Finance. Senate Education Committee will come to order. Miss Chris Family, take the role, please. Senators Bright? Here. Yep. Here. Lundin? Good afternoon. Michaelson Janae? Excused. Rich? Here. Marchman? Here. Mister Chair? Here. Today, I will be handing over the gavel for most of this. I'm gonna get us started. I have a bill up in, judicial that has 600 witnesses. So we'll be spending some time down there. So I'll be back and forth just to let anybody listening and anyone in the room know. But we're going to start off with the School Finance Act,
House Bill 20 five-thirteen 20 with Senators Lundin and Bridges. And who would like to start us off? Holy buckets. Senator Lundin. I'll get us going here. Get us going. Let's get us going. Colleagues, I wish quite frankly, we had had this conversation two months ago because as you know, the reality is I think we should run the School Finance Act before we run the long bill. However, we are having the important conversation of the School Finance Act now. This bill, House thirteen twenty, advances the education funding wins that we all as members of the education policy effort
and as members of the Senate Education Committee pushed in 2024, which included the elimination of the budget stabilization factor and the creation of a new, school funding formula, which is centered on students and less centered on the process, less centered on the history, less centered, quite frankly, on the adults and the apparatus of public education. So this builds on that. It delivers on our constitutional promise, 1320 does, to fund public education and adjust the base funding to account for inflation and student
growth, sadly. We're having a decline in students in K-twelve public education in Colorado. Demographics, other issues may be at play there, but I won't repine on that further in this context. I don't want to get everybody riled up before we bring a gigantic bill. This increases the statewide base per pupil funding for the twenty five-twenty six budget year by $195.42 per student to account for inflation. It sets up a new statewide base per pupil funding amount for the twenty twenty
five-twenty six budget year at $8,691.8 per pupil. It sets the total program funding for the twenty five-twenty six budget school year for all school districts and institute charter schools to at least we've finally broken a big round number $10,000,000,000.35615917 dollars and 80¢ for people that are watching closely. It delivers a $256,000,000
funding increase to schools across Colorado inside a $1,200,000,000 budget shortfall. That's worth pausing on for a moment. We are increasing funding to public education, the students of Colorado, and the districts and the people that provide that education, by $256,000,000 in a year when we started out and have sustained and managed through, in in part due to the good offices of my colleague and, co prime sponsor on this bill, the chairman of the Joint Budget Committee.
Thank you, Senator Bridges. The bill also provides 21 school districts. It holds them harmless, so there are no cuts to them. And the remaining 157 will see an average 2.9% funding increase. The per pupil revenue will increase by an average of $380 per pupil. This takes the next step, and this is critically important to many of us who've been working on this for years, in creating or expanding and applying the equitable, effective school funding system.
Thirteen twenty begins implementing the new school funding formula, which means the state will begin transitioning to a school funding formula that as many of us have been arguing for. Quite frankly, I think we all, argue for it in different ways at different times. But the new funding formula that drives more funding for students who need more funding. It's a formula that says, let's make it about students and less about districts. It provides, protects education funding stability, predictability and sustainability. It extends the implementation timeline by one year,
reducing a strain on general fund and state education fund. And by phasing in the new formula over seven years, the bill ensures that districts serving high need students, such as those in poverty or learning English language as a second language, receive increased support without creating financial shocks across the state. Thirteen twenty also establishes additional economic safeguards and reporting requirements to empower the legislature to further pause or adjust the implementation of the new formula if state revenues drop precipitously. These extra measures protect both students and taxpayers.
The new model also improves funding accuracy with a modernized pupil count. It updates how we calculate funded pupil counts to reflect more recent enrollment patterns, reducing the over- and underfunding tied to outdated averages that we've had in the past. I want to point out, however, the bill does maintain a four year enrollment averaging this year, and moves us to a three year averaging process in the following year, but only if the funding increases, driven by the new school funding formula,
lift all boats. The rising tide is, it is said, lift all boats. I could go on and on and on, off the top of my head and I have pages of notes, but I'm going to pause and let my co prime sponsor speak. Mister Bridges. Senator Bridges. Chairman Bridges. Please go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Give me a second. Senator Bridges. Thank you, mister chair. Thought a lot about how to present this bill today. And, you know, do I go through section by section and do my usual nerd out on the details? I don't think anyone here wants that. Do I talk about the years and years that I have served on the education
committees here in the House and the Senate and the changes that we've made over these years? Do we talk about the new funding formula and how we have finally in the state addressed the equity question, even as we still need to address the adequacy question? I think the most important place to start with this School Finance Act is this is not the school finance act proposed by the governor in January. I think everyone yeah. There's a hold the applause. I can see the sparkle hands. Alright. So in January, we faced a $1,200,000,000
budget shortfall here in the state. As part of his solution to this, the governor said, you know what? We gotta eliminate averaging. Is is school districts are declining enrollment rather than give them that sort of soft landing, that that slow, decline, eliminate it. Not they say one year averaging. Essentially, it's the elimination of averaging. Right? People didn't like that, to put it mildly. I have always said that adequately funding students that exist is more important than funding students that don't exist. And I maintain that, but
the key for all of this to work is that we are investing into our K-twelve public education system what it is that we need to get the results that we all want. I will be the first to admit that this school funding formula doesn't invest enough. We have a plan, a plan under the funding formula passed last year that dramatically increases overall funding in K-twelve public education over the next several years. And as I said, it addresses the equity piece,
right? The two big challenges we faced in public school funding in the state have been adequacy and equity. Finally, we did something about the equity piece. We have more to do on the adequacy piece. We finally had a study that came in this last year, two of them in fact. We paid a million bucks for each of them that said here's roughly where we need to get. And surprisingly, maybe, maybe not surprisingly, they they mostly agreed on where that outcome lies. May have run, something in the legislature to the effect of wanting to make sure we fulfill that, that study. Bottom line,
what you have before you today in this School Finance Act has been carefully negotiated, thoughtfully considered, and in large part supported by just about every group in the state that cares about public K-twelve education. It is a massively different bill from what we talked about in January. The budget committee made $150,000,000 commitment from the general fund in addition to the state ed fund, in addition to what we usually give. This is a school This is a a a public school funding act that I think we can all
be proud of. You know, I said, about the budget. This is a budget nobody likes. We can all be proud of. Right? Nobody likes it because nobody likes me to cut 1,200,000,000.0. There's always something in there people have a problem with. Always. But we can be proud of it because we didn't balance the budget on the backs of kids. We didn't balance it on the back of Medicaid. We didn't balance it on the back of public safety or public lands. We protected those. We protected public education. And this bill here today is the culmination of the extremely difficult decisions we made in the budget committee to ensure that we could fund our kids.
Is there more to do? Yeah. Absolutely. And we will do more in the future. That is part of the plan. But this School Finance Act is one I think we can all mostly, maybe some people still want a few changes to it, but one that we can all like and one that we can all be proud of. Ask for an I vote. Thank you. Do I have questions? Senator Marchman. Thank you, and thanks for being here today. I am curious how much the state share decreases in this school finance act.
Is that state share from the previous year? Is that what you're asking? Mhmm. Anyone? Euler? This is Senator Lundin. I know that's in my notes up here. It is my considered perspective, and I don't know if I'm asking an perhaps narrow question or answering narrow question that's being asked, that it increases two fifty six million dollars to the state share of education funding. And it's worth pointing out that we're north of $10,000,000,000 to the $850,000 give or take K-twelve students in Colorado. There's an additional almost $8,000,000,000
that comes in local share in others. So the aggregate amount, going to students is closer to $18,000,000,000 But to your question, state share increased $2.56. Sarah Marksman. Thank you. That helps. And, based on the law that we passed last year, it looks like it's 16 less for state share. I just wanna highlight that the property tax bill that we ran a couple of years ago is going to continue to make the local share go up, and so we're gonna continue to see the state share fall.
And I just wanna flag publicly that I hope we get to a place where we say we're not going to make the locals cover all of the difference. And that'll be my first. Wouldn't you agree? Question center line. That's a good Lundeen trick right there. Fair enough. No, I appreciate that much. The reality is, at one point it was kind of a sixtyforty mix, local share 60, state share 40. Over the intervening years and for the past many years that flipped. We were approximately 60% state share,
40% local share. And that is rebalancing at this point. Senator Bridges. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And the other thing I'll throw in there is that that doesn't take into consideration as well mill levy overrides, which are fairly inequitable across the state. But that is additional local dollars that are going into K12 education and not through the formula. Sarah Marshman. Thank you. Okay. And so I see that we are taking $45,600,000 in the current budget year out of BEST cash fund.
Sorry. It's the public school capital construction assistance fund. And then next year, it'll be 24.6. And then the following year is gonna be twenty point six. I have some pretty big concerns with the fact that we're trying to take money from capital to put into ongoing operational, which would be the School Finance Act. And second, I have some pretty big issues with saying to all of these building not not saying them to the buildings, but the districts that are struggling to get roofs and HVAC and all that kind
of stuff. I'm struggling with the fact that we're saying it is more of a priority for us to move forward taking money set for capital, borrowing it, and setting it into operational to the tune of, you know, a hundred another hundred million dollars over the next three years. I I I I would I would I would like to understand, how that makes sense, how that impacts our rural communities mainly. But do you also have an estimate of how much our best needs are currently?
Senator Lundy. Appreciate very much the conversation. It is a critically important conversation. I do not have documentation in front of me, but the the answer to what what would be perceived by many, and and I might count myself among them of the needs for capex for schools across colorado, which best is designed to have a positive influence on is billions of dollars is what would be needed to get all of the infrastructure for K-twelve education across Colorado up to what we all wish it could possibly be.
Reality is scarce resources are a reality in every aspect of our lives, whether it's enterprise inside government or enterprise outside government, scarce resources are always a matter. And so the challenging conversation of identifying what the cap needs are, what we spend on cap needs and how we close that loop is going to be an ongoing conversation. There are elements in this bill that allow for the Joint Budget Committee to continue
to evaluate. And I'll defer to the chair of this, the Joint Budget Committee to speak to this in a moment, but to continue to evaluate with a limited, a kind of a three year window on how long can this go as we're evaluating when we get back to what we hope would be a more normal, non capped, best, environment. Senator Marshall. Thank you, mister chair. And I just want to ask also for clarification. It seems strange to me that we've got about 15% of our students being taught in charter schools currently. About 85% are being taught in our public,
traditional neighborhood schools. I also see in this bill, we're actually asking to move up the amount for they get, special types of bonds that our school districts and and regular schools don't get. But I'm seeing that at the same time, we're saying everyone else in the state is gonna suffer with cap, but we need more money for their charter schools. So can you just kinda help me understand that? Senator Lundy. Thank you very much. Appreciate the question. It's a valid conversation, a good conversation.
There are many aspects of of society where government seeks to level things out, even things out, to catch things up. You can think through any number of circumstances where, there were policies, processes, behaviors in place that were perceived over time to be what we would call discriminatory, to have one, one environment, one group of individuals, one class of people to be discriminated against. And and so government seeks to step into that and say, let's balance things out. Let's catch things up.
Let's square things up. So for years and years, over the past thirty years, the charters have been charter schools, which are public schools, have participated. Generally, they've funded their capex out of operational dollars. That's been something that has been a burden. So there have been policy choices made to try and bring that in alignment with the traditional or the neighborhood schools, as they are frequently called, where the districts have the ability to raise additional dollars outside of operational funds and fund that capex or capital expenditure with different dollars.
There are elements of trying to equalize that, normalize that, and catch that back up. I'm very pleased and grateful that we have in the last couple of years, as we've eliminated the budget stabilization factor, as we've taken these positive steps to identify and treat all students as the primary goal for our funding mechanisms, we have also finally decided to fund charter school students at the same operational level that, in fact, we've been funding their brother or sister who may be participating in a neighborhood school. So it's part of that process of equalizing,
normalizing, and getting all students, regardless of what type of public school they're in, to receive the sort of funding that students in other types of public schools are being funded with. Thank you. And I I have a, I think, a follow-up if I if you didn't already ask this. Not necessarily on on charters, but on looking it's it's kind of in the same line. Looking on the fact sheet that you gave, it says 21 school districts would be held harmless, no cuts. What does hold harmless mean? Because my understanding is that there are a number of rural districts that aren't being
held harmless, and that, is there a different definition to hold harmless here in the fact sheet versus what we think it is? Because I don't think their funding increased is what I'm understanding. And I'm just trying to wrap my head around it. Senator Lundin? Sure. And I will take take a crack at that. Part of the challenge we have in the entire K-twelve Colorado education environment right now is we are managing through significantly secular student enrollment decline.
We were north of 900,000 students pre pandemic in k 12 education in Colorado. Today, we're struggling to stay at 850,000 students. Well, if the per pupil, amount is based on numbers of pupils, even with an averaging formula, smoothing or attenuating that is declining, the reality is my expectation is I want as much as I had last year or even more than I had last year is my expectation, but I'm serving 5%, ten %, in some cases, 55% fewer students than I was serving last year.
