think we have to build a coalition with a real sense of urgency now is that this is our best shot in a generation.”
cmcallister@durangoherald.com
