By Todd Engdahl, EDUCATION NEWS COLORADO
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.

The study was released to the State Board of Education Wednesday afternoon.
Ted Hughes, director of the Capital Construction Assistance Division, noted that the study was the first-ever statewide inventory of school buildings and their conditions.
He said the division still has to come up with a ranking system for buildings and is planning to put all the data in a searchable database, to be called Schoolhouse that will include district and individual building information. The database will be updated regularly.
Mary Wickersham, chair of the Capital Construction Assistance Board, wasn’t shocked by the numbers, saying. “A lot of us have known for a long time the broad-stroke dimensions.” Wickersham several years ago led a less extensive study of school conditions. From that, she said, researchers roughly estimated $10 billion in needs.
Board members received the report with only a few comments.
The assessment isn’t a priority list from which state officials will choose projects. That’s because BEST is an opt-in program for which districts and charters must apply. But, the construction board will use the list to help set priorities among applicants. The program also is designed to encourage use of local matching grants, with only a few projects supported fully by state funds.

Edison School in El Paso County has long been a poster child for school building problems.
The BEST program was approved by the legislature in 2008 and is funded by revenues from state school lands and some other sources but not from tax dollars. Applications are evaluated and ranked by the appointed Capital Construction Assistance Board and its staff and forwarded to SBE. The program matches state funds with local money to either directly fund construction costs or to pay off lease-purchase arrangements.
Last August the state board approved the first major round of projects. That project list totaled $210 million, including a $127.5 million state share, another $7.6 million to cover any higher labor costs that might be required by federal law and $75.6 million in local matching money.
The state made cash grants of $15 million, matched by $18.7 million in local money. The state is putting up $112.5 million to pay off lease-purchases (called certificates or participation, or COPs), which will be matched by $57 million in local money. (Two of the projects subsequently were canceled. Voters in the Mapleton Schools last fall defeated a bond issue that would have provided the local match for a $51.3 million project. A $3.1 million grant to the North Routt Charter School was canceled because the school wanted to raise its $1.6 million match using a bank loan, which isn’t permitted.)
About $98 million was approved last March for 11 other projects, several of which needed money to complete work started under previous, smaller state grant programs. Three other awards totaling $4 million were made in April.
The construction board is accepting applications through April 9 for the 2010 round of grants. The BEST law gives priority to health and safety projects, followed by those designed to relieve overcrowding and to make technology upgrades.
Do your homework
▪ Links to report, PowerPoint summary and FAQ
▪ Capital Construction Assistance Board
New district accreditation system taking shape
The state board Wednesday also took testimony on proposed new rules for accrediting school districts but delayed a final vote until its April meeting to allow more time for public comment.
Some school districts and the Colorado Association of School Boards still have concerns about the proposed rules.
Education Commissioner Dwight Jones said, “This is a very, very important milestone for the state … this is major change.”
He said to the board, “I think you’ll see that while nobody will like everything in the rules, the department has been responsive to feedback. The rules have landed in a place that I strongly support.”
Ken DeLay, executive director of the Colorado Association of School Boards, acknowledged CDE’s cooperation but still expressed concerns about the new system.
“This is a complex statute and these are complex rules. … That complexity has some implications. It’s going to change how we do business in school districts. … We are moving away from a community, locally based system … to a system that’s run out of this building and the buildings in Washington, D.C.”