That inevitably is going to create this challenge where it feels like the expectation is not being met. The the formula, the the bill is designed to hold harmless so that there is so that the dislocation in experience from the expectation and the reality is not harmful or or unsustain unmanageable even in a declining enrollment environment. Senator Bridges. Thank you, mister chair. And in what it is we handed out to you, you should have this sheet. I'm a numbers guy, you know, running the budget committee. I like to focus on the black and white.
So here we go, dollars and cents. You can see here the county, the district, and then the 24, 20 five total program, and the 20 five-twenty six total program under this bill. And then you can see the change from twenty four-twenty five to 20 five-twenty six in that far right column. There are no negative numbers in that column. So any district that would have seen a decrease because of an enrollment decrease does not see that decrease this year. That includes the district that is perhaps closest to my heart in the state,
Sheridan Public Schools. In my district, they are the highest percentage they have the highest percentage of free and reduced lunch kids in the metro area, second highest percentage in the state. This is the district that I always think about when I'm looking at school funding and trying to figure out how we give more help to these kids. Sheridan does not see an increase. This chart on the back here, if you can see it from where you are, shows where they would be this year if we hadn't put the hold harmless in place, and if we had just gone with the old formula, if we just dismissed entirely the changes that we made last year and just said,
let's roll forward with what it is we've always done, Sheridan Public Schools would see a pretty major decrease in funding this year. And instead, this bill, this school finance act that you have in front of you right now keeps them at last year's funding level. It also keeps Washington County's aricaree public schools at zero. It keeps it at no loss. It keeps Fremont Cotopaxi District from having a loss. Keeps Delta from having a loss. You can go through here and look at all these districts that if not for
the hold harmless in this bill, if instead we had just gone with the formula as it has always been, these folks would have seen a loss. So, again, I think not only is this a school finance act that most people can like, obviously, some folks would still like to see some changes, but I think it's one we can be proud of too. Thank you. That's what I'm just trying to get to is excuse me. I have a gluten allergy, and I've had some gluten yesterday. Oh, no, Chris. Accidentally. So the hold harmless I'm just trying to get to the point of what hold harmless means,
you know, in terms of Amendment 23. Are we supposed to be increasing our share of funding, or or is it just hold harmless and that they maintain their funding from the previous year? Do we still have to increase it based on amendment 23? This is for, you know, possible future questions. Senator Bridges? Thank you. Absolutely great question. The answer is the hold harmless means that they are not the district. Right? The district itself is not losing any dollars. It's getting at least every district in the state of Colorado is getting at least
as much in 2526 as they got in 2425 regardless of a decline in enrollment. That's what this chart says. That's what the hold harmless means. Right. And I'm just question which means that if these folks these districts with this decline in enrollment actually have, their particular the amount of money they get per pupil, is in many cases greater than the amount of money per pupil the districts get that are growing. So if you look at the total increase in per pupil, revenue across the state, through the formula, it's $380 It's a total of $250,000,000
in increase in investment in public k 12 education over 2425, and every district gets at least what they got in 2425. And I'm I'm sorry to just because I'm trying to prepare, potential questions for future questions. When I'm thinking of this and I'm looking at in Manatee Springs in El Paso County, for instance, that $14,000,000 that they have, let me get this right, that was a whole yeah. There it is. It says $495,452,000 and that's last year and that's the same as this year.
Does the state share change on that as a hold harmless? Do we because their property tax valuations went up? Or are we still paying the same amount? And maybe we don't know this. Maybe it's something we need to figure out. And I just Yeah. Are we Go ahead. Senator Lundin. Fair enough. I appreciate it. And good conversation around hold harmless. What it frequently means in some of these districts where they have declining enrollment, I mean, we'd mentioned Sheridan previously, so let's just stay with that.
8.5% decline in enrollment, but with the hold harmless at $13,700,000 13 million dollars previously $13,700,000 currently, when you consider it and and actually adjust it adjust the math, look at the math based on per pupil revenue, which is, of course, at the end of the day, the the real meaningful metric, how many students are we dealing with, That district with the hold harmless at zero actually is experiencing a 4.5% increase in dollars in their per pupil revenue calculation.
So zero can, in some circumstances, actually mean an increase. And as I look across this particular spreadsheet I've got here with a lot of the more precipitous declining enrollments, they all experience a net per pupil revenue increase experience. The average among them is 3.5%. Senator Bridges? Thank you, Mr. Shear. And I'm not quite sure I know what you're driving at, but I think to break down per district the change in, local share versus state share, that's not something I have,
at my fingers, but I can certainly get that. That's fine. Thank you. Any other questions? Senator Bright. Thank you, mister chair. Just to restate so to make make sure that I understand correctly, You implemented a hold harmless provision to make to make sure those districts that are in a declining enrollment scenario are held harmless for total dollars. That did come with a price tag, but it was important. That price tag also affected, the potential of what could have been PPR, for all the rest of the districts, for all districts. Senator Lundy.
Thanks very much. I I appreciate the question, the observation. It is absolutely accurate. And as we move forward with our funding formula, we are I think everyone is committed to, and the policy determination has been made, and and averaging is another way of dealing with this. Averaging is a form of holding harmless. Used to be a five year average. Now it's a four year average. Next year, it will be a three year average. We're committed to actually putting the money where the students are. And and that's that's the observation you're making is the hold harmless does come at a cost. We're doing it for stability for organizations and operations called school districts with schools because
they have students there and we we want the students to have a good experience. And because we can walk and chew gum at the same time, we are looking forward to a formula where the money is more precisely, more completely, more fully going to where the students are, not to where the students once upon a time may have been. Thank you, mister McShaer. And, you know, I I I'll I'll add to that. Yes, there is a cost to that. And that cost is is born primarily this year. There there will be a correction moving forward as we move towards that new formula.
And as you look at it, especially the districts that are losing right now, they tend to be either small districts or rural districts or districts like, Sheridan, which is small, not rural, but, certainly very small and does have pretty precipitous declining enrollment. Because they have the population they do, because there's a huge number of, kids who are English language learners and kids who, qualify for free and reduced lunch, we know that it costs more to educate those kids. And the previous formula didn't really recognize that fact and certainly didn't fund,
adequately to create that equitable result. We know that it costs more to get, to get a kid who, is ELL and, is on free and reduced lunch to the place that we want them to be as a Colorado public school student than it does to get a similar kid in a different district with a different background to that same level. And so that is the equity piece that we have concentrated on. That is the piece that kicks in the more this formula kicks in. And so you'll see sort of this jagged black line here on this chart shows
what their actual funding will be. The gold line shows what it would have been if we just kept with what it is that that we had negotiated last year. In this blue line though, this way down at the bottom of the chart, this is what they would be getting if there was no change to the formula at all. If we continue with that, what what I would characterize as an inequitable formula, and instead we are having a slower implementation of a more equitable formula. Senator Kim? Yeah. I was hoping that you guys could give me an update and if you want to bring Ms. Gerstel or somebody up to do that,
that's great. But where are we? We passed years ago, the change in how we do at risk funding. And it's like every year it's been like, oh, well, we're going to bring this to light. And I saw in the new finance formula, we're delaying it yet another year. So, why are we delaying it yet another year? Can we just not get this thing figured out? Did we pass something that was a terrible idea? I I'm trying to understand it. Senator Bridges? Senator Kipp, you have pushed my buttons on this. This the the
the, yes, the anguish that I have experienced working on this over the last few years, the hope and then the crash in that hope, and then maybe a glimmer, I'd like to turn it over there to someone who knows a lot more. So Miss Gristle. Thank you, mister chair. Anna Gristle with Legislative Council staff. Senator Koepp, the, the new at risk measure that was passed in 2022, included the sort of the structure for what that new at risk measure would look like. The nitty gritty details of it, how to weight different components of it,
were not specified in the bill and were sort of a working group was tasked with sort of looking at those details. In the years since then when it's been delayed, I think CDE has, started collecting the data that would be needed in order to implement it and to have the districts go through that process to kind of get that infrastructure up and running. But the details of that measure, the weights between different components, I think still would need to be figured out and specified in order for it to be fully implemented.
Sorry. Kip? So is it that you need more information from the working group, or is it that you need additional legislation? Is it you need, somebody to run a study and do additional analysis, and we don't have the money to do it? I mean, help me out here. Miss Gerson? Thank you, mister chair. Senator Kipp, I think legislation would probably be needed, in order to specify some of those components or authority given to the department to specify those or some guidance on exactly what those parameters should be.
I don't know if there needs to be working groups or studies to it. I think it's, a little bit more of just like a decision making thing about what those parameters should be. What those parameters are impacts how many students you count under the measure, which does have financial implications also. So I think it's a bit of a, like, decision making piece rather than, like, a research piece. Senator Bridges? Thank you, mister chair. And, the department is also in the room if we wanna get into this conversation. It it is the School Finance Act,
so it feels like an appropriate time, to do it. But they're also in the room and can help contribute to this discussion. Okay. And I'm happy to have the the rest of the discussion at a different time except for one question. Senator Bridges, as chair of the JBC, the JBC has authority to draft bills and do stuff like that. Why haven't you guys done it if this is such a thorn in your side? Senator Bridges. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you so much for the question, Senator Kipp. I think the short answer is that the way we have the at risk factor working right now, essentially works well enough.
And is the the more we have tried to every time we we move forward on this, we see new challenges and new reasons why perhaps that new approach doesn't actually work or doesn't give us the results that, that are maybe not as good as the results that we had before. And so this is is a challenge that, my understanding is we're at a place that that is perhaps not the ideal where we would want to be, but is perhaps the best that we can get to given the challenges we have with collecting that data. But again,
I will defer to the department for more on that. Sarah Merchant. Thank you. While miss Gershell is here, I'm gonna ask you a question. The hold harmless, some of my districts are impacted by hold harmless. That actually means they would be losing money, and I specifically asked for a floor, and it looks like we got a floor. My question is, how long does the floor last? When does the hold harmless go away? And, when can these districts, expect to feel a hit? Then the follow-up question is gonna be, I'd love to hear you talk more about,
senator Bridges, about the, students that, paying for them where they are, what whatever you were talking about, ghost students or something. Maybe you could speak about that. Miss Gersel? Miss Gersel. Thank you, mister chair. Senator Marchman, the, House Bill fourteen forty eight last year when it was passed, included a provision that, through the six year phase in period of the new formula, no district would receive less than the old formula plus 0.5%. House Bill thirteen twenty changes that hold harmless provision so that in fiscal year twenty
five-twenty six and twenty six-twenty seven, no district receives less than what they received in the current year twenty four-twenty five. So we have under thirteen-twenty, you have two years of districts being held harmless to fiscal year twenty four-twenty five. And then for the remainder of the phase in period, we go back to a similar mechanism as what was in 1448. So we go back to districts receiving at least the old formula plus 1%.
I would maybe if it's easier, on page five of the fiscal note, there's that table. The only other thing I would as I send my pen across through that I would mention about the hold harmless is that, the cost of the hold harmless, which I think Mr. Chair maybe mentioned, is included in the total program amounts that are in the fiscal note. So, like Table three, has what total program is for 20 five-twenty $6.10035000000.000. Dollars that includes the, hold harmless amount. So it's not a separate amount. It's all baked into the total program.
Any other questions? No. So just to clarify from my understanding, checking from my understanding. So the 14.48 stated it would be the old formula plus 0.5%. This stays, if we were still at the old formula plus point five, would these all be at zero still, or they have more money than they're at? Thank you, mister chair. I think it depends on the district. Depends on the district? Because I think, you know, you have, depending on the enrollment trends in a given district, they may benefit from different hold harmless
provisions. So I I don't know if that answers your question. But It it does to a point. Yes. Senator Bridges. Thank you, mister chair. I mean, what we're looking at in most of the districts that are held harmless this year is dramatic declines in enrollment. And if we were just using the old formula, it'd still be averaged over five years, but it'd still be a dramatic decline in enrollment, old formula. It'd still be a dramatic decline in enrollment. So if you look at Sheridan, I think this is a great example, and and, I believe this holds true across most, if not all, of these held harmless districts. The total dollar amount they'd be getting this year would be significantly less.
And so even if they were at old formula plus 1%, the amount of money they would get is significantly less. The hold harmless this year is a tremendous benefit to these districts. It is something that falls off as we move forward. But, again, as it falls off as we move forward with the implementation of that new formula. So the the the cliff is not as steep as it could be because that new formula, again, is an equitable one. It recognizes, that kids in districts like Sheridan, that kids in rural districts, that it just costs more to educate those.
And this goes to, senator Marchman's question about, phantom students. And what I had said earlier about I prefer to fund the kids that exist as opposed to the ones that don't. I think sort of in between the folks that think about school funding as simply districts, we're we're paying districts to educate kids, and and it's the districts that we think about. And the, other folks, maybe I should have used my right hand for this, who think that maybe money should just be a check written to parents to send wherever they want.
Right? I don't know who that might be. But if there are people out there that think something like that right? Kids cost different amounts to educate in different places. Districts have different challenges depending on where they are. What I think the new funding formula recognizes and the reason that I would never support fully eliminating some kind of averaging, some kind of of hold harmless, is because the reality is that these kids that we're trying to educate, that I think we need to be focused on in terms of how much does it cost to get them where we need them to be. These kids are educated by districts.
