CO-04 (Special Election)
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(R) Greg Lopez
(R) Trisha Calvarese
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DEMOCRATS
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December 16, 2010 12:55 AM UTC
51 Comments
Help me understand –
When the school district receives the lowest per student funding in the Denver Metro area, and had a $21 million budget cut in ’08-’09 and $10 million more in ’09-’10, and
• are losing exceptional teachers to neighboring districts
• are halting expansion and improvement of existing programs
• have no more space to accommodate student enrollment growth
• increasing class sizes
• are moving most elementary schools to 4-track calendars
• are changing the current level of service
what are they supposed to do? Wait for more money? Ask the voters?
The above information came off the website of Citizens for DC Schools, an advocacy group that promoted 3A and 3B in 2008. These measures would have cost the average homeowner in Douglas County an extra $10/month to fund public schools.
http://www.citizens4dcschools….
Both 3A and 3B failed, and there were no other funding requests in this last election.
I don’t know the whole history of school funding results from previous elections, but I’m willing to bet not many of them passed.
Personally, I’m willing to pay a little more to support schools that educate our children. Public schools educate them, but are hampered by what is described above.
Let Douglas County implement the program and track the results for two years or more and then we’ll have an answer of sorts on whether vouchers are of benefit to the children of that county.
First off, I have more questions than answers after reading this diary so I’m not calling anybody until I have a whole lot more information.
It seems that the board didn’t even try to get the taxpayers of their own district to pay for their kid’s education.
And now they want to fleece the state on unaccredited institutions with non-certified instructors? If this were the proposed solution to any other government program’s budgetary woes, it would be laughed off the agenda.
Unless Douglas Cty is going to replace their police with voucher-paid private security….
Oh, crap! If a republican hadn’t already thought of that (and it’s likely they have cough Blackwater/Xe cough), then that will be next on the agenda…
They did – it failed bad and in 2010 Douglas County was not going to pass a school revenue measure.
Unaccredited institutions with non-certified instructors is irrelevant to the discussion. Ave Maria Christian Private School claims they offer accredited classes. St. Mary’s Academy (not sure if in DC or not) has been around here since 1864. I’m betting there’s some damn good teachers there.
Also, Colorado Departments do contract out with other entities to perform educational and other services. CDE contracts with nonprofit orgs to deliver educational programs, for example, and the instructors aren’t certified on a professional level. DOC contracts with nonprofits as well to provide education to prisoners. Department of Labor contracts out with nonprofits for workforce development.
Why shouldn’t a school district ‘contract out’ with other schools in the district to help provide better education for the children in the district?
I have no clue what point you’re trying to make about the police.
Looking into this a little more, because the diary was uninformative and so was your post, it looks like the voucher program – as proposed – would not be a good idea.
Mainly because CO taxpayer money would be spent in religious schools, and that is wrong.
Another thing, the diary failed to mention is that the Board wanted a small pilot program and when they couldn’t get that they opted for further study – i.e. no CO taxpayer money is going towards Douglas County vouchers anytime soon. Even if there was a decision, there would most likely be a lawsuit further delaying any changes.
So, Douglas County will continue to face budget cuts, crowded classrooms and underpaid teachers.
Ho hum….
But I’m not sure that the proposed voucher couldn’t be used there.
But assume it could.
Could it also be used at The New School? That’s the one in the store front waiting to get enough students to build a place. No licensing. No testing. Just the free market law of the jungle- if parents like the results more students will come. If not, they’ll leave.
The New School – what a name. I’m going to start a school named The Old School and teach kids the old school way!
I don’t know enough about the proposal to make an educated guess. The diary isn’t very informative and didn’t mention the plan is likely to go nowhere.
I’m not so sure about what is or or is not likely to happen. I would have thought at some point DougCo would have passed one of their 3A3B votes. (Or funded their libraries. Or incorporated Highlands Ranch. )
But as long as they can open enroll at the neighboring districts, and don’t get decent transportation anyway, why should they?
Home values have held up. New construction is set to take off again. Now, they are going to run their wells dry and run out of water, but who cares about that?
and the county will fall into inevitable decline. That’s the way it works when you shit on public education like they do in Douglas County.
so this is how it works? Vote to underfund your local public schools, then vote to grab more public money to pay for private schools?
