Colorado schools have $17.8 billion in maintenance and renovation needs over the next eight years, according to a statewide schools facilities study released Wednesday.

The study, required as part of the 2008 Building Excellent Schools Today law, was the first-ever comprehensive structural review of 8,419 buildings, from large classroom buildings to sheds.

The $17.8 billion estimate covers only what the study calls Tier I buildings – basically those used for instruction.

The study found those buildings need $9.4 billion of deferred maintenance work between now and 2013. An additional $13.9 billion is needed for energy and educational suitability projects. A final $3.9 billion in work is estimated to be necessary from 2014-18.

That’s a gigantic cost. There isn’t much talk out there about how in the world it all could be paid for over the next several years. I haven’t taken time to look at how the costs were determined, but I’m guessing the Statewide Facility Assessment looked at conventional financing arrangements.

Colorado may never get all these capital needs met, but if we’re serious about it, we can accomplish more by thinking outside the box. I would recommend state leaders start by looking at some ideas my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow brought forward in an op-ed he wrote last fall about the school shortage in Denver’s Stapleton neighborhood — particularly, public-private leasing arrangements and/or contract schooling.

It’s going to take creative leadership on many levels for Colorado to address financial shortages. I hope the Capital Construction Assistance Board is taking a look at these outside-the-box ideas and how they can be promoted at the local and state level.

Denver’s Piton Foundation and 9 News have teamed up to create the Colorado School Choice / Escuela Para Mis Hijos site. The site provides some different information than is available on SCFK — with special emphases on schools’ academic growth ratings and student demographics.

Click the play button below (or follow this link) to listen to my Education Policy Center friend Pam Benigno discuss the newer site with Van Schoales of the Piton Foundation on an informative 18-minute iVoices podcast:

Besides the site itself, Pam and Van talk about the need for parents to have access to the best information on schools generally. In 2007 Pam fought to ensure that schools would still have to give paper copies of the School Accountability Reports (SARs) to all parents.

Eventually the SARs were phased out and replaced, and today there is no requirement for parents to get paper copies of reports. But that’s probably just an example why the kind of information provided on sites like School Choice for Kids and Colorado School Choice will be needed for the foreseeable future.

In one of the most fascinating (and longest) education articles out there, Elizabeth Green wrote in the New York Times Sunday magazine about “Building a Better Teacher.” The experts she talked to suggest that the answer may be the latter, that there are specific methods and techniques (and a new vocabulary of teaching terms) that can be used more successfully train high-quality instructors.

However, over at Education Next, Harvard’s Paul Peterson says one of Green’s key conclusions is misguided:

…She says we will need millions of additional teachers to cover baby boom retirements, and wonders how we can find enough good ones.

The answer is that we can’t–not even with more effective education schools or elaborate merit pay programs or by ruthlessly dismissing ineffective teachers.

Dr. Peterson makes an excellent point. Don’t get me wrong: Overhauling teacher preparation and enhancing alternative licensure programs, as well as implementing compensation and tenure reform, are important strategies for policy makers to pursue. But they aren’t enough to solve the problem of getting all students connected to the instruction of quality teachers.

Notice I didn’t necessarily say in the classrooms of quality teachers. Dr. Peterson expounds:

As I explain in Saving Schools: From Horace Mann to Virtual Learning, we need fewer teachers, not more, and those few teachers must reach thousands of students at a time. Fortunately, this possibility, once remote, is now arriving with a speed as rapid as that of the avatar-laden space ship zeroing in on the planet Pandora. As we enter the world of high-powered notebook computers, broadband internet connections, 3-dimensional curricula, open-source product development, and internet-based games, both co-operative and competitive, students will learn by accessing dynamic, interactive instructional materials that provide information to each student at the level of accomplishment he or she has reached.

I’ve written about cyberschools here many times before. Here in Colorado, as much as in any other state, competitive innovation continues in this field as a way to reach more students. Are we at the place yet where teachers can “reach thousands of students at a time”? No, but the day is fast approaching. In the meantime, staying away from burdensome regulations on online education and pursuing quality teaching reforms (like the list I mentioned above) are two important approaches we need to pursue.

Such reforms include the groundbreaking teacher training efforts highlighted in Green’s New York Times piece. The path is clear to how we can improve (and quite possibly in a dramatic fashion) educational outcomes in the near and long-range future. The political power of groups invested in protecting the status quo can only impede progress for so long.

See also:
Terry Moe Touts Power of Technology to Transform Politics of Education – July 30, 2009
Disrupting Class Means Future Change for School System, Teacher Unions – January 5, 2010

HB 1296 would have provided low-income families with an annual $1,000 tax credit for enrolling their child in a private school. The bill would also have provided a grant of $1,000 to any public school that loses a student to a private school as a consequence of the tax credit.

The legislation would have given low-income families a financial incentive to send their child to a private school, reduced public school class sizes as more children took advantage of the tax credit, and provided public schools with a $1,000 grant to help them give the children that remain a better quality education.