And so it's both. You can't just look at the kid. You can't just look at the district. You've got to look at both. And an elimination of averaging ignores the district piece of it. For for districts to to see their their, their revenue, to see their budget swing wildly year to year depending on what's going on with enrollment is is isn't fair to that district. And, ultimately, that means it's not fair to the kids. And I had a wonderful conversation with senator Kim about this, who saw, sort of what happens when districts don't know what's gonna what their funding's gonna look like year to year. They hold back,
and then that's also bad for the kids. Right? They're not investing everything they could because they don't know what they're gonna have. So some kind of predictability built into this system is critical. I think we have that in the new funding formula. I know that as far as, averaging goes, OSPB director Mark Ferrendino was talking about some kind of, limit to the amount of, funding that a district can lose year over year to something like you know, whether it goes to two years on averaging or whether it's, like, a 2.5% difference or some other percentage, giving schools some predictability year over year is critical.
And and again, the amount that we give them is is, I think in my mind, always that combination, that intersection of the students, that exist inside of that district. And I have a question for miss Gerson real quick. Last year, we received, per pupil, funding per district, for every single district in the state, a packet. Do you have that availability to get that to us? Not today, obviously, but for every district. I want to hear it. SFA, Ms. Kersle. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Appendix A in your fiscal note, shows what district PPR would be under current law,
what it would be under the bill. If there's a different PPR comparison that would be helpful, though, we're happy to put it together. I think, maybe I can't I'm sorry. I just wasn't look I just didn't look in the fiscal. It was a separate, spreadsheet that was given to us during committee, so that's why I was thinking that way. That's what I'm looking for. Thank you. Thank you. Senator Marchman. Final question. This is a policy decision you guys made. This was actually a decision, I think, that was made at JVC and one that I I really think we went the wrong direction on. There were two, programs that were kinda being looked at.
One was the high impact tutoring program, and one was the out of school, program. It looks like the out of school program moved forward for 3 and a half million dollars when data shows that high impact tutoring is actually going to improve achievement in students. But, I'm I'm kinda curious why we chose to move forward on out of school time rather than doing things that are actually really impactful in our schools with people who are qualified to teach our students things like math.
Sir, and Bridges. Thank you, mister chair. This goes back to an answer that that I considered giving to you earlier about the the best question. I thought my my co prime here, answered the question thoroughly, and I didn't feel the need to to weigh in. This was a crappy budget. It sucks when you cut $1,200,000,000 It just sucks. You're faced with a lot of bad decisions. And at the end of the day, the question is, how do we get the best return on the investment that Coloradans put into the services that we provide? And I can't say that we made every decision the right way on the JBC.
There's a reason that it goes to the floor so that the entire rest of the legislature gets to take a look at decisions we made, second guess them at times and and change them and provide feedback. That was a hard one. That was a really hard one for me, in in particular. And we had actually drafted a bill to eliminate both programs. We had considered eliminating both programs. At the end of the day, we decided that there we made the decision, again, balancing against all the other demands in the budget, all the other needs we have to move forward with the program that we did.
And so that, again, very well could have been addressed in a budget amendment on the floor. We did the best we could. We made tough decisions. We cut programs that are serving people but that we thought maybe just weren't the highest best return on investment that we could get. Understand if you disagree about the choice that we made there, but those are the choices we had to face. Senator Merchant? Thank you. And I very much do disagree with that decision. It seems to me if we have $3,500,000 that we're willing to set aside, we could at least find a little bit of it to go to an actual
school. So I I do very much resent that, decision, especially as a math interventionist. This is, what I do is I help students get better at math, and I do it through programs like the high impact tutoring. The out of school time stuff helps programs like the boys and girls clubs, and that bill passed last year. And I believe it passed with an implication that it cannot go to any public entity. It has to go to private. So I I I have a real objection with that.
But so my questions. Alright. Any other questions? Senator Bridges? Thank you, mister chair. You know, just to just to to make sure that that we're level setting here. Right? That there is also good evidence, that the out of school time program works. We made the best decision with the information that we had. The program that you think we should not have cut was one we implemented during the pandemic. It was not intended to be long term. If it is providing continued benefit, by all means, let's, look at how it is we can implement that program again.
And as I mentioned, the bill comes to the floor for amendments and conversation from everyone else in the legislature and, welcome that input, and those amendments. Senator Merchant. Thank you. So it didn't come to the floor that we were able to vote or not on keeping the high impact tutoring program. So I appreciate that, but it it didn't necessarily come to the floor. Excuse me. Any other questions? Senator Bridges. Thank you, mister chair. Yeah. I'm I'm sorry that we're only talking about it now because the budget was signed on Monday and we can't fix it,
but a Longville amendment could have addressed this issue. Please, next time, talk with me ahead of time. Alright. Let's move on, to the testimony phase. Senator Lundin. I just wanna remind everybody as we're working through all of this, and we're listening carefully to the great witness testimony that's going to come. Let's do this for the kids. Thank you, senator Lundin. First, I'm going to call up got it. Nikki Schmidt, Frank Reeves, Mateo Montoya Collas, Amber Boom. Three are remote.
One is in person for our first panel. Looks like we only have two people here, online. Nikki Schmidt. If you go ahead and unmute yourself, state your name, who you represent. We're gonna keep this at two minutes because we have a lot of people to testify. Thank you, committee, for your time. My name is Nikki Schmidt, and I'm the CFO for the Weld County School District in Windsor, and I'm speaking on behalf of the school district. I just wanted to express some concerns I have with House Bill thirteen twenty. And I should state that, you know, my perspective also comes from the fact that we are the lowest funded district in the, entire state when you look at in district students. I know some districts have online programs which change the average,
but for in district, we are the lowest funded in the state. And as discussed earlier, I appreciate the discussion. Fourteen forty eight promised to hold harmless to ensure districts would get at least a half a percent increase. And this has been taken out of the current draft with the promise to ensure 1% in future years. As you know, we're just implementing senate bill fourteen forty eight and have already made modifications. So to remove a hold harmless for next year while promising an increase in future years is concerning, especially on, based on the state's budget. While a half percent may not seem a lot to the committee members, for our district it would have covered,
the cost of our health insurance increases. It could have, added potentially four teachers, special education interventionists, which we desperately need. I wanted to point out that we are not impacted by averaging. And there's been a lot of focus on averaging. And I'm just asking for the same consideration on the whole harmless that's been given to the districts impacted by averaging. I appreciate the work done on 1448. As discussed earlier, it definitely helps with equity. I'm concerned about adequacy. I believe all students deserve adequate funding, and there's obviously a difference between equitable and adequate. We see little benefit from senate bill 14,048
over the next years. I'm concerned if the only focus is funding for the years. I'm concerned if the only focus is funding the fully implemented fourteen forty eight without any focus on the base funding, we will be severely impacted as well as all a lot of other districts. I think all students deserve an increase in base funding as shown in the adequacy studies. And without this focus, I think there's just gonna be way too many students impacted. So I thank you for your time. Thank you, miss Schmidt. Can you just tell us the district again that you're representing? Yeah. Weld County School District r e four, which is in Windsor Severance area. Okay. Thank you very much.
And hold on Thank you. In case we have more questions. Okay. Next, I have Frank Reeves. Go ahead and unmute yourself. State your name. You have two minutes. Thank you, mister chair and senate head committee. I am Frank Reeves, the executive director of Colorado Rural Schools Alliance, representing a 47 of our rural districts. We are here today in a MIM position on HB thirteen twenty. First and foremost, we have to say we're very appreciative of the sponsor's support of K-twelve education and funding. The conversation this morning was great. We recognize the fiscal constraints of the state budget and appreciate the sponsors doing what
they can to minimize cuts to public ed. For us in rural districts, though, operations funding is incredibly important as we face different economies of scale than our urban counterparts. But operations for us is just one part and also I'm sorry. But operations for us is just one part and also important in our ability to access best grants, to assist with needed projects. And that's really why we're in a man. As you know, most of our rural communities simply cannot afford to bond on their own for the cost of construction, especially in the past few years with the cost of construction skyrocketing
and assessed valuation not matching that. They need the best program, those districts, and they need the COP capacity to complete our large scale capital projects. In 2425, the best board received applications adding up to $658,700,000 Those were in applications But the BEST board was only able to fund a hundred and 55,200,000.0 of that. This cap reduces their ability to fund down to 63,000,000. That's only a small fraction of the need. We would request amendments to lift the cap on best grants after one year,
which I believe, they talked about in the in the conversation today, and a larger investment in best funds so our district can fill the need for capital improvements for our districts. Thank you, mister chair, and I'm available for any questions. Thank you, Mr. Rees. And that's all we have for this panel. Do we have questions for this panel from any of the committee members? No, we do not. Thank you. Thank you both for attending and testifying. Next, I will call up Michael, Gail or Gaal, g a a l, remotely, doctor Deidra Pilch, Liz Waddick, and Scott Smith. And I think I have Brett Johnson too.
Okay. It looks like we have one remote and in person. Tell me there we go. You wanna start us off and, make sure it says it's green, doctor is it doctor Pilch? Yes. Go ahead and, state your name, who you represent. You have two minutes. Thank you. Hold the microphone close to your mouth. It's not too sensitive. Okay. Thank you, mister chair. And thank you, senators, for letting us be here today. I wanna thank you for your diligence in committing to equitable funding, for the students in Colorado. I am Deirdre Pilch. I'm in my tenth year as superintendent in the Greeley Evans Weld School District six.
I am here to champion support and services needed for students who live in poverty, students who are multilanguage learners, and students who are on IEPs, students who need the most support in our schools. In Greeley and Evans, we serve 23,000 students and over 70% of those students live in poverty. And we're proud that our families speak over 160 languages. For decades, school districts like ours, like mine, with significant numbers of students who live in poverty and who are English language learners,
have not been funded at a level to ensure equitable access to the education supports and services that they truly deserve and need to be successful. House Bill thirteen twenty is necessary to ensure we have quality educators in every classroom, regardless of zip code, And so we can provide much needed intervention for the children who need this the most. Every district has children who live in poverty and who who receive special education services. Most have at least a few students who are learning English as a new language.
These children need more to ensure their academic success. In high poverty communities like ours, to ensure our students are able to access their education, we must provide services like behavioral and mental health professionals, family and parent liaisons, parent education. Students need an extended school day and summer school programming. Their families need food pantries and even laundry facilities in their schools. I implore you to move thirteen twenty forward and ensure the implementation of the formula. Thank you so much. Thank you, Doctor. Pilcher.
Just hold on in case we have questions. Brett Johnson. Go ahead. State your name, who you represent. You have two minutes. Thank you, mister chair. My name is Brett Johnson, and I'm the CFO of Aurora Public Schools. I come to share, our support of thirteen twenty on behalf of both case as a co legislative co chair of the organization as well as the district. Couple of highlights. You know, we're we're very much appreciative of moving forward with the implementation of the new formula. You know, I think it's representative of a great place to be where we were able to
maximize both the interests of many districts, and our neighboring districts to stay put at a four year averaging amount for one year. That was very important. And we we were in the same place five years ago, and we recognized that while also maximizing to the extent possible, the amount to implement next year at 15%. I don't know if I would wish on anybody a billion dollar shortfall. And, you know, we we remain appreciative that K-twelve, is represented as a priority in maximizing both of these things simultaneously under these conditions.
We also appreciate your continued work and continuing work on some of the outstanding nuances with respect to school finance, including the clarification towards how we ultimately calculate, charter per people allocations next year. With all that, we continue, to support this, and we appreciate the work, towards a resolution. Thank you. And if you just hold on again and see if we have questions, I'm gonna go to our remote panel. Michael Gahl, g a a l. And if I mispronounce your name,
just please correct me. Go ahead and unmute yourself, state your name and who you represent. Yeah. Hi. I'm Michael Gahl. I'm the superintendent of the Colorado Springs School District eleven. We come on today in support of thirteen twenty as an extension of the original fourteen forty eight, but I do, share a bit of caution of some concerns coming from district eleven. Our school district for the last thirty years has lost a third of its student population while the population in the general Colorado Springs, area El Paso County has nearly doubled. So while you're making considerations of five year to four year to three year and
then the smoothing, I don't think you're going fast enough. For the last, twenty years, we have taken about, a hundred and $30,000,000 in excess payment due to enrollment averaging and it has actually forced us to be addicted to our old ways instead of forced us to our new ways. And so when you're making these considerations and particularly for my peers in the rurals where sometimes families just actually leave the area in a in a densely populated area like El Paso County, the families are making an external choice in what we are providing.
