Public school funding is a labyrinth of tax codes and grant funds that can confound even the experts. As voters consider a mill-levy override request in Greeley-Evans School District 6, here are five commonly held notions about how public schools get their money, and why they’re not necessarily true.
1 Aren’t schools getting a lot of marijuana money?
Yes and no.
“The biggest myth about weed money is that it solved all our education problems,” District 6 Director of Communications Theresa Myers said.
Public schools get weed money in two ways: from a 15 percent excise tax on wholesale weed and a 15 percent sales tax on retail weed.
The first $40 million collected from the excise tax every year go into the Building Excellent Schools Today fund, a competitive grant program for school construction and renovation. That seems like a lot of money – and it is – but it pales in comparison to the nearly $18 billion in renovations that public schools need statewide. Districts have to match part of the grants, too, so they’re not exactly getting free money. And not every school that applies for a BEST grant gets one. District 6, for example, has only received two, to put in new roofs at Dos Rios and S. Christa McAuliffe schools. Those grants totaled $800,000, and the district matched $400,000 – which was two-thirds of its annual renovations budget. And the district still has more than $300 million in deferred maintenance projects to complete. So while the weed money is “not a drop in the bucket we don’t appreciate,” as Myers said, it’s a pittance compared to what the schools actually need.
As for the sales tax, it has totaled $90.3 million in Colorado in 2017, but that’s only 1.6 percent of the state’s $5.6 billion education budget. Ten percent of that money must go to local governments. Most of the remaining 90 percent goes to the Marijuana Tax Cash Fund, which funds grants for bullying prevention, dropout prevention and behavioral health issues. Again, that’s necessary and helpful, but it doesn’t buy your kids newer computers or better textbooks.
2 My property taxes went up. Doesn’t that mean schools are getting more money?
Nope. Not a cent. Districts receive funding through property taxes and from the state. The state caps the funding each district can receive, and districts cannot exceed that cap without a mill-levy override, which District 6 doesn’t have. When the district gets more money from property taxes, the state pulls back an equivalent amount of state funding.
3 Why did Greeley waste money on athletics fields it could have spent on education?
It didn’t. If district money had gone to this summer’s athletics improvements – the new fields and tracks at Heath Middle School and Greeley West High, the new tennis courts at West and Central, the new soccer field at Frontier Academy – that would have been a spectacular misallocation of resources. But the money for those projects came from Greeley’s quality of life sales tax, which never could have gone to education; public education can only be funded by property tax, not sales tax.
The district couldn’t have afforded these improvements on its own, so the city stepped in. And because the projects used city money, the fields have to be open to public use, not just to schools.
“I had a parent up here the other day asking me why we spent money on this instead of buying new school buses,” district Athletic Director Bob Billings told The Tribune in August, when the field at Heath opened. “We’re not spending any district money on this.”
4 Why did every teacher get a 4 percent raise this year?
None of them did, and none of them ever have. The district and the Greeley Education Association – the teachers’ union – negotiate a salary structure with the other, including annual raises and other pay increases based on performance and the level of degree a teacher has. Until this year, the annual raise – called a “step” – was set at 3.75 percent, which is probably the origin of 4 percent raises.
But District 6 could rarely afford to actually pay teachers that 3.75 percent annual raise. It was such a contentious issue that more than 100 teachers protested about it during salary negotiations in 2014. In their most recent collective bargaining session, the GEA and the district agreed to lower the annual raise to 2 percent from 3.75 percent, with a corresponding 3.3 percent increase in starting salary.
But yes, this applies to every teacher, good and bad. That’s how collective bargaining works: the employer – in this case District 6 – negotiates with the union, which represents every dues-paying employee. As Myers said, though, “it’s not like we’re harboring ineffective teachers.” The district has performance standards, and teachers who don’t meet them are put on improvement plans or let go. Collective bargaining between the district and the teachers’ union – like collective bargaining between sports leagues and players’ unions – simply gives employees a degree of protection from their employer.
5 Is there really a correlation between money spent and performance?
Yes, but it has to be spent right. There are numerous studies suggesting a correlation between money spent on a school district and district performance: one by the University of Delaware concluded there’s a “significant positive relationship” between per-pupil funding and test scores; two separate studies by the National Bureau of Economic Research said there is also a positive correlation, especially in low-income districts.
On the other hand, the Center for American Progress qualified that with a report that acknowledged the correlation but said even rich districts can operate inefficiently. And that’s the rub: “It’s very much about how you spend it,” Myers said, pointing out the numerous cuts District 6, the 10th-lowest funded district in Colorado, has made to operate more efficiently, such as cutting 14 administrative positions in the last two years.
“But efficiencies don’t fund public schools,” Myers said. “You can’t fund just on that or we wouldn’t have $300 million in deferred maintenance.”
To spend money efficiently, it seems, districts need to have it in the first place.
– Tommy Wood covers education for The Tribune. You can reach him at (970) 392-4470, twood@greeleytribune.com or on Twitter @woodstein72.