State Board of Education member Angelika Schroeder, D-2nd District
Board member Angelika Schroeder, D-2nd District and a former Boulder school board member, responded by saying setting goals is the state’s role and the methods for achieving them are up to local districts. With SB 09-163, she said, “We are losing the option in our districts to allow kids to not learn.”
The rules will give school districts the guidelines for following Senate Bill 09-163, which was passed by the 2009 legislature and revamps the state systems for accrediting school districts, assisting and intervening in districts with persistent low accreditation status; the way districts accredit individual schools, and how school performance is reported to the public and parents.
Advisory committees and Department of Education staff have been working on the rules since last year. The board will vote on the rules at its April 14-15 meeting, and the new rules will go into effect in May, with implementation beginning in the fall.
Under the new law, the state board will set targets every year for how a district has to perform in key areas to gain accreditation at one of six levels.
The key areas are student growth, as measured by test scores; postsecondary and workforce readiness, as measured by ACT test scores and, later, performance on the new state postsecondary and workforce readiness test; student achievement levels on tests, and dropout rates and achievement gaps based on income and ethnicity.
The state board is to adopt targets by Nov. 30 each year that will the basis for the accreditation levels. Each year’s target will apply to the next full school year.
Once the new plan is fully in effect, the state will assign accreditation ratings every November, districts that are lower-ranked will have to submit improvement plans by January and plans would be published on the SchoolView.org website in April.
Accreditation contracts run for a year and are renewed only if a district is in one of the top two levels. The old law has six-year contracts.
The six types of accreditation are:
▪ Level 1 – Accredited with distinction
▪ Level 2- Accredited
▪ Level 3 – Accredited with improvement plan
▪ Level 4 – Accredited with priority improvement plan
▪ Level 5 – Accredited with turnaround plan
▪ Level 6 – Unaccredited. In such cases the state board will determine whether a district needs reorganization, external management, conversion to innovation status or charter or school closure.
The old law has a somewhat dfferent six-level system.
The law gives the commissioner of educationthe authority to create a state review panel that will evaluate improvement strategies and recommend interventions.
If a district fails to make adequate progress under a turnaround plan or continues under a turnaround or priority improvement plan for a combined total of five years, the commissioner can ask the review panel to look at conversion of the district. There was no timeline in the old law.
Districts are to evaluate schools on at least the same level as state requirements but can be more rigorous. Districts will assign accreditation status to individual schools that is aligned with and meets or exceeds the rigor of the state system.
Previous law included only general goals for district performance, didn’t require SBE review of targets and had no state review panel.
• CDE information on the new accreditation system, including draft of proposed rules, summaries and background.
Declining enrollment study almost done
The board received an early peek at a comprehensive study of the effects of declining enrollment on school districts.
The study was requested by the legislature in 2008 but was delayed a year because of budget cuts. It’s due to be publicly released next Monday. The study was done by Pacey Economics Group of Boulder, whose president, Patricia Pacey, also happens to be a member of the Colorado Commission on Higher Education.
Although there’s been modest statewide student growth over the past several years, most of Colorado’s 178 school districts actually are declining. The issue is important to districts because state aid to schools is based on enrollment, so there are budget impacts for declining districts. (Current law allows districts to average declines over several years.)
Calling the study “an enormous undertaking” that involved analysis of six years’ worth of enrollment, teacher statistics, spending, revenues and CSAP scores, Pacey gave the board some highlights of the study, including:
Overall student performance doesn’t seem to vary by district size or location.
Because of fixed costs, school districts have little financial flexibility in responding to declining enrollment and aid.
The percentages of budget that districts spend on various items such as instruction or transportation varies little between large and small and urban/suburban and rural districts.
“School choice costs money,” meaning that both district and Charter School Institute Schools affect the finances of districts.
School district consolidation wouldn’t yield significant savings if done on an across-the-board or formula basis although it might be useful for some districts, depending on local circumstances.
Pacey said her researchers didn’t independently study the issue of “adequacy” – how much money is needed for an effective education system – but that the study does contain a summary of other adequacy research.
She did note that that other research indicates Colorado school spending has fallen 20 percent behind inflation since 2002.
Educator ID program on track
Department of Education staff told the board that the new educator ID program is on track to issue eight-digit ID to eligible teachers and some other school personnel by June 30.
The ID program, passed by the legislature last year, is considered central to many education improvement efforts, such as tying student performance to teacher evaluations.
Earlier this year the legislature passed Senate Bill 10-036, which will require that the performance of teachers in their first three years of work be correlated with whatever teacher preparation program they attended. Other future uses of the educator ID remain to be determined.