What’s more, HB 1296 would have saved the state millions of dollar, according to the official fiscal note prepared by Legislative Council: $4.9 million in savings for the first year, $6.9 million in the second year, and as much as $26 million by 2022. [link added]

Over at the GoBash blog, my Education Policy Center friends also highlighted some of the shameful lobbyist arguments used against this legislation (and its companion bill, HB 1295), which would have provided additional opportunities for many students while saving money for the state and public schools. I guess some people are bigoted against schools not run by the government, and that’s just the way they are.

I was going to write about this story last week, but it saddened me too much. I needed some down time with my Legos and my Nintendo Wii this weekend. And, of course, it helped a lot that Mr. Rainey put into words some of my same thoughts.

Let’s not give up, Colorado! These important tax credit proposals deserve serious consideration — even if better late than never.

I’m talking about former Arvada state senator Al Meiklejohn, who died Monday at age 86 and will be put to final rest today. As reported in this week’s Denver Post obituary, Meiklejohn served six years on the Jefferson County Board of Education and “constantly pushed for public-school reform and better salaries for teachers.” For his service he has a Jeffco elementary school named after him.

You know Senator Meiklejohn was a man of influence and stature when in the week of his death he has received such high praise from two very different sides of the education spectrum. First, the teachers union in their CEA Capitol Connection blog declared him “a champion for public education,” highlighting a 1996 feature to him in their own magazine on the occasion of his retirement from the state legislature.

Meanwhile, homeschool parental rights advocate Treon Goossen wrote very kind and moving words about Meiklejohn in her weekly email update:

I speak often of Sen. Meiklejohn, who was my friend. I have been thinking of all of the times he stood for us against a very strong public school majority. He was part of that majority and yet he fought strongly for our right to educate our children at home, free from the oversight of school districts. I remember the many conversations with him when Rory and I worked to get the law passed and in subsequent sessions. He helped stop threats to tighten regulations and worked with us to improve the law. I have never seen anyone fight so valiantly for a freedom that he would never choose. I remember his kindness to a mom, pregnant with her 5th child, and helping her to understand a complicated process and giving her the courage to fight on when the odds were so against us. To me, he was one of those treasures that come into your life, rare and delightful. Every parent who home schools in this state, and even in other states where our law was used as a model, should honor the memory of this wonderful man.

Indeed, Senator Meiklejohn played a very important role in the passage of Colorado’s homeschool law, as explained in depth by my Education Policy Center friend Marya DeGrow in the 2008 Issue Paper Colorado’s Homeschool Law Turns Twenty: The Battle Should Never Be Forgotten (PDF).

R.I.P., Al Meiklejohn, friend of public education AND supporter of educational freedom.

Well U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is a big basketball fan, too, and was once a good college basketball player. No doubt about that. So in one sense I understand why this morning Duncan announced 16 states are finalists for the first round of Race to the Top money. Colorado, which asked for $377 million to implement reforms, is among them.

Since no one knows exactly how many grant awards will be distributed, it’s hard to say how this all will play out and whether states will even get the amount they asked for. But Colorado hasn’t helped itself with a consensus approach, which among other things has created a council to study how to tie teacher tenure and evaluations to student academic growth, rather than actually try to fix the law itself.

And today Ed News Colorado tells us:

Sen. Michael Johnston, D-Denver, had been working on comprehensive evaluation and tenure reform legislation before Ritter’s plan was announced. He says he still plans to introduce a bill but said Wednesday it might not happen for several weeks.

Not exactly the kind of change we can believe in. But as Michael Petrilli explains at the Flypaper blog, with 16 states in the field, the competition isn’t exactly stiff (what he describes as “a sad day for reformville”):

…Arne Duncan has spent a year saying that he was going to keep the bar high. But really? New York, which failed to pass a slew of reforms last month? Kentucky, without a charter school law? Ohio?

Who knows? Maybe Duncan the big basketball fan wanted to include Kentucky and New York because the UK Wildcats and Syracuse Orangemen are both ranked in the nation’s top three teams right now. (Of course, that doesn’t explain why Kansas didn’t make the Race to the Top cut.)

But if we’re going to stick with the hoops analogies, maybe Race to the Top would be taken more seriously if the Department of Education had decided to go only with an Elite Eight group of finalists. And Duncan and crew still might be able to redeem themselves by limiting the winners to a Final Four, whether or not Colorado deserves to be among them.

The only weird part about it might be having to watch the “One Shining Moment” musical montage at the end of the award presentations, with clips of state education department employees filling out paperwork, state lawmakers voting on bills, and state officials personally lobbying Secretary Duncan for their share of the winnings. But ’tis the season:

A bill now advancing in the General Assembly would require school districts to make budget information available online, including discretionary spending. House Bill 1036 argues that districts ought to take advantage of technology to allow for greater transparency.

We question whether a mandate is needed, but agree with the intent and urge districts to use the technology on their own.

