Senate GOP, dissenting Dems save charter schools from chopping block – again

While helping fellow Republicans challenge Gov. Bill Ritter’s proposed property tax hike for schools Tuesday on the Senate floor, Assistant Senate GOP chief Nancy Spence also was doing battle on another front: education reform.

Just before Republicans moved to amend the School Finance Act in order to force a public debate on Ritter’s tax hike, Spence led the charge to strip anti-charter school provisions from the same bill. The result of the effort was to spare increasingly popular charter-school programs – now numbering more than 100 statewide – from attempts to cut funding for their construction and operating expenses.

Foremost among the attacks on charters was a de facto cut in charter construction funding from $7.8 million statewide this year to $5 million. The GOP’s push-back, sustained by key Democrats including Senate President Pro tem Peter Groff of Denver and Joint Budget Committee Chairman Abel Tapia of Pueblo, not only restored the funding but boosted it to $8.5 million for next year.

“Sen. Spence’s leadership, along with some courageous Democrats, stopped an attempt to cut charter schools off at the knees,” said Jim Griffin, president of the Colorado League of Charter Schools.

Also saved from the chopping block was the current funding formula for at-risk children served by charter schools. The original provision inserted in the School Finance Act by Democrat Education Committee Chair Sue Windels of Arvada would have established two different funding tracks for at-risk kids in charter public schools and conventional

public schools – making charter kids second-class citizens, critics said. Spence and her allies were able to strike that provision as well, holding charters harmless.

The provisions undercutting charters in the School Finance Act represented the second bill so far this session that Spence and dissenting Democrats united to stop. Earlier in the session, Senate Bill 61, also sponsored by Windels, would have gutted the state’s power to approve charter schools independently of local school districts that opposed charters. Spence and her allies also neutralized that measure.

“Frankly, I’m getting sick and tired of these repeated attempts, bill after bill, year after year, to undermine charters,” Spence said. “Parents want them because their kids obviously aren't being served by traditional schools. After trying for years to reason with lawmakers who don’t support charter school, I’m fed up.”

Spence noted that charters serve a wide range of students, from low-performing at-risk kids trapped in failing inner-city schools to gifted and talented students who need a more customized, college-bound curriculum.