My school district, Delta County School District 50J is preparing for a 2 million dollar cut in state funding. It’s not alone.
These budget cuts haven’t come out of nowhere. To address a state budget shortfall of 1 billion dollars, Governor Jared Polis has proposed, among other things, ending the “enrollment averaging” doctrine for funding school districts. Under enrollment averaging in Colorado, districts are funded by taking the average student enrollment over the past five years and allocating funding per student based on that average. This approach shields school districts from huge fluctuations in funding year-over-year.
Despite an undeniable budget shortfall, ending enrollment averaging would be a thoroughly misguided decision, and would result in Colorado public schools seeing their staff gutted, their facilities crumbling, and plummeting student outcomes.
Across the state, districts have already been sounding the alarm.
Superintendent Chris Gdwoski of the Adams County 12th School District said, “The rhetoric is disconnected from the reality of school budgeting, scrapping the averaging formula will, in many school districts and schools, result in larger class sizes. It will increase the number of students without a qualified instructor in areas in which the supply of educators is especially limited, including special education, English language development, and support of students in schools with high poverty and mobility rates. And it will limit student choice through the elimination of electives and extracurricular programs with modest participation levels.”
It’s not hard to see the result of this. With the possibility of fewer extracurricular options, students will be less likely to attend school in the first place, driving funding down.
A study by the National Center for Education Statistics found that participants in extracurricular activities were 14.2 percent more likely to have no unexcused absences and 8.1 percent more likely to have never skipped a class.
Proponents of Polis’ plan to scrap attendance averaging claim that per-pupil funding may increase, bettering school funding. It’s a misguided argument, however, that rural public schools should continually get less and less compared with urban and suburban schools, an inequality that is rising, even now.
Even if that didn’t exist, students are not the only consideration for a functioning school system. Under enrollment averaging starting Colorado teachers are already 46th for pay in America, and are, in real terms, making 5 percent less than they were 10 years ago.
It’s surprising that Governor Polis would advocate for such a change, especially since his own party’s state platform claims education as a core value.
