Intriguing. The Colorado Springs Gazette today reports that some of the region’s leading education innovators have proposed a new idea to provide specialized oversight and support to online learning programs:

The Falcon School District 49 school board is expected to vote Thursday on a proposal that would create a collaborative education organization that could charter and provide services to online schools statewide. The concept was pitched to the board last week.

D-49 would not have oversight of the proposed Colorado Digital Board of Cooperative Education Services (BOCES), but appeared poised to jump start the organization’s creation. District officials said D-49 would not benefit financially from the entity.

The digital BOCES would focus on blended and online learning programs across the state, said Kim McClelland, D-49’s iConnect Zone Leader. It would charter online schools, instead of districts being responsible, she said.

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Yesterday I shared some thoughts about how a growing Brighton district with some crowded schools might find some creative solutions to its problem. While securing safe, functional and adequate facilities is a high priority for some school districts, others can bask gratefully in their new quarters and hopefully focus even more on the mission of educating students.

Which brings us to another part of Adams County. Not every school district will be able to do what Mapleton has created with its colorful, new state-of-the-art Skyview Campus. On September 27, some of my Education Policy Center friends received a tour of the creatively-designed campus from superintendent Charlotte Ciancio and human resources officer Damon Brown.

(from L to R): Brown, Raaki Garcia-Ulam, Ben DeGrow, Pam Benigno, Ciancio

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A Denver Post Your Hub story from last week by Joey Kirchmer chronicles some growing pains in Brighton School District:

Brighton High School and Prairie View High School are at or over capacity this school year, which has forced administrators to turn to outdoor modular classrooms, roaming teachers and possibly start looking at a split-schedule system.

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From Todd Engdahl’s story yesterday in Ed News Colorado, at least 23 school districts in the state are going to local voters this year to ask for one or more tax increases–mill levy overrides for various operating costs, and/or bonds or BEST matching grant requests to pay for capital construction or renovation projects. (In the unusual case of Aspen, voters will decide on a sales-tax increase to fund schools.)

The proposals follow one year after a historically-high 26 out of 38 local school tax proposals went down to defeat. Notably, this year five of the state’s nine largest school districts, cumulatively enrolling more than one-third of Colorado’s public K-12 students, are seeking voter approval of various tax increases. Some of them represent significant amounts (descriptions from Ed News in quotes):

• Jefferson County: “$99 million bond for a variety of building upgrades; $39 million override to maintain class size and protect some programs.”
• Denver: “$466 million bond for maintenance, technology, renovation and upgrades; $49 million override for enrichment, student support services and other programs. DPS also is an alternate for a $3.8 million BEST grant to renovate South High School, and some of the bond issue would provide a match.”
• Cherry Creek: “$125 million bond for building upgrades and technology; $25 million override to offset cuts.”
• Aurora: “$15 million override for partial offset of state cuts.”
• St. Vrain: “$14.8 million override to maintain staff compensation, technology and early childhood programs.”

Given fiscal realities, there can be little doubt that all of these districts experienced some degree of cuts in per-pupil funding. But hard data from the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) only goes through the previous school year of 2010-11. My Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow has compiled CDE numbers for the state’s five largest tax hike-seeking districts. Continue Reading »

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If I were to write “it’s that time of year again”… again, you’d probably be ready to chew me out. And my little ears are too sensitive for that. So I’ll just take note that Colorado’s legislative session kicks off on Wednesday. Which naturally means (pardon me if you’ve heard this before) get ready and hold on to your wallets.

Ed News Colorado’s Todd Engdahl as usual does a great job previewing the session and legislative initiatives likely to emerge. If you want the in-depth take, you simply have to go check out the story. According to the story, action is likely to be seen on the following fronts, among others: Continue Reading »

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Welcome to Week 2 of 5 in Colorado’s ongoing school finance adequacy lawsuit, familiarly known as Lobato v State, or just the Lobato case. A report this morning from Ed News Colorado’s Todd Engdahl highlighted some of Monday’s key plaintiff testimony:

One of the main plaintiffs’ witnesses in the Lobato v. State school funding lawsuit testified Monday that his study projects Colorado needs to spent $10.3 billion a year on K-12 schools, an increase of $3.6 billion.

Justin Silverstein is vice president of Augenblick, Palaich and Associates, a Denver-based research and consulting firm that produced a 96-page study projecting the funding Colorado school districts would need to support the demands of state requirements such as new content standards, tests and teacher evaluation systems. The firm was paid $115,000 by the plaintiffs for the study. [link added]

I think I just overheard one of my Education Policy Center friends ask where they could get $115,000 to conduct a study and write a report. But I digress.

Anyway, the lead sentence of that story caused me to do a little back-of-the-envelope math. $10.3 billion minus $3.6 billion = $6.7 billion. Diving deep into the murky waters of school funding statistics — where you can blindly pull a number of different dollar figures off the ocean floor — I have to ask: Where does that number come from? Continue Reading »

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Ed News Colorado reports from yesterday’s State Board meeting about the state of school buildings:

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.

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What to do if you’re a school district, you have a fast-growing neighborhood, and not enough tax revenue to meet the promises to build schools for the elementary and middle school kids in the area? Well, Denver Public Schools is confronting that problem right now in regards to the Stapleton neighborhood. A meeting with community members “to share a list of options about what to do about overcrowding” is scheduled for next Tuesday.

While it’s hard to argue that this situation isn’t a sticky one, my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow nevertheless has written a new piece for Education News Colorado (also re-posted at the Independence Institute website), proposing some suggestions to help the district and citizens think outside the box a bit.

Here’s the flavor: Continue Reading »

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