Give me a break! If the citizens of Douglas county won’t pay their fair share to educate their kids properly, why should the rest of us make up the shortfall especially when that make-up money gets funneled to private, and more specifically religious, schools?
Read my post above.
Madmike’s diary made no reference to religious schools, and taxpayer money should not pay for religious schools.
Again, as I understood the diary, the district would keep 25% of the PPR as opposed to losing all of it to the private school. So, the district is in a way recovering 25% PPR (as opposed to 0%) on a student that is no longer in public schools. That sounded interesting.
Finally, Douglas County does pay it’s fair share for education in the state. Their citizens all pay the same sales/use tax you do that help funds the general fund K-12 budget. But because of TABOR they aren’t able to garner additional revenue for schools.
So, if children aren’t getting educated in Douglas, Denver, Baca or Pitkin counties, it is our responsibility to keep trying to help.
your schools are underfunded by your states funding formula that redistributes Douglas Counties wealth to produce failure in Denver, bond and mills failed and will fail because voters are tired of paying intrest to burrow money we already had. Simply put according to Colorado’s funding formula our money which is property tax, income tax and sales tax (all of which fund schools) is better spent on a 50% failure to graduate rate in Denver than it is here. Douglas County parents in search of choice are not the problem.
Example-
Would the parents of a DOUGCO student who enrolls at a private school in a different county (Arapahoe, Denver, Aurora, etc) get paid?
Where does the money go if the student is currently open enrolled in a neighboring school district? (LPS, CCSD, etc)
What if a student from outside DougCo open enrolls at a DougCo school, can they get a voucher to attend St Thomas Moore? Regis? Kent? St Mary’s?
They have finally found the path to circumvent the teachers’ unions and do the right thing for the students.
and everyone has a pony.
As someone who taught for more than seven years, and with two kids of my own, I know that teachers and even their unions care a lot more for kids — both numerically and educationally — than any voucher-pushing politician or school board member I’ve ever met. It’s simply not a laughing matter that political agendas are trumping kid’s education.
The data doesn’t show any improvement in generalized test scores or curriculum advancement in charter schools.
I prefer data to laughing, obviously. Especially when school boards are taking money away from school districts in a shell game and giving it to private companies and churches.
This is precious…(well, actually it is more specious than precious)
LBs’ quote is at the heart of the matter. Are there bad teachers? Sure. Are most teachers, bad teachers? No. The overwhelming majority are dedicated professionals…like my daughter-in-law. She sure as hell didn’t get into the trade for the income potential…nor the opportunity to become tenured.
Really, as I understand our dearest laughing Boy, the REAL issue is this part:
Data…Shmata, it comes down to this for LB and his ideological brethren:
Unions bad…industry good.
No more discussion, please. Thank you..
The teachers unions are the clearest example in this country of how a union has completely abandoned the mission of the employees they represent in order to wield political influence.
How’s that 30% minority graduation rate in DPS treating you?
teachers unions are solely reponsible for that statistic. I’m sorry…I’m just not so sure… myself…personally speaking.
Certainly mostly.
Let’s see it.
Every cent ever donated to a politician’s campaign by a teacher’s union.
So, LB, are you now claiming that everyone who contributes to political campaigns wants screw over students?
Show me some data.
The union in Denver has had its problems, but the AFT union in Douglas County has generally been well-received.
De-certify the NEA and the CEA, ban all political contributions by public employee unions, and we’ll be homies.
Start up a new union with the stipulation that nobody from the de-certifies unions may participate in leadership.
How’s that?
We’re not interested in an argument about labor unions. The point we were making is that some are better than others, just like in any other business or industry.
What’s a bad one, then?
(I won’t tell Alan – I promise.)
political agends trumped the children of Douglas County when the state decided that a Denver child is worth more. Politics is what send our money there and forces us to burrow money (bonds and Mill increases) to replace money we already had. Private schools have fgar better test scores and graduation rates than the Denver Public School District that we are currently funding.
as a “participating school”?
We’ll teach creationist sience He did it.
That will simplify the technical side significantly.
No girls.
Now the bathrooms get easier.
Text books can be all used, because very little has changed.