Norton Rainey, executive director of the Alliance for Choice in Education, a Denver non-profit that provides K-12 scholarships to low-income kids (www.acescholarships.org), writes in The Denver Post:

“Last week the House Committee on Finance killed HB 10-1296, sponsored by Representative Spencer Swalm and Senator Josh Penry. It was a ho-hum moment. No big surprise. The bill was defeated along a Party line vote 6-5 and it was the expected outcome. But it is worth taking a closer look at what this legislation would have accomplished before dismissing it out of hand. 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.” READ MORE HERE

By Todd Engdahl, EDUCATION NEWS COLORADO

Colorado’s status as the only state west of the Mississippi to make the finals in the Race to the Top is “purely coincidence,” U. S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said Thursday.

“We just took them one to 16,” Duncan said, answering a question from an Arizona reporter in a press conference call after announcing the 16 finalists for $4.35 billion in federal grant money.

Journalists peppered him with questions about why some states made the cut and why some didn’t but Duncan said the answer is simple:

He picked the 15 states and the District of Columbia because each earned more than 400 points – out of a possible 500 – based on their lengthy grant applications.

Duncan acknowledged that he could have picked finalists out of order but said he saw no reason to do so.

“These were the 16 states that had the most points, above 400,” he said, “… there was a natural break at 400 so there was no reason for me to contemplate or consider going out of rank order.”

Reaction to the finalists was varied but some national pundits were surprised by the sheer number.

Andy Smarick, a former U.S. Department of Education official, called it a “major disappointment.”

“(Duncan) had the opportunity today to send a clear signal … that only the biggest and boldest plans would merit consideration,” Smarick wrote in a blog pot. Instead, “the list includes Kentucky, a state with no charter law… Colorado, which backed off of important reforms related to teachers …

“By sending forward a number of states with such glaring deficiencies, the Department did not set a ‘very, very high bar’ ” as promised, he wrote.

Duncan reiterated Thursday that he expects “very few” finalists will be named winners, likely “in the single digits.”

“Each of them has a shot at winning but most of them will go home as finalists, not winners,” he said. “At most, we expect to reward no more than $2 billion in the first round and it could be considerably less.”

That’s less than half of the total money available for Race to the Top. Winners in the first round will be announced April 1. The rest of the money will be distributed in a second round, which has a June 1 application deadline.

So why name so many finalists if the number of first-round winners will be so small?

“We thought about that a lot,” Duncan said. “We could have gone with a smaller number. I thought it was really important to be inclusive … it makes it tougher on our end but it’s not about us.

“It’s really about looking people in the eye and letting them speak,” he added. “If I were on the other end, I would want the opportunity to do that.”

Teams representing the 16 finalists are now scheduled to travel to Washington D.C. the week of March 15 for interviews with Duncan and with the reviewers who scored their applications.

“To me, it’s very important that we not just make these decisions based on pieces of paper,” Duncan said. “This is about looking people in the eye … We want to find out people’s capacity to implement their plans.”

He’s looking for “courage, collaboration and commitment,” he said, along with “complete candor.”

The interviews will not be public though Duncan said they will be videotaped and the videotapes released after the winners are announced.

Colorado was seen as unlikely to make what was expected to be a very short list of finalists, largely because of concerns that state officials shied away from tough decisions about improving teacher quality.

Andrew Rotherham, co-founder of the D.C. think tank Education Sector, said Colorado was considered a“bubble state at best” while Tom Carroll, president of the Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability, deemed Colorado “competitive” but not “highly competitive.”

Still, the real questions on the lists of finalists swirled around states such as New York, which was seen as having little chance because, among other reasons, state lawmakers failed to lift a charter school cap.

But Duncan, questioned on Thursday, said no single element was make-or-break for any state.

“Every state had relative strengths, every state had relative weaknesses but we were looking at many, many different factors,” he said. “Charters were never going to be the determining factor. We said that from day one.”

Colorado’s Lt. Gov. Barbara O’Brien, who has led the state’s Race to the Top effort, said the newly named members of the Council on Educator Effectiveness will begin meeting next week.

“We are committed to thoroughly modernizing and streamlining our teacher and principal effectiveness and evaluation system,” she said. “That council will begin doing its work and we expect that will be a strong point for us when we make our proposal in Washington.”

Duncan said the finalists won’t be told their ranking or hear reviewers’ comments until after winners are announced.

