Yesterday the debate over school funding grabbed the attention of the state senate. This is one fight worth keeping an eye on, as education is always one of the top 2-3 issues that candidates will run on in the fall.?From the Rocky Mountain News😕
Public school funding took center stage Tuesday at the Capitol as Senate Democrats fought off attempts to raid public schools’ savings accounts to fund everything from higher education needs to charter school construction.
Education advocates joined the fray when they called on lawmakers to override Gov. Bill Owens’ veto of a bill that would set aside $20 million to repair rural schools.
The Senate ultimately approved a school finance bill that provides $4.77 billion for K-12 next year, an increase of $205.1 million, thanks to the passage of Referendum C.
Included was an amendment that earmarks an additional $10 million for rural schools. It will help meet terms of a 1998 lawsuit, which requires the state to set aside money to fix rural schools in flush times.
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$4.77 billion?! Good Lord! Since tax money equals acheivement, every flippin kid in Colorado ought to be a genius by the end of the 2007. For cryin’ out loud.
Anybody know which year we passed the $1 billion mark for taxpayer-financed education?
jeez-o-pete! $4.77 billion!? God bless it. What the heck!? Cripers! Egads!
Boy, I could just cuss.
That is with a “B”, right? Can anybody really comprehend how much a billion dollars is?
I don’t even think a round of target shooting will remove the nauseating feeling I have. I’m giving it a try anyway.
smell ya later.
Masturbate on this for awhile. IDIOT
John Adams “Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower class of people, are so extremely wise and useful, that, to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.”
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Adams
School finance is measured in many ways but Colorado ranks in the bottom half among states in every measure.
On the only test taken in every state, the NAEP–often refered to as the national report card–Colorado ranked 6th among the states on the last result I saw.
Nothing clears the senses like the crack of a nine and the smell of gunpowder.
Marshall, methinks that if Johnnyboy could wrap his noodle around how much a billion is, he’d be changing his knickers.
$4.77 billion? Then why is my local superintendent so concerned about decreasing enrollment and the associated loss of PPOR revenues? Why is he so concerned about a projected 5% increase in the cost of supplies when revenues supposedly increased so much? How much of this $4.77 billion actually reaches the local districts?
Ten dollars says next election or at worst the one following will have School District 11 begging for yet more money.
There is no such thing as “enough” money for schools. Especially when they are run by the government.
There is no such thing as “enough” money for schools. Especially when they are run by the government.
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You just don’t get to see the increases in private school “funding” unless your kid happens to go to that school. Increases in gasoline prices, heating and cooling costs, supplies and materials, insurance, salaries, electronics, etc. happen in all types of schools public and private. And yes, reductions are made, belts tightened, reorganizations take place to save money on a regular basis.
Most of the increases are simply keeping up with inflation but new programs such as CSAP and No Child Left Behind (NCLB)cause new dollars to be spent.
We need a clear, consistent way of tracking that money. Voters in Denver have voted two mil levy increases in two years, giving the District almost $50 million more a year and yet poor kids don’t have textbooks. That money is consistent and independent of student enrollment and as property values go up, that annual increae goes up, too. There is a leak someplace and the money is pouring out of DPS.
Watcher, the cost of public ed will never go down, no matter how much “belt tightening” you claim they do. In fact, with mass immigration and ELL students, the education bureaucracy will suck ever more blood from taxpayers.
BTW, I did the numbers (simply). I rounded them down:
$3.75 billion going to 750,000 students equals about $5000 per student. If a classroom has only 20 students, that is $100,000 per classroom. If we pay the teacher 50K (for nine months of work) and 20K for supplies, that leaves 30K for admin and school costs.
I know that it is considerably more complicated than this, but from a common-sense POV, this is ridiculous. This doesn’t even include the millions that come in from the local districts or the feds.
I don’t have kids, so I’m really getting ripped off. Besides, good parents keep their kids away from public schools, therefore I’m subsidizing bad parents, bad schools, and stupid kids.
The better economy a country has the more education costs to be effective due to factors such as teacher pay(which needs to be competitive with other profeesions that need a similar education or you will have high teacher turnover(which is bad)) and the higher costs of goods and services(textbooks, desks, construction, ect.).
We won’t have a “better” economy ever again. Manufacturing creates wealth. Service transfers already existing wealth. Where are the new jobs? Service.
Manufacturing is quickly going down the WC…I mean…to China. The wages for service jobs are being degraded because of imported cheap foreign labor.
The population of the ignorant is exploding in this country and the only solution apologists for the education bureaucracy can come up with is higher taxes.
Someday, this whole f**king thing is gonna collapse, and I’ll thank that school down the road with the ol’ one-finger salute.
Plumber…
You surely aren’t laying the greed and short-sighted policies of big business getting all they can as quickly as they can to satisfy the insistently stupid short term profiteers on public schools? We probably agree more than disagree on your statements about the sorry stae of manufacturing and the degrading of wages in service jobs by importing cheap labor or exporting good jobs to find cheap labor elsewhere.
But, that agenda is not being pushed by schools. Schools reflect society. They don’t drive it. Schools try to adapt public policy to an increasingly splintered culture. They don’t create the culture. Kids are more educated now than they have ever been.
When this whole thing collapses, it will only be put back together by educated people.
“I don’t have kids, so I’m really getting ripped off. Besides, good parents keep their kids away from public schools, therefore I’m subsidizing bad parents, bad schools, and stupid kids.”
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Plumber,
Old post but wanted to reply – I do have kids, I am a parent, my public school isn’t bad and I’m not stupid. My boys go to a school where more than 75% of the students are Hispanic. The vast majority of the Hispanic parents take more of an interest in their children’s education than the Anglo parents.
You’re not getting ripped off, the children that you help educate today will help CO in the future.
Watcher, I was writing about the state of the economy, which you brought up, not schools.
More kids are educated than ever, but they are not better educated.
Car31, Yes, I’m getting ripped off, big time. And you are ripping off your kids.
If they turn into readers of history, they’ll thank you for it. I know I thanked my parents, they still feel terrible for not pulling me and my sisters out of public school. In my mom’s words, “I’m sorry. We were ignorant. We just didn’t know”.
YOU don’t have that excuse (ignorance) because I just told you. I didn’t call you stupid, but if you leave your kids in a public school, I’ll stand by what I did call you.