Governor Signs Pair of Zenzinger Bills Making Historic Investments in Colorado Schools

DENVER, CO - This afternoon, Governor Polis signed into law two landmark education bills, both sponsored by long-standing education advocate, Senator Rachel Zenzinger.

“I’ve spent my entire legislative career prioritizing school funding – working to ensure that our educators have the resources they deserve and our students have the tools they need to succeed,” said Senator Zenzinger (D-Arvada). “So after an incredibly difficult year – marred by disruptions and uncertainty – I am honored and thrilled to see these transformational bills become law. This session, we were able to come together and make drastic improvements to facilitate long-term success of our public school system – strengthening our kids’ futures for generations to come.”

SB21-268 is the annual School Finance Act, which sets the funding formula for all public K-12 Colorado schools. 

Specifically, this year’s School Finance Act restored cuts to programs made in 2020, such as the K-5 Social Emotional Health Pilot Program, School Leadership Pilot Program, Behavioral Health Care Professionals Grant Program. Additionally, the bill makes permanent changes to the school funding formula to prioritize more funding for low-income students, at-risk students, and English-language learners, and increases per pupil funding by $141.67 to $7,225.28 for the next fiscal year. Lastly, the bill sets aside historic investments to decrease the budget stabilization factor--which represents the amount of funding deducted from the total program--by $481.4 million, bringing it back down to pre-pandemic levels.

HB21-1164, works to resolve the structural inequity in Colorado’s property tax system that must be fixed to ensure our schools have the funding they desperately need. 

In 1988, the School Finance Act set a uniform school district mill levy -- a property tax applied based on the assessed value of the property -- so that theoretically, each resident would contribute the same proportion of local property taxes to school funding. 

However, the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights imposes a cap on school district tax revenue. So between 1994 and 2002, voters in 174 of 178 school districts in Colorado chose to permanently waive TABOR’s revenue limitations (“De-Bruce”) in order to fill in the gaps caused by its arbitrary restrictions on public school funding. Despite those votes, the Colorado Dept. of Education continued to require school districts to reduce their tax rates (total program mill levy) to remain under TABOR’s revenue limits – even though they were legally no longer subject to those limits. There is strong reason to believe that these forced reductions were illegitimate and the source of serious structural inequity.

Due to this error, some property owners pay tax rates that are 16 times higher than that of taxpayers in neighboring school districts on properties of the same value, which forces the state to send disproportionately high state funding to our wealthiest districts, subtracting from what would otherwise be distributed to all districts.

HB21-1164, authorized by the recent ruling from the Colorado State Supreme Court, will allow districts to recoup tens of millions of dollars for school funding at a critical time in our state’s recovery.