“All of these states could win,” he said, “but … a relatively small number will win.”

Click here to read Duncan’s statement at Thursday’s press conference.

Click here to read Ed News’ coverage of Thursday’s announcement, including videos and audio.

Nancy Mitchell can be reached at nmitchell@pebc.org or 303-478-4573.

STATE BILL COLORADO
Colorado recently was named a finalist for education-related stimulus funds dubbed “Race to the Top.” Here’s how media covered the news.

Education News Colorado: Colorado’s bid for $377 million in federal Race to the Top education stimulus funds was strong enough to land it among the 16 finalists, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced Thursday morning. Duncan said Colorado, Delaware, Washington, D.C., Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Tennessee made the finalist cut. Forty states and the District of Columbia applied. Colorado is the only western state selected. More states were named finalists than many observers had expected. The states named Thursday will be invited to Washington the week of March 15 to make presentations. States that don’t make the cut can apply in a second round later this year.

Associated Press: Winners will be announced in April and losers can reapply for a second round later this year but there’s no guarantee finalists will win any money. Lt. Gov. Barbara O’Brien, who’s leading the effort, also announced that Gov. Bill Ritter has appointed members of a panel to recommend how teachers and administrators should be evaluated. Ritter created the panel with the backing of the state teacher’s union as part of the state’s application but has been criticized for moving too slowly to appoint its members.

The Pueblo Chieftain: Colorado is among 16 states still in the running for $377 million in Race to the Top funds from the U.S. Department of Education. Forty states had applied for shares of the $4.3 billion in available funds. Finalists were announced Thursday, and will present their proposals to a panel of reviewers in Washington, D.C., on March 15. Colorado Education Commissioner Dwight Jones and Lt. Gov. Barbara O’Brien will pitch the state’s plan.

By Todd Engdahl, EDUCATION NEWS COLORADO
The Joint Budget Committee Wednesday afternoon was told it should set a target of $509 million, or 8.8 percent, for what the legislature should trim from the amount schools otherwise would have expected to receive in the 2010-11 budget year.
Staff analyst Carolyn Kampman made the suggestion as part of her overall recommendations for school funding next year. When compared to actual 2009-10 K-12 aid, the cut would be $291 million, or 5.2 percent. Kampman’s briefing paper stressed that the two figures could shrink depending on upcoming revenue forecasts and other legislative budget-balancing decisions.
“My hope is it’s a large target and will get smaller,” she told the committee.
Kampman detailed her recommendations at a figure-setting hearing for the Department of Education. During figure setting for a department, a committee analyst prepares a detailed proposal for the department’s budget, including dollar amounts that will be included in the annual state budget, the long appropriations bill.
Each proposal contains several specific recommendations. The committee usually approves groups of recommendations without much discussion. That’s what happened Wednesday with Kampman’s plan.
It’s been widely assumed for months that state school support would drop in 2010-11, an inevitable result of the state’s revenue losses and despite the provisions of Amendment 23. Gov. Bill Ritter’s initial budget proposal last November suggested a 4.6 percent cut in 2010-11 compared to actual spending this year.
Full funding next year would equal about $5.8 billion in state and local revenue, according to the JBC document. Target funding for 2010-11 is $5.3 billion, $508.8 million or 8.8 percent less.
Actual school funding for the current year is about $5.6 billion, also below what full funding would have been. The 2010-11 target is $291 million, or 5.2 percent, below that current spending.
The reductions could be smaller, Kampman said, depending on things that may happen later in the legislative session, including transfer of $46.1 million in state lands revenue to school aid, possible cuts in other programs supported by the State Education Fund or proposed Ritter administration transfers that could add $135 million for school support.
The numbers in the quarterly revenue forecasts to be issued later this month also could redraw the school funding picture for next year – for either good or bad. (See pages 25-27 of the briefing paper for details on all this.)
School finance is complicated because state support for schools is drawn from three separate funds and distributed through two different pieces of legislation, the long bill and what’s called the school finance bill.
Kampman actually is recommending an increase in the base school support contained in the long bill and that the cuts – $509 million or whatever the figure ends up to be – from the school finance bill, which will be introduced later in the session.
Ritter has proposed that cuts be taken from a fund used to adjust individual district support based on cost of living, although all districts would take the same percentage cut. Some school groups are nervous about that idea, fearing it would set a precedent for future budget years. So, there’s expected to be extensive debate over the mechanics of the cuts.
Final decisions on school finance won’t be made until late in the session, which will end in early May.