And so in essence, the the state is paying for those families twice because you're paying me to no longer educate the child on a five year average while at the same time you're having to pay for that enrollment to where the child has landed in a neighboring district. The fastest way to correct the hills in public education, particularly in those hyper competitive environments is to fully implement the student weighted formula that you passed last year and are now presenting a version of this year. 15% is a is is a great first start, but if we could,
accelerate the time instead of slow down that time, it would actually hold the districts like ours accountable to the choices that we present to families instead of allowing us to hide under the cover of why it is that families are choosing to leave. Thank you. Thank you. Again, if you just hold on and see if we have questions. Miss Watt Watt excuse me. Miss Wattick. Excuse me. What's that? Go ahead. State your name, who you represent. You have two minutes. Thank you. Good afternoon, mister chair, honorable members of the committee. My name is Liz Wattick. I'm a high school Spanish teacher and the vice president of the Colorado Education Association
representing nearly 40,000 educators across the state. I'm here to express CEA's strong support for 1320. First, I'd like to thank the sponsors for their commitment to funding Colorado schools. Over the past few months, Colorado educators have called and emailed their elected officials, come to the capital to share what an underfunded education system has meant for them and their students. And a month ago, 8,000 educators from across Colorado rallied outside this building where where you are. Thank you for letting me, be remote. I appreciate that. To demand no more cuts.
The School Finance Act shows that our legislators listen. We're heartened by the progress that's been made, since the governor's November budget proposal. And as you know, eliminating the student count and averaging process would have resulted in millions of funding cuts to nearly every district and state. We're grateful that instead of cuts, the legislature is moving the direction of increased investment in public education through the phased implementation of the new finance formula. While CEA believes it's a major win, there are still a few critical details we urge you to prioritize as the implementation continues. First, school districts should only move to the next tier of fourteen forty eight implementation if
the funding is sustainable and allows for meaningful investment in student success. We cannot afford to take steps that undermine long term sustainability. And most importantly, we urge the legislature to make it a top priority to establish a sustainable path forward, one that both preserves the solvency of the state education fund and fully funds the school finance formula. Our students and educators have waited far too long for a system that meets their needs. Balancing the budget on the back of our public schools must become a thing of the past. Any future policy or amendment that moves us closer to fully and equitably funding public education will have the full support of CEA.
Thank you for your leadership and continued commitment to Colorado students. We look forward to working alongside you to ensure a future of sustainable and equitable school funding. Thanks. Excuse me. Thank you. And, Scott Smith. Go ahead and unmute yourselves, state your name, who you represent. You have two minutes. Thank you, mister chair. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Scott Smith. I'm the chief financial and operating officer of the Cherry Creek School District, but I'm also incoming president of CASE, and that is the capacity that I'm speaking to you today. CASE represents about 3,600 public school, and district leaders across the state,
and our organization is very pleased to support house bill thirteen twenty. And we really appreciate all of the time that has gone into ensuring, the investment, in Colorado k 12 education. Overwhelmingly, our members wanted to see the new school finance act, fourteen forty eight implemented, and this legislation does exactly that. We appreciate that it puts us on a path towards full implementation, and we also appreciate that it maintains four year averaging. We know that many districts over the last few decades have benefited from declining enrollment averaging, and we're encouraged that more districts will be afforded that opportunity as others have already
benefited. CASE believes that the School Finance Act before you today honors the intent of 1448 and will help ensure that we equitably serve all students. We're very supportive of the legislators who have been willing, to listen to us and work to make amendments in on this bill, particularly the ability to have a tracking mechanism, if the legislature is not able to meet amendment 23 funding obligations. I know we don't want that to happen and necessarily hope it doesn't happen, but should we be in a place where this can't be fully funded, it's important just like we have in the past to have an ability to track those funds.
We also appreciate the opportunity to be part of a working group on the concept of smoothing. We remain concerned about the long term viability of this plan and how financial decisions in the legislature could affect the speed at which declining enrollment averaging is reduced. It's a critically complicated conversation, and we wanna ensure that school districts from urban and rural districts alike are able to be part of it. House bill thirteen twenty protects public education funding to the greatest extent possible given this challenging funding environment, and our organization is pleased to support the bill. We ask for your yes vote. Thank you.
Thank you. And I think you're the last person here on my panel. Do we have questions for this panel? Senator Bright. Thank you, mister chair. Question is for doctor Pilch. Welcome. Thank you for being here today. You mentioned English language learners. Do you feel like this new funding formula is gonna allow you to keep up with the specific needs that they they have to make sure that they can meet their objectives by graduation? Doctor Pilch? Thank you, Senator Bright, and thank you for the question. I think this is a significant move in the right direction for us really being able to meet the needs of our English language learners.
As you know, we are a refugee resettlement community. And what that means is we have children coming to us who are seven and sometimes 17 who have never had any formal education. So the needs are significant, and, this this will make a a big difference to us. For us, next school year, it's at least $9,000,000 Thank you. Senator Marchant. Thank you. And this is for mister Smith. Thank you for joining us again. My question is twofold. I'm wondering if you can talk about this concept
of paying for students that are in seats, as well as and maybe in connection with did you mention some sort of a group about looking at, stepping down the averaging? I'm just curious about that. I wasn't I wasn't sure about that. Mister Smith. Thank you, mister chair. Thank you, senator. You know, I think the question around declining enrollment averaging is that while we may be funded on a per pupil basis, our costs don't move on a per pupil basis.
I'm projected to lose 250 kids across 65 schools next year. So four kids per school. I'm not sure which school I'm supposed to close or which teacher I'm supposed to lay off in order to cover that gap. So it's critically important that declining enrollment averaging allows us to serve all of our students. We're not paying for empty seats. We're paying for the services that all current students benefit from. The second part to your question, senator, is around changing declining enrollment averaging from four year to three year to two year or some sort of smoothing factor as it's been described.
We don't have clarity on what that looks like yet, and so it's contemplated that a group of us would get together to, hash that out. My concern is that the way the bill is written right now is that if the state ad fund goes below 200,000,000, we go to two year averaging automatically regardless of the implementation of fourteen forty eight. And so my concern is that next year, the state ad fund will be rated, in order to balance the budget and will be immediately thrust into two year declining enrollment averaging before we've implemented any more than 15% of house of, thirteen twenty here.
So I just wanna make sure that as we lean into that conversation, we're thoughtful to how the political and budgetary decisions that occur at the legislature could or could not accelerate, the removal of declining enrollment averaging. Senator Marchman. And I appreciate that. I just wanna go on the record during this, hearing to say that the legislative intent, if we were to move this bill forward, would not be to see declining enrollment as an issue to be solved. But I do appreciate having additional conversations.
But this is happening across the nation, and so I I just wanna go on the record to say that I would not support going to two year averaging, next year. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you all for being here. Thank you for your testimony. I appreciate it. Next, I'm going to call up panel three. I have Doctor. Yenny, Chuck Carpenter, Dan Schaller, Adam Hartman, Mary Wickersham remotely, Adam Hartman remotely, I believe. As we're bringing up the remote,
we can go right now, in person doc doctor Yenny? Am I saying it right? Jenny? Jenny? Doctor Yenny. Thank you. Yeah. You're okay. My my thinking Jay, I have no idea. Go ahead. State your name, who you represent. You have two minutes. Thank you. Good afternoon, mister chair and members of the senate education committee. I'm Jubal Yenny. I'm the executive director of the Colorado Association of School Boards. I'm here today representing nearly 1,000 school locally elected boards of education members. CASB members would like to thank Senators Bridges and Lundin for their work to bring
forward the School Finance Act. CASB members appreciate all the hard work by stakeholders and the bill sponsors to craft a bill that helps to move Colorado forward with the new school funding formula. When fully implemented, the new funding formula will benefit the students regardless of where they live in the state. Committee members are aware that Colorado has long struggled to carry out the promise of a thorough and uniform free public education. The challenge was highlighted with the adequacy studies the General Assembly commissioned. These studies are a stark reminder of the work that remains to be done.
CASB would encourage members of the general assembly to continue to search for the solution to our funding issues. Locally elected boards of education continue to work toward the goal of providing our students the best opportunity to achieve their full academic potential. 1320 is the next step on this path. CASB members would respectfully ask for a yes vote today on the bill as amended. I'm available to attempt to answer questions the committee may have. Thank you. And thank you. Alright. We'll go right here. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. My name is Chuck Carpenter. I'm the chief financial officer of the Denver Public Schools.
I was also the chair of the school Public School Finance Task Force, that brought recommendations for that, you know, were largely accepted and have become part of the new School Finance Act. I want to talk about a few things today. One, I think the legislature in 1994, which is the last time that we update our School Finance Act, we've met the moment at that time to allow children to go across district lines, across school boundary lines. So, to think about charter schools as a potential option, and also to bring an equalizing formula into Colorado. That was all done thirty years ago, and I think this bill and this legislation meets the moment now of putting money
where it belongs. This bill, as represented by the recommendations of 1448 last year, was intensely stake held or there were intensive amount of stakeholding that went on to this. Very bipartisan. You had practitioners in the room making recommendations and those have largely been followed, including money following kids that are at risk, ELL, special ed, and decoupling some of the really big mistakes of the formula, like overemphasizing where students live and, that and essentially the wealth of a community and the size, the size factor as well. I think, you know, there should be financial concerns.
This body needs to take financial concerns seriously. But I think doing nothing is really just the safest thing, and and doing nothing doesn't really help kids in Colorado. I think that the tradeoffs have been very pragmatic. I mean, JBC and this committee and the chairs have done a good job of doing pragmatic things like considering averaging, considering slowing it down, considering phasing it in longer. I think it's been a responsible and pragmatic approach, financially, and it doesn't fall into the trap of doing nothing. And finally, I hope as you look forward into the years, there are some amendments in this bill that that smooth things out and make things
easier. But I hope those don't become permanent amendments and permanent subsidies like some of the things that you complain about now. We have to ultimately fund the kids where they are, and some of those things need to come out in the future. And I hope, and I hope that this will give time for those things to happen. And I appreciate you having me here today. Thank you. Thank you. And hang out because we'll have questions. There we go. Good afternoon. Madam chair, members of the committee, my name is Dan Schaller, president of the Colorado League of Charter Schools, a statewide organization that represents the interest of the vast majority of Colorado's two hundred and sixty two charter schools serving a 36,000
plus of Colorado's public school students. I'm here to voice our support of house bill thirteen twenty and all of the hard hard work and collective effort that has gone into it and helped us arrive at this place with a new formula that is more reflective of current realities, current students, and current student needs. There is some more work to be done now and into the interim to figure out all the ways in which the new formula overlaps with the Charter Schools Act. We're grateful for the partnership that we've been having in those conversations. I wanna give a particular shout out to Brett Johnson, for the collaborative spirit in which he has approached that dialogue and continues to approach
that dialogue. But here today to ask for your support of House Bill thirteen twenty. Thank you. And thank you. Does anyone have questions? Great. I'll start. Mister Carpenter, you had mentioned that there were a number of things in this bill that you want to take out later. You actually also spoke about the fact that we fixed, that we weren't double counting for location, whereas, actually, the adequacy study showed us that the fourteen forty eight locale and size factor actually
do double dip. So those are pretty similar. We might be better off looking at economic, regional economics. So just curious what kinds of things you're looking forward to coming out of this act in years to come. Thank you for the question. I think this is a very nuanced question and I think my first overall point is that history doesn't stop here. History kind of did stop in 1994 for thirty years and there wasn't a whole lot of intellectual updates to the School of Finance Act. And what I would just say is that when we're going to right now,
we're saying we're going to essentially create some off ramps and let inflation grow into future funding. But in the in the future, the the how we fund schools should be the same no matter where they're located in the state. It should be about the kids that are there and the kids that are attending. So as we are off ramping, districts or we're off ramping other kind of things in this formula, we should keep doing that and not create permanent subsidies. That's what I meant, with that comment. I'm sorry if I'm not answering the question here. I guess I don't understand what you're saying.
I'm saying if you permanent subsidies. You just strictly ran the formula as it is, there would be some districts that would lose money. And there have been some grandfathering in, and I think the grandfathering should be grandfathering. And eventually, that kind of stuff goes away. I got you. So it's the hold harmless provisions. So I don't disagree with you, but, again, I think 1448, we paid a million dollars to find out it's actually duplicitous in that geographical area. So we need to fix that before we do any of that. But I appreciate that.
