Until May
21 of this year, when I graduated from Colorado College, formal education was
central to my identity. I was a student and I had been for nearly my entire
life. Growing up, I had the good fortune to attend pre-school and then continue
through a very competent public school system in the suburbs of Philadelphia.
My family is also a family of educators. My grandmother was a teacher and both
my mother and my oldest sister work in education. So I must admit I am
biased. I believe that a quality
education is a right that no child
should be without. A competent system of education represents an investment in
our society’s future, a future that will be created through the opportunity we
give to our students today. But, as I have seen many times throughout my life,
this right to a quality education is frequently denied, often to those who are
disadvantaged in other ways as well.
The Constitution of the State of Colorado
specifically guarantees the government will provide a “thorough and uniform”
system of public education. Surely, with a constitutional guarantee, Colorado’s
children must enjoy a fantastic education in every district, in every county
across the entire state. But, according to many throughout Colorado, this is
not the case. Enter Lobato v. The State of Colorado. In 2005, a coalition of
parents from across Colorado came together to confront what they saw as a
woefully underfunded system of public schools. Their children were going to
school in a system which was (and still is) funded well below the national per-pupil
average through a combination of state revenue and local property tax revenues.
 |
| Per-pupil funding: Colorado v. National Average over time1 (Click to enlarge) |
The
group of parents, together with a number of Colorado school districts sued the
state of Colorado claiming that Colorado’s public school finance system
violates their rights granted by article IX, sections 2 and 15 of the Colorado Constitution
which guarantee that the state will provide a “thorough and uniform” system of
public education and that there will be “local control” over individual school
districts.2 After the Colorado Supreme Court made its way through the legal question of
whether the plaintiff’s claim was “justiciable,” the case was remanded back to the district court in 2009.
Finally, on December 9, 2011, the district court ruled in favor of the
plaintiffs stating, “Colorado's public school finance system is irrational, arbitrary,
and severely underfunded” and therefore was in violation of the constitutional
guarantee to a “thorough and uniform system” of public schools. Also, as a
result of the systemic problems with the public school funding system, schools
cannot be “locally” controlled as the state constitution mandates.3
As you can imagine, the state is not particularly
interested in accepting this ruling and they have appealed the district court’s
ruling. The state claims several things. First, it maintains the budget process
is an inherently political decision that is the responsibility of the executive
and legislative branches, not the judiciary. Second, it claims that because of
the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) and the Gallagher Amendment it is not
likely that overall state revenues will increase. And, if the district court’s
decision is upheld the education “slice” of the budgetary pie will grow larger
without a similar increase in the size of the pie, thus crowding out other vital
state funded programs.4
As someone who is relatively new to the fiscal reality
in Colorado as well as the legal realm, I am certainly not an authority on the
inner workings of this trial. Nor can I predict how the Colorado Supreme Court
will rule in the coming months. However, it seems to me that among all the
political chatter surrounding this case, several important facts have been
lost:
First, we
must remember that this case is fundamentally about the children of Colorado.
Every day that the Colorado public school system remains “unconscionable” the
children of Colorado lose.
Second, Colorado’s
schools are lacking in funding, a fact that even the state does not seem to disagree
with. Although the state claims more money does not necessarily improve
outcomes, more money can almost certainly guarantee better teachers, improved
technology and smaller class sizes — three areas where Colorado ranks
poorly relative to other states. For example, in 2009, Colorado was ranked 41st
in terms of technology in our schools. In 2010, we were ranked 44th
by the ratio our teachers are paid compared to other occupations and we ranked
40th in the median student-teacher ratio at primary schools.5
Third,
because of the complex system of public school funding in Colorado, capital
construction projects receive very little state funding. This means that the
burden of improving school facilities or updating aging school infrastructure
falls largely on local property taxes. This in turn leads to uneven capital
development across the state. For example, the court’s opinion found that “the
wealthiest district has 20,000 percent more capital capacity than the poorest”.
Or, as district court Judge Sheila Rappaport put it, “relying on local district
funding is inequitable, is inadequate, and has produced an enormous backlog of
school capital needs across the state, resulting in serious health and safety
problems in school buildings across Colorado”.6
To provide a school system where a child on one side of an imaginary line has
access to a better, safer and healthier environment whereas a child across that
line only has access to the opposite, is to lay the foundation for a state that
cannot begin to provide equal opportunity for all Coloradans.
To many
people the Lobato case is about budgetary restrictions or legislation such as
TABOR. The outcome of the case, many say, will have large ramifications for the
rest of the budget and create an uncomfortable position, almost a punishment, for
our elected officials. However, the district court did not specify how the
legislature should increase funding or what methods should be used to increase
funding. Instead, the court gave the legislature an opportunity. It is an
opportunity that requires tough decisions and maybe politically unfavorable
positions (support raising taxes through a referendum or support the repeal of
TABOR for example). But, it is also an opportunity for the legislature to
uphold our state’s constitution, ensure that the children of Colorado are
prepared for the future, make our state a better place to raise a family and
lay the foundation for a more prosperous Colorado. In the long run, if this
opportunity is squandered we will all pay the price.
Andrew Ball
CC/Rice Fellow
aball@cclponline.org
1 http://www.greateducation.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/printthisout.pdf
1 Lobato v. The State of Colorado
1 Lobato v. The State of Colorado
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