Tag: Colorado Commits to Kids

DENVER -- Frustrating, heartbreaking, disappointing, even devastating — words heard all over the hotel ballroom here where supporters of Amendment 66 gathered to watch the votes come in. What no one said aloud, but what was smuggled into the phrase “we came up short,” was the question How did it go so terribly wrong?

It's an off-year election in swing-state Colorado and there aren't a whole lot of candidates on ballots. There are, however, important questions voters are being asked to weigh.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg -- the antigun, anti-big-gulp, billionaire nanny stater -- is back, now trying to force the good people of Colorado to give up our God-given right to underfund K-12 education.

Grand Junction’s KKCO 11 News has reported that as many as twenty rural school districts in Colorado will see funding drop if the proposed Amendment 66 education tax passes on Election Day. The report got its facts all wrong.

When Janice Anderson, a fourth-grade teacher at Pennock Elementary school in Brighton, Colorado, stands before the 30 students in her class, she’s teaching a collection of radically different 9 years olds with little to no extra help.

CORTEZ, Colo. -- They're still here. They've been here 12 hours. It’s just another day at Kemper Elementary School, where annual funding for each student is $6,328, which means it's $4,506 below the national average.

The measure asks voters to raise $950 million for our public schools, while keeping Colorado’s taxes among the lowest in the country. It’s a no-brainer.

DENVER -- Colorado Senator Mike Johnston, a former high school teacher and principal, spearheaded the effort. It took 2 years, 250 public meetings and it involved 2,000 individual stakeholders. The result is a bill that would rewrite the formula for funding state K-12 public education in a way that boosts the education budget and makes spending more accountable and more effective.