Question for you related to the charter school at risk funding. Can you explain to me what level of at risk funding charter schools will get in a district versus what a traditional neighborhood school might get. Yes. Thank you, madam chair. I believe that might be a reference to the at risk supplemental funding that is referenced in here. I think it's important to note sort of to some of Chuck's points that, the old funding formula came along in 1994. The Charter Schools Act was,
started in 1993. We've had thirty plus years of different conversations about the intersection between the old formula and charter schools. One of those conversations over time had been about creating this at risk supplemental, to fund certain schools and districts that are serving, at risk students. Of the current amount that has been allocated for that, set its total of 7,000,000, roughly five four to five million of that is to districts. The other 2,000,000 is is to charter schools. But recognizing the, the fact that it doesn't really intersect with the new funding formula at this point,
that is why we are proposing and is embedded in here as a phase out approach related to that. Okay. Great. And then could you talk a little bit about the need? I mentioned this in my opening, but what the the bill in front of us proposes to do is to cap best funding for all of the schools that are traditional schools. And yet, it's increasing the, the amount of money that, charter schools can take out in state backed loans,
up to $1,000,000,000. Can you kind of explain the equity around that? Sure. Thank you, madam chair. So the moral obligation program was created back in the early two thousands out of recognition that, charter schools oftentimes are not able to, partake in their local district's bonds issuances. And so therefore, they're put on the private market and they have higher interest rates associated with that. And so the state created this creative program which enables charter schools that get a high credit rating to be able to have their bond backed up by the state,
the the moral obligation, so that they can take advantage of the lower interest rate. So it was created through the lens of equity to make sure charter schools who often were not able to participate in local bond issuances or had another avenue to not have a crippling interest rate attached. Thank you. I sure wish schools could take advantage of that too, neighborhood schools. Does anyone else have any questions? Seeing none, we're gonna release you. Thanks so much for your testimony today. Next up, we are going to pull up Mike Crawford,
Carrie Zimmerman, Doctor. Wendy Baransel I'm sorry if I messed that up and George Welsh. Yeah. Alright. We will start with Mike. If you want to unmute yourself, and you've got two minutes. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Good afternoon, madam chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to talk with you just for a few minutes. I am Mike Crawford. I'm the superintendent of Mapleton Public Schools in Adams County. The new school finance formula that passed last year as 1448 was more than a decade in the making.
Many educators and legislators and others, studied and then championed a more equitable formula, and it recognizes the particular educational needs, that exist in communities where the at risk students are concentrated. In Mapleton, we have just over seventy percent of our students qualifying for free or reduced meals and about forty percent of our students learning English as a second language. In our mission statement, which we, quote and talk about all the time, we guarantee that all students can achieve their dreams, and we talk about the fact that no obstacle should impede a student's success.
But removing obstacles for students who, come to school with a lot of challenges and needs requires resources. We pay for mental health professionals, but also multi language learning teachers, specialized curricula for students with a variety of needs, attendance intervention, personnel, translation services, and and lots of of other things. A year ago when fourteen forty eight passed, we celebrated in Maventon, and I know that many legislators did as well. You all ended the negative factor and made this commitment to address equity. And in school districts, we've been begin to make plans about,
promises to to families and promises to employees. And I know that at this point, economic conditions have changed, but we believe that this bill thirteen twenty honors the work that went into developing that new formula and really comes through on that commitment that was made last spring. It really represents an incremental and responsible and sustainable way to implement the new formula over time. So thanks so much for honoring this commitment that you made a year ago and prioritizing, more equitable k 12 funding. That was perfectly timed. Thank you.
I am not sure who I have up there. Do I have Carrie Zimmerman? Yes. Good afternoon, madam chair. Are you ready for me to rock and roll? Ready for you to go. Thank you. Thank you for this time, members of the committee. My name is Terry Zimmerman, and I am the superintendent of Center Consolidated School District down south. We're real close to the New Mexico border. And today, I'm here representing the fourteen Families Valley School District in strong support of thirteen twenty. We thank Senators Lundin and Bridges for their leadership in sponsoring this very important bill,
and we recognize that it builds on years of collaboration to create a more equitable student centered school finance system. Thirteen twenty applies sound financial practices to address long standing funding challenges. It offers a strategic, responsible solution that increases funding, especially for students with the highest needs, allowing districts to adapt through its measured implementation and built in safeguards. Despite budget constraints, this bill honors commitments to students and to schools. It resists efforts to maintain outdated,
inequitable funding models and keeps the focus where it belongs on our students. With 82% of Colorado's one hundred and seventy eight school districts considered either rural or small, thirteen twenty supports all students regardless of their ZIP code. It continues the progress made under 14488. It aligns with the adequate adequacy study recommendations and represents a sustainable investment in Colorado's future. Thank you for your time and your continued commitment to Colorado students. Thirteen twenty is the reasonable, responsible solution that we need.
Thank you. We're gonna have the final gentleman in the bottom left unmute and please tell us who you are because I can't quite see. Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is George Welsh. I'm a long time school system leader, twenty five year veteran as a superintendent of schools. One year, almost one year veteran as a leader of a BOCES down in the San Luis Valley where Ms. Zimmerman works. I also represent but not speaking for I'm a member of the BEST board and
I'm a member of the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind Board of Trustees. I just want you to know that that's where some of my perspective comes from. I'd like to thank Senators Bridges and Lundin for sponsoring this bill. The work you've done has been incredible. I've listened to your presentation right up front and I echo that we all deal with limited resources so we can't make everybody happy with everything. As you all know, many of us deal with greater limits than others. You know, the limited resources may be from what's coming from outside.
But what we can do inside is very different in different school districts. In Colorado school districts, these resource limits are mostly the result of property wealth, which tends to also be connected to local human capacity. And that can be education level ultimately attained. Though some districts are blessed with far greater resources, we're all held to the same standards as they relate to state accreditation in Colorado. And this being the case, it's absolutely necessary to work toward equity to give all districts the opportunity to succeed. So my primary message today is one of thanks.
Thank you for doing your best you can for kids despite these limited resources. Thanks for remaining on the course toward greater equity that you established last year. Finally, thank you for empowering the JBC to channel more dollars toward best if it finds this feasible moving forward. On that front, though operations dollars are of utmost importance, the financial freedom afforded districts with low property wealth through a best grant can be a game changer when it comes to maintaining improving instructional programs. Thanks again for all your hard work.
And thank you for your testimony. Does anyone have questions? Seeing none, thank you for sticking around. Okay. I think we are toward the end. We've got Shannon Nicholas, Krista Spurgeon, Maddie Asher, and anybody else who is here to testify for, against, or in amend on house bill thirteen twenty. Okay. We're gonna start right here. Just, yes. There's a button over there that'll turn green. Fantastic. Hi. Thank you, madam chair and,
senator Bridges and Lundin. My name is Shanna Nicholas, and I serve as senior vice president of Colorado Succeeds. I'm here today on behalf of our board of directors who represent business and industry across the state, united by the belief that education is the engine of economic mobility and long term prosperity for Colorado's homegrown talent. We're here today in strong support of HB251320, a long overdue modernization of Colorado school funding. It's the result of years of listening, learning, and collaborating, And most importantly, it shifts the focus of school funding where it belongs, on students.
This legislation responsibly ballasts its vision and pragmatism. In a year marked by fiscal pressure, the bill ensures that no district receives less funding than before, while setting the stage for a smarter, more student centered approach. The thoughtful implementation timeline gives schools, districts, and the state room to adapt with care and clarity. In the business community, we're used to asking what delivers the greatest return. And then again and again, the answer is education. When we fund students based on who they are, what they need, we don't just support individual success, we fuel workforce resilience,
strengthen our economy, and build more vibrant communities across Colorado. This isn't just a sound policy, it's a strategic investment in our future, and it's how we begin to keep a long standing promise to our students that our education system will see them, support them, and set them up to thrive. I strongly encourage on behalf of Colorado succeeds and our board of directors, the advancing of this critical bill. Thank you for your time. And thank you. I'm gonna go right here. Thank you. Good afternoon, madam chairman and co members of the committee. My name is Krista Spurgeon. I'm the executive director of Stand for Children Colorado.
Our work advances solutions that increase opportunities for families historically furthest from privilege through meaningful partnerships with families, educators, schools, and policymakers. I'm here today to testify in favor of House Bill thirteen twenty, the School Finance Act. As you all know, last year, our state took a monumental step forward by eliminating the budget stabilization factor and modernizing the school funding formula for the first time in thirty years. The most impactful thing we do at Stand for Children is to work with and listen to parents across Colorado. They teach us so much year over year, share what matters most to them,
and influence what policies we work on. More than 1,000 of these families advocated for the changes in this formula last year because the new formula puts students first and have asked us to continue to work on implementing that formula. The changes, excuse me. The changes promise to deliver critically needed resources to schools, particularly serving those students in poverty, English language learners, students with special needs, and our rural communities. We applaud the leaders that crafted a proposal that put students first while also making critical adjustments to address the budget shortfall this year.
Thank you for putting our students first and funding our schools, and we encourage a yes vote on house bill thirteen twenty. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Finally, miss Asher. Thank you, and good afternoon, madam chair and members of the committee. My name is Nadia Shore, and I'm the director of k twelve education policy of the Colorado Children's Campaign. The campaign is a nonpartisan policy organization that leverages data and research to unapologetically advocate for kids. Thank you to senators Bridges and Lundin for carrying this important legislation, and thank you to the many other policy makers, legislative staffers, school district leaders,
superintendents, educators, and advocates who work so hard year after year to develop the best possible school finance legislation for Colorado kids. Last year, this legislature made history by enacting a new student centered school finance formula, one that promised to reflect the real and growing needs of Colorado students and to correct long standing inequities in how we fund public education. But just a few months later, this enormous win for kids was temporarily threatened by a $1,200,000,000 budget shortfall. The people in this room and a few other rooms came together and found their way to the solutions and compromise in House Bill thirteen twenty.
The bill turns on a modern equitable school funding formula, but by extending its implementation by one year, thirteen twenty reduces strain on both the general fund and the state education fund, setting districts up for predictable sustainable funding for years to come. This bill slowly phases out enrollment averaging as the state phases in the new funding formula and the funding increases tied to that formula, rightsizing and streamlining the way dollars flow to schools. This bill increases k 12 appropriation by $256,000,000 this year,
which is frankly incredible in a $1,200,000,000 shortfall year and ensures no school districts take a cut by holding all districts harmless to their twenty four twenty five funding levels. This $256,000,000 investment will directly benefit all students in our public schools, but especially those who need it most. Students from low income families, English learners, rural students, and those with special needs. House Bill thirteen twenty is proof that when Coloradoans work together, we can do frankly incredible things for kids even in the most difficult times. Please vote yes.
Thank you so much. Does anyone have any questions for this panel? Seeing none, thank you for your testimony. Is there anyone else who would like to testifony testify on this bill? Seeing none, the testimony phase is closed. The amendment phase. No. Mhmm. Yeah. He said he didn't wanna know. Thank you. Mhmm. Great. I got an error right now. Sponsors, it looks like we have, three amendments before us. When you are ready, take it away, and we can move whichever amendment you want to first.
Adam chair. Don't panic. So Placing across the, cover of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, there are the two important words, don't panic. In moments like this, you always want to remember that. I'm, not panicking as I power through the 9,436 emails I've gotten in the last thirty minutes. Oh, yeah. It's a popular bill. Senator Bridges, why don't you kick us off, and then we'll move that way. Thank you, madam chair. Would someone be so kind to move,
l, 32. 30 two? Madam chair, I move amendment l 32 to House Bill thirteen twenty. That's a proper amendment. Can you explain the amendment to us, please? I would love to, madam chair. This is a technical change requested by CDE. Last year, we gave the department the authority to redesignate the school district's locale factor in consultation with LCS. This amendment specifies the criteria CDE and LCS should consider when reviewing Emdahl's locale factor. Any objections to l 32? Seeing none, l 32 is adopted.
Senator Lundin. Thank you, madam chair. I move amendment l zero two six to thirteen twenty. Alright. And what does l zero two six do? This is an an additional technical amendment offered, not once, but now twice. It was offered in the house. It wasn't quite, perfectly formed or drafted. In that circumstance, this cleans up the the date range that, needs to be in place. It simply strikes at the out years of 2728, which were never intended to be included. It makes it '25, '20 '6 or 2627.
So technical in nature. Alright. Any objections to L 26? Seeing none, L 26 is adopted. Senator Landin. Who's this? Madam chair, colleagues, I move amendment 27 to thirteen twenty. Senator Bridges. Thank you, madam chair. What this does is takes interest earned on the public school fund and anything above that $41,000,000 cap goes to best and does not count against the $150,000,000 cap, that we have in this bill, which is already, subject to JVC review.
Any objections to amendment l 27? Seeing none, l 27 is adopted. Any other amendments? Seeing no other mhmm. Senator Lundin. Thank you very much, madam chair. I would ask for a senatorial five. Granted. Senator Landin. Thank you very much, madam chair. We have an additional amendment. I think there's been an administrative snafu, so we don't have it in our hands at this moment. It will put in place a process for a working group on charter school and at risk funding, which will include charter and district associations.
It's been subject to a conversation that has been pending for several days. We thought we had the language on the paper that, gets to what everybody has agreed needs to happen. Don't happen to have that with us in the moment. I believe we can do this either in a probes tomorrow morning or on the floor following that. Fair enough. And we've heard I've some of us have heard about this amendment that's coming. So, if you're okay, we will move forward with that in appropriations. And, with that, I would oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna ask for you to move your amended bill, to appropriations in just a second, Sender Lending.
Senator Bridges? Thank you, madam chair. Just that, the chair of appropriations request that we not run policy amendments in appropriations, so we'll plan to run it on the floor instead if that works for everybody. Great. Yeah. That sounds good. Thank you. Senator Lundeen, hi to Thank you very much. Make your motion. And so I'm going to lean in a little bit here, in the amendment phase because this is in nature a conversation about an amendment. I've heard my co prime sponsor say on the microphone that, the perfect policy solution is like the horizon.
