JBC weighs cuts to education grants, flags Charter School Institute mill‑levy cost

Miss Bickle, Joint Budget Committee staff, opened discussion of Department of Education figure setting by highlighting programs where spending has lagged, including the Academic Accelerator (math) grant created in 2023–24. She said the program was slow to ramp up and that “it sounds like there might be $1,500,000 that you could recapture from ’26–’27,” and presented staff’s options for taking unspent future appropriations. Vice Chair Bridges moved a staff‑initiated approach that would preserve current‑year activity but revisit next year’s funding; the motion passed 5–0 with Kirk Meyer excused.

The committee reviewed Division 7 (Student Pathways) and approved staff recommendations for line‑item detail and base appropriations. Members then turned to the Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind (CSDB), reviewing a small teacher salary alignment (R‑9) tied to District 11 pay scales and technical corrections to prior personnel calculations. Staff said the CSDB proposal is a modest statutory alignment (about $47,603 GF) and that they would follow up on a requested state‑architect assessment of campus building needs after members raised concerns about the cost of maintaining many aging structures.

A lengthier discussion centered on the Charter School Institute (CSI) and the state’s mill‑levy equalization program. Miss Bickle walked members through how local mill‑levy override dollars and district enrollment math drive equalization payments for CSI students; she cited the staff estimate that the program’s cost is now roughly "$56,700,000 from general fund and state ed fund" and warned that in some districts the state adds more than $4,000 per CSI student. "It's a whole lot of money," she said, describing the mechanics by which local levy decisions and enrollment declines can raise the per‑pupil equalization amount.

Staff presented a legislative option to cap CSI equalization (an example in the packet reduced the program 20% as a balancing option) and framed it as one of the major drivers of long‑term budget pressure in school finance and categoricals. Committee members were split. Senator Kirkmeyer and others noted the policy passed overwhelmingly in past sessions and argued the state fully funding equalization is now law and policy; Commissioner Bridges warned lawmakers that denying equalization to CSI students would be unfair to those pupils and said, "To say that kids who are in charter schools don't benefit from those dollars ... to me is unfair to those kids." Several members agreed to consider legislation if stakeholders and legal services analysis supported it.

The committee also approved long‑bill footnotes and several RFIs (requests for information), asked staff to propose options for preserving a $200,000 Teach Colorado recruitment carve‑out after the CDIP line is eliminated, and asked the department for further detail on how small grants are distributed geographically. Miss Bickle closed by offering a packet of additional balancing options for later consideration.

Next steps: staff will return with more precise dollar estimates and potential bill language for CSI options if the committee wants to pursue statutory changes. The committee advanced the approved line items and RFIs to the long bill drafting process.