Superintendents from nearly all of the state's 178 districts, their school boards and other education groups are frustrated over increasing demands for education reform and dwindling state dollars. The groups are sending letters to parents and community members asking them to lean on their lawmakers to restore cuts to education, and they are paying weekly visits to the state Capitol asking for more money and local control.
"Politicians and special-interest groups have really started to shape the K-12 agenda, and absent from any conversations regarding that have been superintendents, the people who have been hired by locally elected boards of education to run school districts," said Cherry Creek Schools Superintendent Harry Bull. "You get to a point where you say, 'Wait a minute. We're the people who are charged with running these districts. That's our job, and we ought to at least have a say.' "
A revenue forecast to be released Tuesday will set the tone for the last weeks of negotiations with lawmakers over education funding in the state. Lawmakers are warning that the forecast may not be as rosy as initially expected. They argue that while the state is rebounding economically, it cannot fully restore education cuts made over the past five years.
But superintendents and other education leaders, who have already scored a victory by getting lawmakers to include in a bill the restoration of $100 million in budget cuts, said they are not backing down.
"We found a common voice, and that common voice is far broader than school finance," Bull said. "It's just that the money issue, the school-finance issue this year, was something that we were better prepared to more quickly respond to. Rest assured that we are committed to continuing our work as a common voice in the interest of K-12 education."
State Rep. Millie Hamner, D-Dillon, a former superintendent who chairs the House Education Committee, said the unified and loud voice from education leaders is unprecedented and has caught the attention of lawmakers.