State Bill Colorado Photo by Jamie Cotten

By Peter Marcus, DENVER DAILY NEWS
Students danced, marched and rallied yesterday for higher education in an attempt to convince lawmakers not to slash its budget.
Facing $89 million in cuts for the fiscal year beginning July 1, higher-education students yesterday marched from the Auraria Campus to the Capitol and asked, “For the masses, or just the upper classes?”
They are concerned that cuts to higher education could result in laying off professors, raising tuition and cutting programs.
While the cuts to higher education will be backfilled by federal stimulus dollars, students are looking to the future, worried that if tuitions at institutions of higher education were increased by 9 percent — the maximum allowable under state law — they’d have trouble paying the bills. A tuition hike of 9 percent equals about $700 extra a year for the average state college student.
“They cut over 50 percent of our budget over the past two years and they want to cut another 54 percent of it,” said Nathan Durnberger, the external affairs director for the Associated Students of Colorado. “Imagine the impact that will have on schools.”
Gov. Bill Ritter has already submitted two budget-balancing proposals. The first — a $7 billion budget proposal submitted in November — closed a $1 billion shortfall. But a December forecast showed continued revenue declines caused by the economic downturn. A second budget-balancing plan was submitted in February, reflecting a $340 million proposal to re-balance the Fiscal Year 2010-11 budget.
The latest proposal would end the CollegeInvest Scholarship Trust Fund by transferring $45.2 million of its funds to other areas. In the current fiscal year, there are approximately 400 students receiving the scholarship at $900. Next fiscal year, there are projected to be 1,025 students receiving the scholarship at $1,000 per student.
Over the past three years, higher education has been cut $622 million, according to the governor’s office. Those cuts will be backfilled by federal economic stimulus dollars, but concerns are mounting for FY 2011-12 when those dollars run dry.
Fears are also rising that the upcoming March economic forecast is going to reflect an even greater shortfall, and since higher education is not protected by constitutional spending mandates, it is often a popular target. The Long Bill will be based on the March forecast.
A spokesman for Ritter’s office applauded students for showing passion yesterday. Evan Dreyer pointed out that the governor has launched a steering committee to lead a strategic planning effort to drive progress and analyze budget issues for the state’s higher education system.
“They are right to be concerned and they are right to be involved,” said Dreyer, speaking for Ritter, who remained in the hospital yesterday recovering from six rib fractures suffered from a cycling accident. “Their voice is an absolute crucial part of this conversation. We are talking about their future and about the future of their younger brothers and sisters, and all Colorado kids.”
“In this debate, the governor’s top priority is to keep college affordable and accessible for all Colorado kids,” Dreyer continued. “That’s what this exercise is about — that’s why he, in large part, convened this steering committee.”

The Rocky Mountain Collegian: It will be about a decade before Milan Gutierrez applies to college, but there she was in a sea of more than 1,000 others who marched on the state Capitol Wednesday. Gripping a sign that read “What about my future?” Milan, a fifth grader from Adams County, and her mother Yvonne Cordova, joined the mob, frightened and angry about what the future of Colorado’s higher education could hold for them.

A proposed law giving CSU students two votes on the university’s governing board passed the House on Wednesday morning and moves to the Senate for consideration, The Fort Collins Coloradoan reports. The current system gives one student representative from the Fort Collins and Pueblo campuses each a seat at the board table, but those students cannot vote or participate in certain personnel discussions.

When Amendment 50 was up for vote in 2008, state economists forecasted that the Colorado Community College System would receive about $29 million in revenue during the first year. Nancy McCallin never believed in that prediction and now her fears are coming true, 9News reports. “It is coming in lower. That is a function of the economy,” said McCallin, system president of the CCCS which adminstrates over 13 community colleges around the state.

