Senators continued their debate on SB12-002, the civil union bill, into its third reading as male Republicans tried one more time to convince their colleagues to oppose the bill. The bill finally passed with debate that included biblical exegesis, prayers to Jesus, and Founding Father quotations. The Republican women senators joined Democrats in support of the bill.
Senator Kevin Lundberg, R-NoCO, summed up the long debate as a poignant example of "two extremely different world views competing for dominance in our nation." Senator Pat Steadman, bill sponsor, countered that the bill modestly modifies existing statutes to accommmodate civil unions. Lundberg replied that the bill affects 27 different areas of law and it's a radical change to the construct of marriage and family.
Other senators let loose. Senator Kent Lambert, R-COSpgs, used a camel and duck metaphor. "You can't take a camel and say it's a duck," he said. "Marriage is the same way. Our society knows what marriage is. Using government to change the definition of marriage is stretching the point."
Senator Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, counseled, "if you don't want a civil union, then you don't need to have one."
"Jesus loves all of us and only wants the best for us because Jesus loves you. And I would ask that you vote NO on SB12-002," said Senator Scott Renfroe, R-Longmont. His vote was based on "religion and morality," citing God, George Washington, and John Adams. Genesis says "it's not good for man to be alone...a man will leave his father and mother to join with his wife. That's traditional marriage - one man and one woman. The constitution is made only for a moral people, and we're changing that today," said Renfroe.
Senator Joyce Foster, D-Denver, quoted another Genesis passage: "We are created in God's image. We are all children of God and created in His image. He (or Her) lifts us up." She cited her idol, Anne Frank, who believed "there is goodness in everybody. We honored Holocaust victims last week - Jews, gays, disabled. They were victims."
Senator Ellen Roberts, R-Durango, hoped that SB-002 would rectify the 1992 election rejecting same sex unions. "That election stopped me in my tracks," said Roberts. "A person is a person is a person. I'm not Shakespeare. I don't have 'gaydar," and I don't really know what that means. Giving gays legal protections with civil unions is like a ladder without the first few steps. This bill clearly says that civil unions are not marriage. But this bill will restore some ot the collective soul we lost in 1992." PEN CCW
This post was published on April 26, 2012. Permalink ». Comments are disabled at this time.
Senators Michael Johnston (D-Denver) and Nancy Spence (R-Centennial) added about $16 million more dollars to HB12-1238 to push the revised children's literacy bill through the Senate State, Military, and Veterans Affairs committee. House Minority Leader Mark Ferrandino (D-Denver) found money in a State Land bucket to help out the bill, bringing funding totals up to about $20 million.
According to Spence, the number of third grade kids who can't read can fill Sports Authority Field at Mile High. That's about 80,000 kids. More precisely, about 25 percent of Colorado kids aren't proficient readers by third grade. The bill requires schools to contact parents early about reading deficiencies and talk to parents about holding their child back a year to give kids "the gift of time."
The money is geared to developing more proficiency in teachers in identifying non readers and providing more differentiated help for the kids. Dale McCall of BOCES said the money will help rural Colorado teachers have resources to work more effectively with non readers. "We have 30 school districts in Colorado with one administrator. We don't have a lot of capacity in rural Colorado."
The bill passed on a 4-1 vote, with Senator Tim Neville (R-SJeffco) voting No. He also chided a teacher who testified that literate children are essential for our democracy. "This is a Republic, not a democracy," Neville corrected her.
Holding a kid back can cost the state anywhere from about $6000 to over $11000, depending on the per-student funding for the school district. No discussion occurred around how many kids may actually be held back. Some of the $20 million can be used for additional tutoring, longer school hours, and more days in school. But basic math shows that if more than 3333 students per year are held back for non proficient reading, the $20 million is all used up. PEN CCW
This post was published on April 26, 2012. Permalink ». Comments are disabled at this time.
Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! Education! Education! Education! Snarky observers in the House Chamber peanut gallery scored both parties a 10 based on their ideological flipflops over HB12-1335, also known as The Long Bill. The Long Bill sets the state's General Fund budget for 2012-13.
Positions reversed on jobs and education
House Republicans surprisingly took up the Education shield and House Democrats unexpectedly picked up the Jobs spear. Thinly veiled “gotchas” were hurled across the chamber aisle in a seven hour pitched battle, ending with Republicans up one. Experts expect the score to even out when the bill moves to the Senate.
Democrats took the first shots by introducing multiple amendments based on two unexpected money pots: approximately $5 million available from either fewer prisoners needing prison beds or a raid on the Colorado Department of Education social studies and science test assessment fund.
Citing an immediate need for jobs and a distant need for the tests, Democrats had numerous uses for the CDE funds to support “job creation” and “job creators.” Republicans cried foul, saying the money would come “straight out of classrooms.” These mantras reversed the usual platitudes in which Republicans plead for economic development and Democrats decry education cuts.
Declining prison population makes money pot
When the deep voices of House Republican No's overwhelmed the higher and softer pitched tones of Democratic Yes's on these amendments, legislators flipped back to their usual positions. Democrats wanted to use dollars from the state's declining prisoner population for education, veterans, or helping the poor. Republicans said No, based on the potential job losses in eastern plains towns hosting privately owned prisons. The GOP position is complicated by the job losses in public schools, but those are often union jobs... and so it goes.
Representative Dan Pabon (D-Denver) offered the most unusual amendment to the Long Bill. He wanted to deny state funding for vasectomies and Viagra for males if women were denied state funding for contraception. The peanut gallery speculated on the babyboom that might ensue, and decided that would be a good thing for the long-term efficacy of PERA.