This is my plan.
Build a mosque/school/cultural center with public money and teach the kids about US imperialism and the universal brotherhood found in the Koran.
Yeah that will go over with the Fundies.
It’s called the Ethnic Studies department at CU.
vouchers to help the well-to-do pay a smaller out-of-pocket tuition at their private or parochial schools . . .
A very Merry Christmas to the upper class!
(Anyone besides me wondering if there isn’t something more that the little tax payers could be doing this holiday season to make the lives of their betters more comfortable?)
We can’t pass a vote to raise taxes to pay for our Douglas county students ourselves, but we can spend your tax dollars instead. I wonder where I should send my daughters to school next year? (I should really be checking to see who’s got the newest lacrosse field, Olympic swimming pool, and air-conditioned field house.) Thanks so much, suckas.
I only hope that there’s a complete disclosure of the names and addresses of the recipients of these voucher funds — and, I mean listed in the newspaper so that everyone can see who’s receiving their tax dollars.
$5,000 will cover such a huge amount of tuition that all the middle class will be able to take advantage of the better schools!
Full disclaimer: I did a search for private schools in Colorado and pulled up any that were labeled as being near DougCo. These are the ones that listed their tuition online. I did not omit a single one from the page I found.
So yeah, I have the same issue as you. What we’re doing is giving people who can afford private school a reward for being able to afford private school. I think there’s probably merit in discussing making schools more open for students, particularly by evaluating how children learn, but this strikes me as a dumb way to go about it. At best.
Education – a for realsies problem in need of a for realsies solution.
Hoo boy howdy! Can you imagine the sqwaking on right-wing radio then? Imagine state money supporting the kids of rich liberals. How’s that going to play down in the Springs?
But, somehow, if it’s DougCo, it’s OK.
You say that they’ll get $5 million “IN ADDITION TO its normal allocation”. How can that be/should that be?
I have little problem if Douglas County, in its infinite wisdom, wants to vote to underfund its public schools and INSTEAD take the money for private vouchers. Let ’em destroy themselves, just like El Paso County.
But why should they get EXTRA money from the rest of us? That’s, um, socialism! And surely, SURELY, Laughing Boy does not want to support that.
Please explain what law allows for this – so that we can challenge or change it. Thank you!
Suppose you were rich and already have your kids enrolled in a private religous school. Right now you pay all the costs and nothing comes from state – read as taxpayers. When the program goes into effect, you apply for a voucher. The school district gets to treat you as an additional student and collects another $5,000 that the disctict had not collected before the institution of the voucher program. Now, I as a taxpayer in Jefferson County get to pay for some rich kid getting a private, religous education in Douglas County. Talk about taxation without representation.
Which is why I asked what I asked.
See- the way it is now, if a student “open enrolls’ into DOUG CO from a neighboring district – say Littleton – then DC gets part of the $budget that LPS would have otherwise had.
So if a student from a neighboring district open enrolls, and then chooses caroman’s
madrassaschool do they get the voucher?If not – why not?
If so- wouldn’t every family with kids at Regis, Kent, St Mary;s, Machbeuf, Valor, CCA, etc and so on. open enroll at the nearest DougCo school, then take the voucher?
The funding principle is the same as online multi-district schools. This has turned into a private enterprise grab of taxpayer education funds.
A private company approaches a school district and offers to set up an online school program. If is gets qualifed as a multi-district program, students from all over the state can enroll. The district gets to count the online students and get money from the state which is promptly hands over to the private online school company – keeping a small handling fee of course.
Every October each school district takes a count of their students and sends it to the State. This is the number that is used to base state aid to the district. Private school students are not currently counted in that mix. But if a private school chooses to participate, their students will then become part of the count. Let’s say 1000 private school students participate and are added to DC’s count of 65,000 students. Now their count is 66,000. That is the number they send to the state for reimbursement. One school official who I spoke with said that, since local real estate tax money is not part of this deal, that they might even award a voucher to a non-resident of DC. For example, a Liittleton student who attends Valor Christian may qualify for a Douglas County voucher to attend Valor. It’s called “sharing the wealth.” My best advice to you is to talk directly with someone from Douglas County who can give you factual information. That’s what I did.
