Educators scrambling after snub from voters
Cortez schools among victims in Amendment 66 crash-and-burn
By Joe Hanel
Herald staff writer
DENVER
– Education advocates are reacting with a mix of resolve and confusion
to the staggering size of the loss of Amendment 66 at Tuesday’s
election.
With votes in 51 of the
state’s 64 counties fully counted, the income-tax increase for schools
had lost 35 percent to 65 percent.
Many Republicans were quick to pin the loss on Gov. John Hickenlooper, who faces re-election next year.
But at the Capitol, legislators said they would find a way to help the state’s schools, although they aren’t sure how.
And
for Alex Carter, the loss has him wondering how he will be able to give
a decent education to kids in Montezuma-Cortez schools, where he is
superintendent.
“We simply do not
have the resources we need to offer a world-class education to our kids.
And we’re not going to,” Carter said. “Colorado needs to wake up. I am
really disheartened by this.”
Cortez
schools have adopted a four-day week to save money. They cut librarians
and ended elementary school art classes. Kindergarten classes have up
to 29 5-year-olds in a single room.
Local
voters supported a bond for a new high school last year, and Carter
thinks the community couldn’t sustain a property tax hike for its
schools.
Sen. Mike Johnston,
D-Denver, designed Amendment 66 to help districts such as
Montezuma-Cortez by rewriting the state’s two-decade-old school-finance
formula.
Through the years, state support has drifted toward richer districts, and inequalities grew among schools.
But
repeated attempts to reform the system have failed because they amount
to taking one school’s slice of the pie and giving it to another.
Johnston’s
gambit was to make the pie bigger before he resliced it, making sure
just about everyone got a bigger slice. La Plata County schools, which
have richer tax bases thanks to the gas and oil industry, would have
gotten small increases – or, in Ignacio’s case, no real increase.
Montezuma-Cortez schools, where property values are lower and natural
gas isn’t a factor, would have received an extra $1,200 per student.
Johnston
led a coalition of Republicans and some Democrats on several
school-reform bills the last several years, including a controversial
revamp of teacher tenure that created a deep rift within the Democratic
Party.
But Republicans voted
against Johnston’s new school-finance act because it called for a
billion-dollar tax increase. It passed with only Democratic votes, but
it won’t take effect unless voters approve a tax increase by 2017.
House
Republicans released an education agenda Wednesday for 2014 that
borrows some of the most popular parts of Johnston’s finance reforms,
including boosting funding for charter schools and English language
learners, and changing the way the state calculates school populations.
But without extra funding for all schools, charter schools will have a hard time getting any extra cash out of the Legislature.
Carter says there’s not much more his district can do without added resources.
“It
is incredibly disheartening that people who say they value education
only value it as long as it doesn’t cost them anything,” Carter said.
Other
school advocates, like Colorado Children’s Campaign President Chris
Watney, say there are reasons to hope even in the landslide defeat.
“Obviously,
I’m really disappointed, but I’m not discouraged because I did not hear
at any point during this campaign that people are not committed to
education reform,” Watney said.
Johnston thinks events outside Colorado might have influenced voters here.
Internal
polls showed Amendment 66 was holding up well until about a month ago,
when the federal government shut down and the rollout of the Affordable
Care Act bombed. Undecided voters quickly decided against the amendment,
Johnston said.
“We took about the
hardest last four weeks you could have expected in an election cycle
when you’re trying to reinstill people’s faith in investing in the
competency of government,” he said.
Many Republicans, though, blamed Hickenlooper, including Ryan Call, chairman of the Colorado Republican Party.
“The
people of Colorado clearly reject his radical agenda that is hurting
families, small-business owners and senior citizens. Colorado voters are
ready to elect a governor who, unlike Gov. Hickenlooper, will listen to
the people of Colorado, not the out-of-state special interests,” Call
said in a news release on election night.
Hickenlooper’s
campaign team created the strategy for Amendment 66. Curtis Hubbard,
spokesman for the Amendment 66 campaign, said it wasn’t out of line to
ask voters for a tax increase – something only voters in Colorado can
approve.
“There’s no overreach when voters are given the ultimate decision,” Hubbard said.
