Two Words: “Sustainability” and “Cliff”
Because Colorado’s current school finance system is in need of a major overhaul, the legislature this year passed HJR 09-1020, a resolution establishing an Interim Committee on School Finance.
Thanks to a set of amendments to HJR 1020 successfully promoted by Great Ed and a number of other education advocates, the scope of the committee is broad, including a charge to consider:
How current reform efforts, both those already statutorily enacted and those proposed by various councils and public and private sources, could be synthesized into a new school finance act with other necessary supporting legislation to create an actionable vision for Colorado’s twenty-first century public education system that could and would be enacted only upon the provision of new resources by the voters of the state of Colorado[.]
In other words, “reform with resources.”
The Committee held its first meeting on Thursday, listening to testimony from a couple dozen “stakeholders.” about a broad variety of funding and reform issues. But out of those diverse speakers came some clear themes, including: 1) for a reformed system to be successful, we need a new school finance act with a significant, sustainable source of additional funding; and 2) we’d better come up with that funding soon, or we’re going to hit “the cliff” in 2011, when Referendum C, Amendment 23′s extra 1%, and federal stimulus dollars all expire.
Great Ed couldn’t agree more. On sustainability, check out the testimony of Great Ed Policy Director Lisa Weil before the Interim Committee. And when it comes to the 2011 cliff, nobody explains it better than Sam Adams in our latest video.
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