The question to which I keep returning is this: Can the Douglas County School Board unilaterally include ordinary private school students in the count?
It seems to me the Public School Finance Act permits the counting of private school students only in special cases and that an amendment to the Act would be necessary for DougCo to open up the count in the way the supporters of the proposal envision.
Douglas County officials who back the plan might not be the best authority on this question. On the other hand, I have not succeeded in getting any one else to weigh in authoritatively on this either!
And I really hope that they can’t. But they evidently think that they can (YES WE CAN? How ironic!). They’ve hired a lawyer from Colorado Springs (that ought to tell you something) who insists that they can. So it ought to be interesting how this plays out this spring. Frankly, I hope the state tell them to go sh-t in their collective hat.
No, the vote was to not pay intrest to burrow money that we already had but lost to the Colorado Department of Wealth Redistribution who took out tax dollars, property, income and sale taxes respectively and turned them into a 50% failure to graduate rate call the Denver Public School System. This is a battle over pennies while we are robbed of dollars, millions of dollars.
I believe madmike is mistaken in the following assertion: “If, next school year for example, one thousand students participate in the program, Douglas County would receive approximately $5 million from the State in addition to its normal allocation.”
The “Total Program” funding any school district receives is basically a product of the local per pupil revenue (PPR) rate multiplied by the number of students enumerated in the annual pupil count taken on the school day closest to October 1. The students have to be physically present in their schools on Count Day in order to be counted.
It seems to me that the critical question in relation to the Option Certificate Program is whether ordinary students sitting in private school classrooms would be counted. I believe the Public School Finance Act does not allow for this.
As I understand it, the Public School Finance Act has provisions for the counting of special needs students served at private schools under special contracts. It also has special provisions for online schools. And then there are charter schools, which are like private schools in some respects but are officially public schools. Students at charter schools do of course get counted. But a school district cannot contract with private schools willy-nilly and expect the students enrolled in the private schools to be counted.
If I am correct, then under this program the Douglas County School District would end up with LESS funding. Students who left the public school system in favor of private schools would go uncounted, and the school district would lose all of the PPR that it had previously received for such students. On top of this, the school district would shell out a subsidy valued at 75 percent of PPR for each of these students. There would be no dedicated income stream to fund this subsidy. Rather, this subsidy would drain away funds received to educate the students who remained in — and were counted in — the public schools.
That’s how I understand it, anyway. Are there any experts on the Public School Finance Act out there who can weigh in?
Here are some information resources:
https://cdeapps.cde.state.co.u…
http://www.cde.state.co.us/cde…
http://www.cde.state.co.us/cde…
http://www.cde.state.co.us/cde…
http://www.cde.state.co.us/cde…
http://www.cde.state.co.us/cde…
the way I understand DougCo’s plan is students will have to enroll at a Doug Co school to be eligible for the voucher (75% of the PPR for that student)
Then when they choose to go private, DougCo will send them their 75%.
The actual figure is slightly less, $4900 and something. I rounded up for simplicity’s sake. Again, I urge folks to go to the DC website to get more specific information or speak to someone who knows the specifics, a board member or someone in the central office who is working on this project.
Fucking greedy charlatans.
Wealthiest county in the state funded number 14 out of 14 metro counties and number 175 out of 178 in total districts, why? Because we are the war chest for the rest of the state. Our money is redistributed to cover others short comings. The parasite is not this county.
This is what goes through my head whenever I hear about school voucher programs. Encouraging parents to take their kids to private schools with different teaching styles and subjects just works to further divide our country.