You are always pursuing it. That is, in fact, a reality as we seek in an area as complicated and as important as public education, we always pursue that policy horizon. And you have to have a vision to do that. And, I have considered an amendment and will not be offering an amendment right now. But I want to discuss briefly what it is before this August and important policy making body, the Senate Education Committee, about this concept. I will then continue to have conversations, in honoring of the process.
I mean, I guess I'm doing this, I'm backing up, I'm pausing in honoring of the process even though I have an amendment ready to go Because I do care about the process and I want to make sure that everybody has a chance to think about, interact with, and understand what this would mean. As we all know, there are pockets in this state where students do not currently have access to quality schools. And there is nothing that this body has done to seriously address those specific discrete pockets. We need to take action on this in legislation brought forward at some point,
and I would prefer that it be this year and in this moment. We've heard conversations about these, what are called education deserts, which are areas in the state where, listen to the definition here, fewer than one third of students currently have access to a performance rated or what's known as a green school. Let me put a fine point on what that means. Based on that definition, there are 46 zip codes in Colorado that meet the criteria of an educational desert
in 2024. Collectively, these 46 zip codes enrolled 123,000 students. That's 14% of the students statewide that have limited access to a green rated school. And this isn't in just a handful of districts. These zip codes pop up in all corners of the state, including rural, suburban and urban areas. Education deserts include students from all racial backgrounds and identities. However, on a percentage basis, black and Latino students are twice as likely to be enrolled in schools in education
deserts than other parts of the state. And we look within these zip codes, only 23% of students in education deserts are attending performance rated schools, as compared to 80% of students in other zip codes. This the disparity holds true across every major demographic group. This particular body, Senate Education Committee, has the capacity to lead, to lean into, and address these sorts of challenges. So what are we going to do about it? We need to make sure that as a state,
we are offering access to high quality schools for all of our students. This means giving parents more choices and allowing any high high quality school that wants to open anywhere in the state the opportunity to do so. This includes high quality charter schools that currently face inordinate barriers to authorization, especially these in these high priority zip codes that I've just mentioned and described. This shouldn't be a controversial statement that we need to do something about it. And I know this is something our Senate president,
myself, members of this committee, the governor, the policy education policy making stakeholders that we interact with constantly are aware of this and addressing through a a visionary statement of how to deal with it is something we must do. I wanna make sure that even though I'm not offering this amendment right now as drafted to address a means of getting at this, that I will continue to interact with my co prime sponsors on this bill and others. But I wanna honor the process. I'm backing up. I'm pausing.
I'm saying, you know what? Just got this thing drafted. Just got this ready to go too soon to bring it in this moment. But I wanna put in the record, on the record, the need to address in some way this issue. So I do not have an amendment to offer, madam chair, at this moment, but wanted to acknowledge and call out this situation. Senator Kipp. Senator Lundeen, do you have a copy of that you could share? Pardon me? Do you have a copy of that you could share? Senator Lundeen. Absolutely. Let's continue on with the business we have before us. But since I'm not formally offering it, I'll I will get it to you after,
we could dispense with the senatorial five. I called the senatorial five because what we just discussed was, not something that I certainly would support, and it would certainly be something I would want to elevate and be able to vote on if it's moving forward. What I'm hearing you say is you have a conceptual amendment that you're not going to bring today, but then we did talk about it even though we didn't have the amendments. And, and so I don't feel comfortable moving forward with that educational desert part of the
conversation that needs to be outside of school finance act. Senator Bridges. Thank you, madam chair. No amendment offered. No amendment intended to be offered. This is not in at the moment, this is something that, senator Lundin brought up, just, I think, this morning is is when I heard this might be a potential, thing to talk about. I, strenuously requested that that not be offered as an amendment. Today, and the good senator from Lundinville agreed not to offer that on the School Finance
Act today, but did want to discuss it and bring it up and then not offer it. So that was the presentation that you would have seen had the amendment been offered. It was not, there is no amendment. It is not being offered. There is no amendment being offered, related to any kind of desserts, or desserts here, on the school finance Act. Very good. Any other amendments that are real? Yes. Senator Bridges, we got another one. I do. Thank you, madam chair. Would someone please move l 41? I move, madam chair, with your pleasure.
Amendment l zero four one to thirteen twenty. Senator Bridges, to the amendment. Thank you, madam chair. This was part of the aforementioned conversation about, charter schools and I think, something that happened in the formula unintentionally all around this year that will be worked out. We had mentioned we'd run this on the floor. There is another half to this that we're on the floor, but this is the part that is, about having a conversation around solving this. So what we will offer on the floor will be a strictly one year fix to what's been identified, and the ongoing long term fix will be,
discussed, by the group here. This is modeled on the conversation that is going to happen around averaging, bringing folks together to have good conversations in an informal way, but formally, formally asked to informally gather through the bill. Any objection to l 41? Seeing none, l 41 is adopted. Any other amendments? Seeing none, the amendment phase is closed, and I'm gonna pass this back to the chair. And he's reading, so we'll say, closing comments.
Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. I'm back and forth, so I got I have some time. Senator Lundin, closing comments. Thank you very much. Two, gets people outside the building the ability to hear me, even though everyone in the room could hear my voice, undoubtedly. We are, with the School Finance Act, doing, I believe, the, the priority of state government, that is providing for, the public education system in Colorado. This is incredibly important that that we do this. The bill that you have before us, we discussed it,
at length. It advances the conversation one more step, by increasing funding, by addressing not only the reality of the fact that we must serve students in Colorado well, but we must serve them better and we seek to do it with that. But it reminds us as we pass this act that we must always continue to look forward to that best perfect policy horizon. We must be visionary. We must say to ourselves, yeah, great $10,000,000,000 bill. Only part of the funding that we will put into k 12 education in Colorado,
but it is still leaving half of the kids behind, more than half of the brown and black kids behind. And we must always, as we pass this $10,000,000,000 policy piece, we must always be looking forward to how can we address this in a better way tomorrow than we have today. I urge your support of this step along the way that brings into alignment several things we've all agreed on, Elimination of the budget stabilization factor, a formula that's more bent toward, inclined towards students and less towards districts and schools.
Although important districts and schools are not whom we are serving. It's students whom we are serving. We must always continue to lean forward. Thirteen twenty does a good job of stepping forward. But colleagues, constantly, if you would please join me in the effort to consider how can we do it better as we move forward. Thank you, madam chair mister chair. Excuse me. Senator Bridges. Thank you, mister chair, and thank you for refraining. I joined the state house. I was elected to the state house, served my first term nine years ago. One of the first conversations I had when I got there and was assigned to
the education committee, which I was very grateful for because I do believe that education is the most important thing we do as a state government. One of the first conversations I had was with the Colorado Association of, school executives, because the superintendents had a formula change idea. And I was like, well, hey. That sounds great. We're, you know, trying to pay off the negative factor. What if as we pay off the negative factor, we change the formula, do a more equitable formula, haven't updated it since the early nineties, when I was still in k 12 public school here in Colorado.
Seems like a good idea. Wow. Not a good idea, it turns out. For the entire term of my service in the legislature until this bill, the mantra has been no change until we pay off the BS factor. Yes. What we did last year, Paid off the BS factor. And for the first time in my term of service in legislature, we had the opportunity to create a new funding formula that served kids, that met kids where they are, that gave districts the resources they need to serve the kids they have, and I am incredibly proud to be a sponsor on the first school finance act
that is implementing a more equitable, more just formula for the kids in Colorado. So, thanks to my co prime sponsor here. Thanks especially to all of the work that has been done on this bill already before it reached this chamber by so many people. In particular, wanna say thank you to the house prime sponsors on this bill. So much work that has been done on this, and ask for an I vote from the committee. Thank you. Do we have any other comments from the committee? Senator Marshall? Thank you. I'm really excited to move forward with the school finance act.
I kind of agree with you, minority leader, that we should be doing this before everything else. And, and just the whole concept of we only have seven days left, and we're finally in the second chamber making not even in the second chamber yet. But, so I appreciate what you've done. This bill doesn't get everywhere it needs to to go in my mind. I did have amendments that I'd shared with you in advance that you will be seeing, but not today, related to the best cap. I really struggle with,
capping the best grants. That's that's all of our schools rely on that capital funding, especially our rural schools. So, really impressed with the work you've done, terrified by the conceptual amendments, really excited to pass another bill so that we're working with actual data that we can rely on rather than what that was based on. And I, look forward to supporting this bill. Thank you. Senator Lundin, would you like to move the bill, please? Thank you, mister chair. I move House Bill thirteen twenty as amended to the Appropriations Committee.
That's a proper motion. Miss Kirsten, may we call the poll, please? Senator Sprite? Aye. Kipp? Yes. Lundeen? Aye. Huygels and Janae? Aye. Rich? Aye. Archman? Aye. Mister chair? Aye. That passes unanimously, and you're off to appropriations. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks, colleagues. We will next hear house bill eleven ninety two still with senator Bridges and with senator Frizzell. May I have a copy of the central amendment? I have no idea. We're just taking a senatorial five. 11 90 two. That no.
Yes. Thank you, mister chair. I would love to start you off November. Let's talk about financial literacy in Colorado over the last twenty years because senator Kipp and I have actually done a lot of work on this. In 02/2004, the legislature created a financial literacy resource bank. We encourage schools to require high school students to take a financial literacy course. They didn't. In 02/2008, through House Bill eleven sixty eight, the legislature established financial literacy curriculum standards. In 02/2009, through Senate Bill two fifty six,
financial literacy was deemed a quality indicator within the individual career and academic plan requirements for all high school graduates. In 2021, the financial literacy standards established in 02/2008 were revised through House Bill 20 one-twelve hundred sponsored by, let's see here, Senator Bridges and Senator Kipp. In 02/2022, through House Bill twenty two thirteen sixty six, also sponsored by Senator Bridges and Senator Kipp, the Financial Literacy Resource Bank was updated, the Financial Literacy Standards were strengthened,
and focus was added to help students and families understand and access federal and state financial aid. Despite this, two decades of effort, only about 25% of districts include financial literacy in their approved graduation requirements. 25%. These skills are not a nice to have. As representative Bacon put it in the education committee in the house, this is a generational issue for students today, and we must do right by them. These students are walking into a world where student loan and medical debt are at their highest levels in history,
where the American dream of buying a home is increasingly out of reach, and where the lure and confusion of cryptocurrency and stock day trading are only just a couple of thumb scrolls from years of financial struggle or ruin. Right now, today is a watershed moment, and there has been so much done to address the concerns of our colleagues, both in the House and here, while ensuring that this bill still delivers for students to ensure that they get this critical knowledge by graduation. We've done so much over the last twenty years,
even more over the last five to prepare prepare students, not just for college, but for the world that they're going to enter into. This bill this bill ensures that some of the most important and critical life skills that we can equip our kids with are skills that they learn in our schools. Because we didn't equip their parents, and the parents aren't equipped to equip them. There is just very little equipment and equipping that is occurring with financial literacy. There's a lot of things that I learned in high school that I don't do anything with in my current life.
There was a big sign up in my high school cafeteria that I always thought was sad funny because it said, not for school, but for life we learn. I thought, you know, I'm just not sure that all of these dates I've memorized are things that I really am gonna need to rely on once I'm, you know, out of this building. Really, once I'm past the test and maybe they'll be on the final. There's not a lot that stays with you from high school. Understanding credit card payments, understanding retirement savings,
understanding student loan debt, These are things that it is critical for our students to understand. I mean, you look at the cost of college. College has has gone up an insane amount, faster than the the cost of housing in this country. In large part because it's kinda subsidized and paid for in ways that the consumers don't really take into account as they're making those decisions. They it's tough for kids to sort of really feel what it means to be tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
We can help them. We can help them avoid ending up under a mountain of debt first thing that they do in their life. We can help these kids by making sure that they have the financial literacy background that they need to survive in today's world. This is a critical bill. I understand there are some concerns with forcing districts to do anything at all, but this this is so important. This should be the exception that we make to what it is that we require of schools. I know we never wanna tell them to do anything,
but come on. This is so important. Every kid every kid should have this. And we have a chance today to say every kid will. I ask for an I vote. Thank you, senator Bridges. Senator Frizzell, thank you for for joining us. You wanna continue? I I don't believe I can expand much on my cosponsor's words, other than to say trigonometry, which I happen to enjoy but have not used since yeah. Anyway, well, since college. But, this is really an important important piece of legislation. You know, I remember back when I got my first checking account.
And, so I have the checkbook, and you would dutifully write in every single transaction and subtract out in the ledger. And and that was kind of the extent of the need for financial literacy back then just so long as you remembered to subtract what you had spent, and didn't look at every check as an opportunity to spend money Yep. That you might not have. And things have changed quite a bit. It's much easier to get a credit card. It's much easier to get loans.
