Health care takes bite out of education funds

Budgeting is about setting priorities.

In most states, K-12 education is the top priority and receives the lion’s share of funding.  Yet across the country, states are grappling with a budget monster that pits education funding against federal health care mandates.

In the last three years, total spending on K-12 education in Colorado has fallen by $389 million.  Spending on health care, however, has increased by $763 million during that same period.

The problem is that states no longer have the ability to set their own priorities. (more…)

Rationality eludes judge in school lawsuit

When Gov. John Hickenlooper announced that the state will appeal a Denver court’s ruling that the state inadequately funds education, he acknowledged what Judge Sheila Rappaport — and previously the Colorado Supreme Court — would not: money is a finite resource, even when it’s spent on worthy causes and when it’s spent by government.

The state legislature allocates $4.3 billion to educate more than 800,000 students — just under $6,500 each — in K-12 public schools.  According to the Colorado Department of Education, other sources bring that total to a statewide average of nearly $13,000, as of 2009-10.

Over two years ago, the supreme court ruled, in a contentious 4-3 decision, that a lower court should entertain claims brought by a group of parents and school districts that the state constitution’s call for a “thorough and uniform” system of free public schools should be interpreted to require a specific funding amount.

That lawsuit, Lobato vs. Colorado, reverted back to Rappaport’s courtroom, albeit with instructions that “the trial court must give substantial deference to the legislature’s fiscal and policy judgments.”

Rappaport’s decision, however, offered no such deference. (more…)