By Debi Brazzale, COLORADO NEWS AGENCY

It was a poetic moment for the former music teacher and longtime legislative advocate for the arts: Rep. Michael Merrifield’s proposal to require that classes on performing and visual arts be taught in all Colorado public schools made it over its first legislative hurdle today. Dubbed the “Merrifield Legacy Bill” by colleagues of the term-limited veteran Colorado Springs Democrat, House Bill 1273 passed the House Education Committee amid muted opposition and overwhelming support from those who came to testify on the legislation. The bill is now headed to the House floor.

The measure also passed over objections of two Republican dissenters, who said they could not impose the mandate on local school districts that are struggling financially.

The concern was echoed by representatives of the public school district boards and adminstrators. Jane Urschel, of the Colorado Association of School Boards, said unfunded mandates at a time when schools are tightening their belts made the bill unworkable and that the school boards regrettably could not support the bill.

“This is perhaps the most difficult testimony that I’ve ever given,” said Urschel. “The intent of this bill is genius but how the bill is executed is not. We can’t have art on demand by the state–that decision has to be made locally.”

Also opposing the bill, and delivered with the same regrets, was the Colorado Association of School Executives. Both groups suggested that if the mandate were replaced with an incentive for the schools, they could support the bill.

Rep. Ken Summers, R-Lakewood, voted for the bill but agreed with Urschel and said he would prefer incentives over mandates as well.

“We’ll need creative accounting to pay for this,” Summers said.

Yet, the overwhelming majority of those who came to speak to the committee spoke emphatically in favor of requiring an arts curriculum in public education.  Many who spoke were students or former students whose lives were enriched by their exposure to the arts. Others said they simply couldn’t imagine an education without art.

“Performing arts are just as important as math and reading.  To have an education without these things is just unthinkable,” said Dan Ritchie, the former University of Denver chancellor who has an arena on the DU campus named after him.

Some lawmakers, such as Rep. Judy Solano, D-Brighton, lamented the loss of arts in favor of math and science–which she said are given priority for the sake of standardized testing. She said only wealthier schools have the means to support arts in the curriculum.

“High-stakes testing has crowded out the arts, especially in lower-income schools,” said Solano.

Rep. Nancy Todd, D-Aurora, a former schoolteacher, said she always found ways to integrate the arts into curriculum and that Merrifield’s measure mandating the arts curriculum won’t be burdensome on school districts.

“I don’t look at this as a mandate.  With my students, I took their artistic sense and was able to integrate the arts into other subject areas,” said Todd.

Mark Hudson, of the Colorado Music Education Association, said it came down to deciding what’s most important.

“Can we afford to do this? The question is–can we afford not to?” Hudson asked the committee.

Merrifield said the measure is simply overdue.

“There are ways for us to be creative in finding a way to do this,” said Merrifield. “I’m calling this the ‘no more buts’ bill.”

The state budget crisis leaves lawmakers with little choice but to let some state colleges and universities increase tuition without legislative approval, Gov. Bill Ritter said Thursday, reversing his position on the issue, The Denver Post reports. The proposal is being drafted in the form of a bill that could be introduced as early as next month. It would require heads of state schools to submit financial plans showing how they would assure a public-college education would remain affordable in the face of tuition hikes.

In other coverage:

Rocky Mountain Collegian: Gov. Bill Ritter said Thursday that Colorado’s legislature will keep tuition hikes in check for the next fiscal year, despite looking at possible models for what leaders are calling “tuition flexibility,” which will allow state institutions more authority in increasing college prices. In a discussion between news reporters and members of his recently commissioned strategic planning team in his office at the Capitol, Ritter said, “tuition flexibility is not tuition autonomy.”

Boulder Daily Camera: Gov. Bill Ritter signaled Thursday that he’s warmer to a proposal that the state’s public colleges and universities be able to set their own tuition rates. While Ritter didn’t go so far as to say he’d support a measure that would allow colleges and universities to raise their own tuition without directions from state leaders, he acknowledged the recession’s toll has been tough on higher education. In the past, Ritter vowed to veto any attempts to allow schools to hike their own tuition rates, citing concerns that students would have a difficult time affording public colleges.