Since the author of this article has opted to bring politics into the matter (as if politics is ever not a part of any equation) let me shed some light on just what the issue is here, money, taxes, yours mine and ours. Presumably the reader is supposed to interpret the article and get all up in arms at the Douglas County School Board and the county Republican Party for daring to put a part of an agenda that is important to conservatives into action. Let’s remember that that in this past election Republican Candidates carried 70 of the vote in this county and that we all live in a red county, so a GOP agenda should not seem out of place considering the makeup of our voters. 5 million is a big number and if this plan will indeed cost that much then I would say we may need to wait until we are financially healthy before exploring it. Let me give you a bigger number, $600,000,000 is the amount of debt that our school district owes on Mills, Bonds and such. We are discussing a nonprofit organization which is completely dependent on taxation for its stream of revenue. 600 million in debt, a figure surpassed (and just barely) by few Colorado School Districts. Why is that the case? We will never be financially healthy with this amount of debt hanging over our community. How is this even possible for an affluent suburban school district with median incomes just below 100k to be this deep in the hole? Two words can explain the problem, wealth redistribution. Douglas County is the war chest for the rest of the state and predominantly Denver Public Schools who receive between 3000 and 4000 more per student because of the states lopsided education funding formula. This formula redistributes our income taxes (.43 of every state income tax dollar funds education) and all the sales tax we pay on the items we buy. The general thinking seems to be that because our incomes are higher we must have truck loads of disposable money, this thinking is (since we are engaging in a political discussion) left sided shenanigans, we earn more, we owe more, we spend more and we are taxed more because we earn and spend more. Education is not just funded by your property taxes; the pool of “our money” relies quite heavily on sales tax as well as income and property. We have the ability to spend lavishly on education in this county, BEFORE TAXES, and a growing portion of people here have come to the realization the every time the yard signs for 3A and 3B hit the street what they are really saying is the following:
PURPOSED MILL / BOND YARD SIGN VERBIAGE
YES ON 3A AND 3B BECAUSE THIS MONEY WAS ALREADY SENT TO DENVER AND NOW WE NEED TO RAISE IT BACK UP (PAYING INTREST FOR IT IN THE PROCESS)
OH AND BY THE WAY WHEN YOU DO PASS THESE MEASURES YOUR PORTION OF THE NEXT ROUND OF CUTS TO THE EDUCATIONAL BUDGET WILL GROW IN ACCORDANCE.
Wow would that be some truth in advertising for the public. This plan would restore roughly 5000 of the money already being paid (again taxes) by parents to allow choice. Then of course if we do not pass the Mill / Bond we are greedy right winged kooks who only care about themselves.
Actually I am a right wing citizen who is sick of being told he is so very rich then I look at my School District and see that it is funded last of the 14 metro counties and 175th out of 180 at the state level and lest we forget the state itself floundering at the bottom (46th out of 50 I believe) in the national contest and I ask a simple question, Where in the hell is all this money we supposedly have in this county. Has it occurred to anyone that thinking people see how this system works, decide they do not agree and want out?
What is really funny is that a private school education (for the record I will never take my children out of public schools regardless of what happens with option certificates) may or may not be better than the education provided by Douglas County Public Schools, but their failure to graduate rate certainly is far less than Denver Public Schools. Is the purpose of education (public or private) to make successful children, or to pay homage to a system, a bureaucracy that has ceased to make sense and that is collapsing under its own weight? Do we want children educated, or is it only about keeping the system going, about official procedure? It seems to me if a child can graduate and become a functioning member of society I am willing to support that regardless of whether the school is public or private. If a child cannot graduate because their system is broken I am not willing to continue to toss money into the tree shredder. The system is at fault and the system is what must be punished not children in Douglas County. The State of Colorado consistently financially spanks the dog who did not mess on the rug and the dog (let’s call him Doug) continues to perform best in class. This will not continue forever eventually either the dog is going to bit or the spankings will become beatings and kill the dog. By screaming so vehemently about the unfairness of vouchers and that it is welfare for the rich you are all enabling the other side of the argument, the 800lb gorilla we feed at far more than a possible 5 million a year, Denver Public Schools. We allowing failure, we are propagating theft of our money to fund disaster then argue over the remaining pennies, completely foolish and myopic in view. This type of thinking is the very reason that people will not pass bonds or and seek alternatives to escape a system that devours to produce far less than it consumes. The emissions emanating from the Denver Public School District are offensive and a greater contaminate to the quality life here in Colorado than any carbon based fuel discharge is to our air.
Ask yourself a question, when did the parental and community become hyper involved with our schools? After the funding cuts started coming, it got people myself included off the couch and plugged into what is going on. The real issue is not choice it is the perception that the secret is out and that parents in Douglas County are trying to establish a pecking order of the fiscally damned. There is not pecking code for the damned and that is what all children in this state are on a fast track to being, damned.