Representative Cheri Gerou (R-Evergreen) was having none of Pabon's tomfoolery. “This is not a serious response to the budget,” she said. Pabon retorted that he's “tired of threats to women's health services.” He eventually pulled out his amendment after noting how firmly he stood behind his commitment to raising the issue. At that point, his puns petered out and the fight moved to other more mundane topics. PEN,CCW
This post was published on April 12, 2012. Permalink ». Comments are disabled at this time.
No stone left unturned is the public education motto of recent legislature sessions. The first bill introduced in the House this year, HB12-1001, approved rules to implement SB10-191, the teacher evaluation law that fundamentally changes teacher performance review and tenure. The bill passed 98-1 in a bipartisan sweep.
Republicans and Democrats both love local mandates
Since then, Republicans have allied with some Democrats to eviscerate local school control, set public teaching priorities, create additional rules around parental involvement and permissions, insert new programs, loosen school disciplinary procedures, enforce public negotiation of employee contracts, deny unions automatic membership payroll deductions, and eliminate trans fats from kids' diets.
School districts get to cut budgets, and not much more
About the only duty left to school boards is budget cutting, as state funding for Colorado public school kids has declined about $700 per kid since 2009. Many school districts have cut millions of dollars from their budgets.
Jefferson County Schools, the state's largest district, has slashed over $50 million since 2010-11, and taken over $56 million out of its savings account to cover its costs. The total decrease equals $107,600,000 since 2010, with up to $40 million in cuts scheduled for 2013-14, depending on state funding and property tax revenues.
Costs to districts of mandates rarely calculated accurately, if at all
The legislature didn't calculate the cost to districts of implementing SB10-191 when the bill passed in 2010. Now we know. Large metropolitan districts will spend in the millions, with Jefferson County School District estimating $4 million.
No one knows how much HB12-1238, sponsored by Representative Tom Massey (R-Poncha Springs) and Senator Michael Johnston (D-Denver), will cost either. This bill sets up processes for kids who aren't proficient readers by third grade, placing emphasis on retention rather than so-called “social promotion.”
Retention costs more than $6100 per student, which is what the state currently provides per student for a year in Colorado public schools. No one has proposed a bill to put $6100 per child for remediation starting in pre-k, a strategy that would probably do more to reduce reading deficiencies in kids.
Johnston likes taking the local out of local control
Johnston, always busy on school issues, also is sponsoring HB12-1149 that allows parents with kids in non-performing schools to go straight to the State Board of Education after two years of a district trying to turn those schools around. Opponents say the bill doesn't give districts enough time to show improvement and pits parents against each other.
Johnston's bill says that if local boards want to give its schools more time, they can be second-guessed by the State Board, again taking the local out of control and decision-making away from elected officials closest to problems.
Conti wants open budget negotiations - but not for the legislature
HB12-1118, a bill sponsored by State Representative Kathleen Conti (R-Centennial) tells districts how to conduct their employee contract negotiations by mandating public negotiations. Of course, school districts are unable to tell the legislators to do their budget negotiations in public, even though many decisions relating to the budget are handled behind the closed doors of the governor's office and Senate and House leadership.
School boards are at the foot of the elected officials' mountain in the state, so they have to live with the mandate stones from the feds and the state that avalanche down hill. Ironically, state legislators complain non-stop about federal mandates, many of them related to education. But once an avalanche starts, apparently, it can't be stopped, until it hits the bottom of the mountain, and that would be in the laps of local governments. PENCCW
This post was published on April 3, 2012. Permalink ». Comments are disabled at this time.
Surprisingly, Colorado does not know how much it costs to educate k-12 students. The legislature doesn't know if the state is paying too little or too much.
Tracie Rainey, executive director of the Colorado School Finance Project, met with the Joint House and Senate Education Committee today to review Colorado's 18-year-old School Finance Act. The presentation offered a path to reforming the Act that includes re-balancing education funding from 63 percent by the state and 37 percent by local districts to roughly 50-50.
State clear on standards, but not on money
The 50-50 ratio, however, begs the question of exactly how much it costs to educate students to academic standards set by the state legislature. Apparently, no state has a definitive answer to that question, mostly because the dollar number may be too high to realistically fund, according to Augenblick, Palaich, and Associates, the Project's consultants.
State students demographics show big changes
Even so, the School Finance Act can use significant updating. Student demographics have dramatically changed since 2002. Student population has increased by 100,000 students, and over 41% of students are on some combination of free and reduced lunch (339,723 out of 850,000 students). Justin Silverstein of Augenblick says that the distribution of poor kids is uneven, making it difficult to get enough money to the right places. The free and reduced lunch population is the fastest growing in the state. Gifted and Talented students increased by over 16,000, to more than 60,000 students, in the decade.
Rainey believes that the current revenue formula for schools is out of whack. She says that a property tax of roughly 40 mills would re-balance state to local school funding. The School Finance Project also offered a path to calculating the true cost of educating children. After setting a base price for regular students, variables for special education, non-English speakers, free lunch students, and gifted and talented students should be calculated.
State may need $1.40 per $1 of spending for 40% of kids outside base formula
John Augenblick, a consultant, eyeballs that number at about .4. That is, for every $1 spent on "regular" students, the state will need $1.40 for the other students. This estimate does not include facilities, transportation, family education, or food services.
If the state decides to update the School Finance Act, it will have to phase in a new funding formula, says Rainey. "There will be an order of doing things. The state accountability system is holding people to standards of education. The state has an obligation to provide resources to meet the standards. There has to be a right balance - there needs to be a discussion about accountability and the financial component for districts to carry forward." PEN, CCW
This post was published on March 21, 2012. Permalink ». Comments are disabled at this time.