Sometimes those those things are both predatory, and and people don't actually understand what they're getting themselves into. So, I echo my good, cosponsor's request for an aye vote. This is important. It's an important gift that we can give our students in the state of Colorado. And I would also like to mention that, once again, I have arrived out out of breath from running up the stairs from judiciary because it's a pattern. You were running up. I ran up before you. So, we got ahead of you. Any questions for the bill sponsors
on this bill at this time? Senator Marshman? Thank you. Thank you, mister chair, and thank you for bringing this bill. I pulled up on the website the personal finance education legislation that we have run here. And it has been since 02/2004 where we encourage district boards to adopt personal financial literacy as a part of curriculum. 02/2008 established standards that were to be implemented by 2020. In 02/2009, we made the ICAP required,
and personal financial literacy is a quality indicator within the ICAP. In 2015, we created a financial literacy resource bank and technical assistance. In 2021, I'm not sure exactly what we did. It was another bill. And then in 2022, we did another piece of legislation. I'm a math teacher, and so what you said really resonates with me. My students are like, when am I ever gonna use this? And so financial is really important, and it is integrated into the standards that I teach.
And so I just wanna mention that. I also wanna just say that I personally, coming from a school board, I would say I definitely hold a gate up to see what we need to ask our school districts to do. But I am not, loathe to put important things on their plate. While financial literacy is important, adding a degree requirement is pretty unprecedented. We've done it only in two different places in, the law, and I wasn't here for it.
So we did that for civics, and we did it for the holocaust. Both really worthy topics as is financial literacy. My point is I I have a hard time making a mandate because I know that the constitution of Colorado says that it's local control. These guys get to pick. We can set some standards, but they get to pick curriculum. Throughout the bill, I'm seeing places where we're wanting to make sure that there's input for curriculum, and I don't see how that falls with the state. So just curious what role you would think the state has in choosing financial,
literacy curriculum as described in the policy. Senator Bridges. Thank you, mister chair. You know, thank you very much for for listing again all of the things we've done as a state to try and, convince our schools to have, quality financial literacy courses to try and, encourage them, to incentivize them, all the things we've done to try and get schools in Colorado to teach one of the most important things that they can teach their students. And yet, despite two decades of legislative efforts, only 23 of Colorado high school students see any kind of financial literacy in their coursework. Less than a less than a quarter.
And so I'm grateful that you incorporate that into your instruction, but the fact is statewide, it's less than a quarter of students who see that. And so what we have in here is we're building on the standards that we have put into law over the last two decades and saying now it's time that you actually go off and do that, make that class. So that is how I would see this bill working. Sarah Marksman. Thank you, mister chair. And, you know, I totally disagree being a teacher.
I know what is being taught. And so if we're saying that 23% of students are not getting it, that's gonna be an issue with the school district. So I, you know, I I it's it's it's in the math test that we pay CMASS and Pearson to do. It is it is a part. The second piece I wanna say is we've just added the so we've just added this to social studies this year. So it's kinda hard to say, gosh, we keep recommending this for our school districts, and they just won't take the bait when it's it's in math.
And now it's in social studies, but we haven't had any time for it to sit and marinate. So I, I appreciate your thoughts, and I look forward to the testimony. Senator Bridges. Thank you, mister chair. Thank you, madam vice chair, for, for those comments. You know, I I as I look at what we have required in law for schools, it is extraordinarily minimal. Civics, it is the holocaust, as you mentioned. And I think in terms of your ability to exist in America today, financial literacy is at least as important as civics.
And, I think that we would be right as a state to say that schools need to teach it. Any other questions? Seeing none, let's go to the testimony phase. We do have a few people signed up to testify. I'm going to call up first Matthew Laden, Gaddy Laden, Sam Kolal, and. I always I know. My mouth is not following my mind sometimes. So do we have everyone here or online? I'm just checking to see if there's any online. K. Brie, since you're here, will you start us off? Thank you, mister chair. My name is Brie Buentejo,
and I'm the associate executive director at Stand for Children Colorado. Our work advances solutions that increase opportunities for families historically furthest from privilege through meaningful partnerships with families, educators, schools, and policymakers. Stan believes that we can't effectively advocate for children without addressing inequities throughout our system, whether it's equitable funding for our schools, kids getting the health care they need, staying or staying connected with their incarcerated loved ones. We're here today to support House Bill eleven ninety two, for all the reasons described so eloquently by the sponsors.
We have worked closely with educators and parents in our advocacy fellowship this year, and when we shared this legislation with them, they were thrilled that this could be an opportunity for their students in their classrooms. They had many examples for how this would have helped them in their own lives and have seen other districts doing this, and are hopeful that their district will as well. Many of y'all know that before I came to this building, I was a social studies and special education teacher in Title one schools. Before my tenure in the Centennial State, I was a teacher in Kansas, which has a much more prescriptive, which has much more prescriptive education standards and recently made financial literacy its own course
requirement. You can imagine my shock, that Colorado does not have the same requirement. Instead, we have a standard tucked into a larger topic the larger topic of economics. It's only required that our students take four years of social studies education. What I saw during my time as a teacher in Pueblo schools is that financial literacy is taught differently, not just from school to school, but truly from teacher to teacher, and rarely as a sole course. It's no secret that Steel City has seen better days with the slowing of American steel. The unfortunate impact is that many of my students were from generational poverty.
These kids needed someone who could teach them what a credit score was, the difference between APR and APY, overdraft fees, and salaried versus hourly paid positions. I didn't get the yellow light. With Colorado only mandating a standard, this oftentimes meant that financial literacy was only taught to kids as a matter of, two to four weeks coursework and usually at the end of the school year, which is why we've been so excited to see, in recent years, the push for greater financial literacy, requirements in schools. This simply isn't the type of education I would want for my son and strongly
feel that we must do better for Colorado's kids. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you for wrapping up. Appreciate that. And we have online, I'm not sure I see, is it Sam I have in my notes? Kamara will be fine. Samara, okay. All right. If, Samara, if you just go ahead and state your name, who you represent, you have two minutes. Hi. Thank you guys so much for having me here and allowing me to testify today. I am here as a part of Glenwood Springs High School with my teacher, Jill Wilson. I was invited today to speak on the importance that financial literacy has had not
only in my own life, but in the life of people around me. I am incredibly fortunate to have a parent who has worked in finance for many, many years, but I appreciate that not everyone in this community or any community in Colorado has that opportunity, which is why financial lit is so incredibly important. Because financial lit should be offered to all communities, especially marginalized ones. Being a woman, it's incredibly difficult to have, a certain level of respect for me maintained in the finance world.
As it is often assumed that women don't have as great of an understanding as finance, which is not at all true. My teacher, Jill Wilson, has instilled in me the belief that I can handle my own money, and she has instilled that belief in every single student she has taught, which is why every student in Colorado deserves to feel this way. It is incredibly important not only for our lives, but for the lives of the people who will come after us. Colorado deserves to have a financially literate future, which is why this bill is so incredibly important.
Thank you very much. We had is that all we have on the panel that show up? Okay. Oh, and I'll call up Liz Waddick if you're you're still online. If you don't unmute yourself, state your name, who you represent. You have two minutes. Hi. Thanks for having me again. My name is Liz Waddick. I'm here representing the Colorado Education Association in an amend position on November. We appreciate how far the bill has come, and the hard work that the sponsors have put into listening to the voices of educators. Educators are vital in shaping students' lives. However, daily challenges such as limited resources,
low pay, long hours hinder our ability to perform and maintain our jobs. Respecting public educators, education workers goes beyond saying thank you. It's about listening to professionals and creating reasonable workloads for us and our colleagues that will help prevent burnout and keep education professionals in the classroom. Colorado's public education system is confronting an exodus of educators driven by untenable conditions, and this jeopardizes both schools and student outcomes. Well intentioned policies like House Bill eleven ninety two can make the burden on educators even heavier.
Launching a new course, such as financial literacy, requires many dozens of hours of professional development and preparation. And while some districts may be able to cover the cost of professional development and even compensate educators in some cases, most districts in Colorado cannot. And this is why we appreciated the effort in the house to add additional dollars to help schools fund this curriculum and the promise of stipends to educators who engage with this professional development. We wanna make sure the same consideration is provided to our school counselors, and ensure that this policy does not add a heavy burden to their workload and
would support amendments to ensure this. We respect the sponsor's desire to set our students up for success in their adult lives. Because our goal at CEA is to keep educators in this profession for long, fulfilling careers, we also ask we ask that you also consider their needs and allow for sufficient support to make the implementation of November successful. Thank you. Thank you. And I wanna, also go back to Samara. Is Jill Wilson is she is she there with you? Hi, sir. I'm so sorry. Yes. Miss Wilson is with me, but I believe she's in a different group. Well, she can if you,
wanna put her on, she can testify right now. Well, alright then. I'll go ahead and tell her. There's some confusion here on on where everybody's at, so I just wanted to make sure since she said it, because we had a couple people not show up. Hi there. I'm so sorry. I'm back. Miss Wilson has just relayed to me that she actually needs to be let in Okay. To the meeting. Is there any way we can Yep. We'll let her in right now. Thank you so much. Miss Wilson, can, you hear me? You can unmute yourself, once you come on. There we go.
I just assumed you were in the same room, so I thought you were gonna use the same connection. So that's my apologies. If go ahead, state your name who you represent, and you have two minutes. My name oh, sure. My name is Jill Wilson. Thank you so much for hearing my testimony, members of the committee. I am Sam's teacher, very happy to be her teacher, and I'm very proud of her for her testimony. I have taught financial literacy for over twenty years at Gomez Springs High School and I am literally boots on the ground. I have five financial literacy classes both semesters. So I reach 10 class, sizes or classes each semester or each year.
And, I've witnessed firsthand the profound difference that this class can make in our students' lives. The course addresses gaps in knowledge that may exist because many of our students in their homes don't have this information. 60% of our student population identifies as students of color and 25 are economically disadvantaged. Many of their parents never received any financial guidance and can't provide this for their students. In February of twenty twenty four, Time Magazine stated that financial literacy is a civil rights issue of this generation.
I quote that without proper financial knowledge, students and families are left vulnerable to cycles of poverty, debt, and limited economic mobility. How are we gonna break this cycle for our students outside of having a stand alone course for them? To push back a little bit on the difficulties of holding this class, it actually pairs fantastically with civics that's already required for our students. It can be, a back to back class with them, one semester of civics, one semester of finance. And there is ample free training for teachers,
that I have received to teach financial literacy during the time I've taught it. And there is some funding that's being allotted to train teachers. Once teachers see the impact of this class, you will not have a hard time finding teachers that wanna teach it. And it can change the lives of our teachers as well because it is difficult to live on a teacher's salary in Colorado. And I know that my own financial literacy has skyrocketed since the time that I have been teaching it. So I would just really highly encourage you to look at, all the benefits that we can get from making this a statewide mandate.
And I know Colorado isn't local control, but I think this is the time that we need to tell the school districts you have to teach a stand alone class because a few minutes at the end of a social studies class is not enough to prepare our students for their future. They need to find out about credit scores, interest rates, all the vocabulary that is finance specific. And to be honest with you, my social studies teachers thank me for teaching it because they don't have to and they're not trained to do it. So in my career, it's been in math and it's been in social studies,
and it's not being treated the way it should be treated to be a successful class in our schools right now. So thank you for considering this. Thank you, Ms. Wilson. Appreciate that. And always good to hear while you're still teaching kudos from students. So it's great to hear. Do we have questions for this panel? Senator Marshman. Thank you. And, I, my question is for the the final speaker and I'm not sure Miss Wilson. Miss Wilson. Thank you for being here. I'm a math teacher. I really do like that we've now double added these standards,
so they now exist within math. I'm looking at, like, grade eight things I can do. I can do formula for compound interest, rate of change, simple and compound interest. Those are all lessons that are a part of, the financial literacy curriculum that's currently in place. My question is how has it been rolling out financial literacy with the new standards that have come out, in your social studies? You know, it's not one of the four strands,
but kind of an additional strand. So just curious how that has worked with the new standards. Miss Wilson. Thank you. I am not privy to what happens in the social studies department meetings. I am sort of a stand alone department at my school. I know though throughout our district, the teachers have not been trained on how to teach financial literacy, neither math teachers nor, social studies teachers. The both departments, have what they see as important that the kids need to know before they leave their classrooms. And speaking since you're a math teacher,
you might be able to relate to this, but I feel like our math teachers are going with, compound interest as a mathematical calculation, but they're not telling teach students exactly what that means to them personally in their finances. Some people may be doing that, but they look at it more as can the kid come do the computations. And I use a financial literacy calculator online so I can have them figure out compound interest, how much they're paying over time, should they get a short loan, a long loan, what term what difference does it make, what interest rate difference does it make,
and we compare all of that. And I'm not trying to do use you know, teach them the math skills to do that because the computer's doing it for them. So we can do a lot more content of why. And I think that's really important not to just know how to figure it, but why do we need to know this? Sarah Marshman. Thanks. And just to, speak up for math teachers across Colorado, we do that too. We definitely make sure that what we're teaching are not just formulas. We're teaching application. We teach students how to use spreadsheets to do exactly what you're talking about.
So I just I I really appreciate what you offer. I, I wish every school did, in fact, offer that, in an optional fashion. But thank you for being here. Any other questions? Thank you all for being here, and and thank you, to Samara too for testifying. It's always hard to do as I think as a student. And I appreciate you being here and taking the time. Next, we will call up Theresa Connolly, Howard Wolske, we're combined here Brent Jones, and Emmanuel Eliasson. Do I have Richard Maize? Yaneli Espinal?
