Key lawmakers said today they were appalled to learn school districts are collecting millions of education dollars from the state's taxpayers for time students spend passing between classes.

The lawmakers also chided some state and local education officials for failing to take the issue seriously when it was raised recently by state Board of Education Vice Chair Bob Schaffer. Schaffer sent a memo today to members of the Senate and House Education committees and the Joint Budget Committee, telling them that more than $145 million a year is spent on "passing periods" at 32 school districts. 

The Senate's assistant GOP leader called  the practice "a disgrace."

"Think how many at-risk kids could benefit if we spent that money in class," said Sen. Nancy Spence, of Centennial, the ranking Republican on the Senate Education Committee. "Imagine how many charter schools $145 million could open."

Added Spence, "What I find almost as hard to believe as the policy itself is how some prominent members of the education community are pooh-poohing the whole matter."

Schaffer's fellow Board of Education member Evie Hudak and Jefferson County Schools Superintendent Cindy Stevenson appeared to dismiss the issue in a report in today's Rocky Mountain News.

"If you start to nitpick it, you can get into a lot of discussions it's not worth our time to have," Hudak told the News. Stevenson called the concerns raised by Schaffer ridiculous. Senate Republicans were astounded at their muted response.

"$145 million is a whole lot of nits to pick," said Sen. Mike Kopp, a Littleton Republican

who also sits on the Senate Edcuation Committee.

The money is disbursed to the school districts as part of their overall funding share from the state Department of Education on the theory that time spent in hallways is part of the "educational process," Schaffer says in his memo. However, Kopp and Spence agreed with Schaffer that such an interpretation is "quite a stretch" and doesn't amount to the kind of actual teacher-pupil contact the money is intended to compensate.  

Schaffer said in his memo he will propose to his fellow Board of Education members to end that practice. Yet, he said it might be necessary for the General Assembly to act if it wishes to rein in some other related payments to school districts that also assume pupil-teacher contact but where no education actually occurs. Those include closures for snow days and team-building meetings among teachers.

Schaffer, a former state senator and U.S. congressman, also noted, "Members of the General Assembly should consider establishing a tighter, more accurate definition of the teacher-pupil-contact activities in Colorado public schools for which state per-pupil reimbursements and payments are made through the School Finance Act."