As my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow noted in his recent report “What Should School District Financial Transparency Look Like?” (PDF), HB 1036 is a small step forward but a relatively weak mandate.

By comparison, last year’s SB 57 that made it through one house of the Colorado legislature (before being double super-killed) was a much stronger mandate. In February 2009 the Denver Post published an eerily similar editorial supporting SB 57, titled “Shine a light on school budgets”:

Today, the bill is expected to be debated on the Senate floor. Lawmakers should take the opportunity to put some of the teeth back into the transparency law, remembering that open government is better government.

Left to their own devices, many school districts won’t publish the information. We understand many of their concerns, especially when it comes to the cost of putting all of that information onto the Internet….

But taxpayers deserve to know how their money is being spent, and the Internet allows for that transparency.

Last year the Post urged strong teeth be put into the school transparency bill, even as lobbyist factions at the Capitol worked behind the scenes to stop it. This year the Post is cautious about supporting the weaker mandate backed almost unanimously. What’s up? The more dire budget situation, perhaps? I’m not sure, but thought it made for an interesting contrast.

In any case, it’s good to see Denver’s only major daily newspaper taking a stand for local governments showing taxpaying citizens how their money is being spent. With the news that tomorrow the U.S. Department of Education will unveil winners of Race to the Top federal grant dollars, Colorado officials can only hope there are many more millions of publicly-accountable dollars available.

Whether it’s money that comes from property taxes or vehicle fees or state funds or Race to the Top money, the message is the same: If you can’t defend it, don’t spend it!

As News 5’s Andy Koen reports, Colorado Springs School District 11 last week voted to spend $50,000 on the lawsuit, even though a Democrat state legislator says the money simply isn’t there in the budget, and an education legal expert says these lawsuits are ineffective (click here to watch a 2-minute video of the news story):

The schools already takes the biggest share of the state budget, roughly 43 percent. State Senator Abel Tapia, who sits on the joint budget committee, says they don’t have the money to pay if the state loses.

“We really don’t have a plan of attack in order to finance that if it happens because the amount is so incredibly high that even this year, we’re lucky to fund what we’re going to fund,” Tapia said.

UCCS Political Science professor Joshua Dunn has written extensively on education funding lawsuits. He says they generally don’t work.

“If the plantiffs win and if they actually do manage to extract more resources out of the state legislature, and those are big if’s, it’s very doubtful that the money will lead to substantial changes in the quality of education,” Dunn said.

Jefferson County Schools is one other district that has voted to join the lawsuit. There may be others. This little kid sure doesn’t have time to keep track of them all. But why should I be upset about taxpayers funding both sides of the Lobato case? After all, it’s for the kids, right? Sorry, never mind.

Yesterday the Denver Post’s Jeremy Meyer and Burt Hubbard reported some of what can be learned by having an easier peek behind the financial curtain:

Spending on items other than salaries and bonuses by the Jefferson County and Douglas County school districts totaled $106 million and $91 million, respectively, from July 2009 to mid-February this year.

And while the bulk of that money is spent on necessary supplies for maintenance of schools, and for direct classroom expenses (such as books, office supplies and other items), millions are spent annually on restaurants, travel and training.

And Jeffco and Douglas are the two districts that have shown themselves the most comfortable with opening up their line-item spending so the public — including the press — can take a look. (The Post probably had to work somewhat harder to get the same sort of info from Denver Public Schools.) What’s going on in other districts: Cherry Creek, Adams 12, Aurora and Boulder Valley, to name a few?

Of course, as school districts in Colorado look to achieve savings during the current difficult budget times, eliminating the frills won’t get them all the way there. Cutbacks will have to hit the much larger personnel part of the budget, one way or the other. Trimming bureaucracy, reforming teacher and principal pay, and private contracting of non-classroom services also should be given strong consideration.

Nevertheless, when it comes to other spending practices in a district, the Starbucks and the catering and the out-of-state conferences, here’s a word to the wise: “If you can’t defend it, don’t spend it!”

Amy also highlighted the story this morning on the Colorado Transparency site.

1. On Monday the 15th I noted that the school spending transparency debate had returned to the State Capitol. While Senate Bill 91 here was killed, I see that our neighbors to the Southwest – Arizona – are giving serious consideration to a bill that would bring detailed spending transparency to public school agencies and all other governments.
2. On Wednesday the 17th I highlighted our new podcast with Harrison superintendent Mike Miles about his district’s groundbreaking performance-based teacher pay program. Today the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) posted their interview with Miles about the very same topic in its weekly Teacher Quality Bulletin.
3. Last but not least, on Thursday the 18th I brought your attention to Rick Hess’s new blog and promised to cut back on using the “It’s For the Kid” line. This morning the Education Intelligence Agency’s Mike Antonucci observes that it didn’t take very long for NEA to help make Hess’s argument for him.

Here’s hoping the month of March brings something new. Have a great weekend!