Elijah Huff online. We'll start, online. Elijah Huff, if you could start us off, unmute yourself, state your name, who you represent. You have two minutes. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for having me here. My name is Elijah Huff, and I am representing myself today. I get the opportunity, though, in my work capacity to work with DPS teachers and also DPS students where, it is a district graduation requirement to receive personal financial literacy. Couple things that I really wanted to talk to today, that I've got a chance, in my experience of working with the district when it comes to this topic and
personal financial literacy, is first is really the diversity of the real world topics that students get to engage with. Every time I get to talk to a teacher who has the opportunity to teach this course, they can't help but share about how this course causes students to be so interactive in their learning and have the opportunity to contextualize it. To double that down, I'd also like to mention that teachers really enjoy teaching the class, and also collaborating with each other inside of the district. I can't, begin to explain how awesome, the work has been where I get to see teachers sharing resources, sharing their experience on how they've taught the class.
Sorry, I got my little one year old in the back since she Starting them early. That's okay. I just wanna mention that students with financial literacy also help make way more well informed post secondary decisions. I used to serve as a college adviser for many years in the district, and the students who always had, the highest level of skills in financial literacy were the ones who made the best choices in terms of understanding the financial aid packages offered to them, understanding even when it comes to what major that they receive, how the return on investment in their education impacts their lifestyle after,
and all of those are built off of those financial literacy skills that they have. And then lastly, I'd like to mention that the work with the alumni that I do, every time I talk to an alumni and say, what is one thing that they wish they could have gained inside of their k 12 experience, they always bring it back to financial literacy skills. So to have the opportunity for students to be focused and siloed in on one topic that is so instrumental and beneficial for them in their lives after will be huge. Thank you so much for having me here. Thank you. And just hang on in case we have some questions for you.
I have let's see. I wanna see if I can get everyone online. Howard Wolske, are you online? Yes. Go ahead and state your name and, who you represent. You have two minutes. Mister chairperson, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to present to you today. My name is Howard Walske. And while I'm fortunate to work for the Littleton Public Schools, I'm here today representing myself and my support for this bill advocating for a standalone semester long class for all Colorado high school students in financial literacy. I've been in secondary education for fourteen years now with nine of those coming in the classroom and four as an administrator. Prior to that,
I spent the better part of twenty years in banking and finance. Our curriculum is meant to introduce adolescents to a wide variety of topics specific to their financial opportunities, their risks, and the rapidly changing world economy. The instruction is geared towards those entering the workforce right after high school, those going right to college, some that will delay college and get a job and enroll in the near future, and many that are considering a military career. All of these pathways are investigated in our semester long class. I'm an educator who is also social studies certified and I can assure you these materials are different from what is taught in your typical high school economics class.
In a semester long personal finance curriculum, we have the time to do a deeper dive into more real life scenarios and realistic financial simulations. Specifically, my class, I urge students on the first day to go home and have financial conversations with their parents or their guardians because lessons that are started in the classroom are made real in the homes. One such lesson is the value of starting to plan for retirement early in their lives. Even now, I urge those with jobs to actually open their own IRA accounts and try to budget $25 or $50 a month for long term savings. In an email sent out to the students' homes, I alert parents that these activities are going on in the classroom and those ask
those financially able to match their children's investments and their futures for a few years. The feedback I get from grateful parents is unbelievable and always positive and willing to help. In Littleton Public Schools, one of the stated goals to reach our district mission is as follows. A hundred percent of LPS students will graduate prepared for meaningful post secondary opportunities. If we're truly educating our Colorado high school students for what comes next in their lives, is there a more critical skill to acquire while in high school than handling their own finances? Across all socioeconomic classes, urban or rural, every Colorado high school graduate is going to apply these financial skills in their lives.
What other topic do we currently teach that can truly say that? I urge you to support this bill and help make the Colorado the twenty seventh state that requires high schools to teach comprehensive financial literacy to all of our students. More than that, support this bill because it helps ensure our next generation is pre prepared for meaningful post secondary opportunities. Thank you. Thank you, mister Walzke. Appreciate that. Hold on for questions. I have Theresa Conley, up on the screen now. Theresa, if you would go ahead and unmute yourselves, state who you represent. You have two minutes. Thank you, committee, for the opportunity to speak in, support of bill eleven ninety two.
My name is Theresa Connolly. I am the financial literacy specialist at Denver Public Schools. Previously, I was a math teacher, assistant principal, and instructional coach for many content areas, including financial literacy. Now I have the privilege of supporting the financial literacy graduation requirement at DPS, the largest and most diverse district in the state. I've seen firsthand the impact of offering financial literacy in our districts and also through the process of this bill. The graduation requirement started because our alumni advocated for it, and now students across the state are advocating for the opportunity to gain the knowledge needed to have financial stability and wealth building.
Their voices should be the loudest in this conversation. As I talk to more and more teachers who teach this course in DPS, there's a resounding message. This is one of the most important classes we teach, and I wish I had this in school. They share that the curriculum is accessible for everyone, is differentiated for all students, and allows students of all backgrounds to gain the insight on how to make the best financial decisions for themselves. Best of all, it's free and easy to use, which has made the implementation of this requirement seamless. While we use NextGen, there are free and accessible resources through EverFi, Intuit, and several other financial institutions.
All of them are eager to share their materials for students to use. Teachers have been excited to teach this course because it has engaged students in relevant topics that pertain to their life and the future of every student. The power of knowledge on investing, taxes, saving, budgeting, and insurance for all, especially for under underserved communities, is worth this vote of a yes from you. Finally, financial literacy is expanding across the country with good reason. In this role, I have now been in contact with people from at least 25 other states in the district who are implementing the same requirement or trying to. Students all around the country are learning the real life tools to planning their financial
goals as well as college and career goals. And I want all Colorado scholars, regardless of background, to be equipped to leave high school and enter the post secondary world. Thank you for your time. Thank you. And if you just hold on to see if we have questions. I am I have Richard Mays. No? Yanele Espinal? Thank you. Go ahead. Thank you, chair, vice chair, committee members. I'm so excited to be here today in support of eleven ninety two. My name is Yaneli Espinal. I'm a former teacher turned financial advocate, a very passionate financial education advocate at that.
I'm here representing the NGPF Mission twenty thirty Fund as well as our affiliate nonprofit n g p f dot org. And I wanna be clear upfront that neither organization benefits financially in any way from this effort. Both organizations are structured as nonprofits purely for charity. We're currently offering free curriculum to teachers in personal financial literacy as well as free teacher professional development training workshops. And to date, we have a 10,000 teachers, and that number is growing every day, across the country that are using our curriculum to teach financial literacy.
And over 2,000 of those teachers are based right here in Colorado. Over five hundred thousand hours of our training has been completed by teachers cumulatively, which is a massive investment of their time outside of the classroom to upskill themselves so they can teach this course with confidence and competence. And it is so important that we look at demographic data because 02/1958 schools in a set of data here in Colorado shows that of only 26 schools, roughly 10% required this course in 2024. But a closer look at the racial breakdown shows that of a 12 schools or
43% of those schools have 50% or more students of color and only nine of them required the course. And that aligns with research from Montana State University that says that in states without a requirement for the high school level, students of color are less likely to have access to personal financial literacy education. And that holds true in Colorado as we've seen. So for high schools with the majority students of color, only 8% are guaranteed access versus schools where the majority of students in attendance are white. There's a 12% that are required to take the course.
That's nearly 1.5 times higher a likelihood. And worse yet, the number of schools with no access to personal financial literacy at all, of those schools, 75% of them serve a majority of students of color. And so we really need eleven ninety two to equalize the playing field and give every student in Colorado an equal chance to take a full stand alone semester course before they cross the graduation stage. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Definitely, Pasha. I could tell. Thank you. Also, just wanna remind anybody who signed up, or who's been called up,
if you we haven't got you to sign up, please use the QR code back there to sign up online so we have a record. Thank you. And now I have Brett Jones, correct? Correct. Thank you. Your pen almost looks like a St. Louis Cardinals pen, so from this distance. But go ahead and introduce yourselves. Tell us who you represent. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, Madam Vice Chair, members of the Education Committee. My name is Brent Jones. I'm principal and owner of a risk management, retirement income, Social Security and Medicare and estate planning practice in Colorado. I'm here today in my capacity as a member of the Board of Directors of
NAFA Colorado. NAFA is the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors, which has over 80,000 members nationally and 2,000 members throughout the state of Colorado. NAFA Colorado members serve individuals, families, and businesses across the state by providing your constituents with products, services, and guidance that increase financial literacy in our communities. On behalf of NAFA Colorado, I'm asking for your support today of House Bill eleven ninety two. If a Colorado supports schools requiring high school students to complete financial literacy class to
graduate. The class would include topics like household budgeting, saving, investing, using credit, and understanding the difference between leasing and buying large purchases such as homes, cars, and such. NAFE National strongly supports state requirements for public high school students to complete personal financial coursework prior to graduation. Starting financial education in high school gives students a leg up and helps them make better financial decisions when they enter the workforce. Currently, 24 states have passed measures to require public high school students to take a one credit personal finance course prior
to graduation. Eight of these requirements have been put in place and 15 have begun the implementation process. As of June 2023, there are 17 states with active legislation with more on the way. I would ask the committee's support of House Bill eleven ninety two. And also, personally, to the committee members, thank you for your service and time today. Thank you, mister Jones. We appreciate that. Was there anybody else I don't see, I called up, and no one else. It looks like we had everybody. Do we have questions for this panel? I do have a question.
Let's see. Miss Connolly, when did DPS make this a graduation requirement, and how many, credit hours or whatever you use to to to calculate? Is is it and then what grade levels? So the graduation requirement starts, with the year 2027, but there's a lot of schools that have already, put in place, their courses. It's a point five, for social studies as a personal finance course or, can be, fulfilled in a full year of financial algebra. Both of those curriculums are through Novaktion.
I'm sorry. You said a full year of algebra? Of financial algebra, so a math credit. Okay. Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. And and so why 2027? Just the implementation time, miss Connolly? Yeah. Implement implementation time, and, like, the onboarding and training. But, now that we've been through it, I think it it could be faster. Well, it did you establish this, in 2023 so you could get that first consortium of of kids through? Freshman at that time, miss Connolly?
Yep. Alright. Yeah. It was passed in passed in 2021. Can you hear me? Yes. Passed it passing 2021, and then implementation and then the first graduation requirement start will start for '20 class of 2027. K. Thank you very much. And what, grade level? Is it typically seniors, juniors? Do you can you tell me, miss Connolly? Recommend recom recommended for eleventh and twelfth grade. And some folks have put the intent, but we really highly recommended eleventh and twelfth grade. Thank you. Appreciate that.
Do you have any other questions for this panel? Senator Marchman. Thank you. And this is a question for, the DPS teacher. Really appreciate, what you shared about either math or social studies as ways of, getting this. I guess my question is if you've been able to man you know, to get this done, I wonder why why a mandate? Why why wouldn't we just allow other districts to do as DPS did and roll
it out according to their timing? The mandate was started because Miss Connolly, Our alumni sorry. Can you hear me? Go ahead. Okay. The mandate, started, because of, the alumni who advocated for it and put it in place. They wanted to see a stand alone graduation requirement. And then from there, they wanted to give options to have it fulfilled in either so that schools had the option to have it in either math or humanities. And both of those courses were approved, and cover the same topics. And so,
overall, they really pushed hard to say we didn't get, through the standards, we didn't get enough. And we really wanted, this as the stand alone, so that we had the time dedicated, to to what we need to do. Senator Marchman? And then I'm just curious. The timing must have been right, but were there resources available as well? Miss Connolly. So NextGen, provided the they provide free training. So they were able to support us in onboarding, in both training our teachers through our not required, professional learning.
So teachers got to be onboarded to the resources, and were able to do so, with the help of their support, which I think they plan to do. And I'm more than happy to be a support for anyone who, has questions during implementation as well. Thank you very much. Any other questions? Thank you all for participating and answering our questions. It's been a long day and I'm glad to see you stick around for us. So thank you so much. Thank you. I have one more group to call up. Matt Cook, Sarah Hunt, Andrew Bristol, Frank Reeves, Catherine Ritchie Rapp,
and Aiden Gallegos. We'll start with, mister Cook since he's here. Mister Cook, go ahead and state your name, who you represent. Good afternoon, mister chair, members of senate education committee. Matt Cook here on behalf of the nearly 1,000 locally elected school members and their superintendents who make up the Colorado Association of School Boards. We would like to thank senator Bridges and Frizzell for their including the CASB membership and the stake holding of the bill. Unfortunately, we are opposed to H. Bill, h twenty five eleven ninety two. I would just like to say I'm I'm a fairly old guy. I've been around a long time. And I appreciated the history lesson,
Senator Bridges. And we used to have a class called consumer math, and we did a lot of what folks are demanding now. And then there was a state and federal change to say everybody was gonna do algebra. And so these things have changed. And I think what you've heard today is exactly how the process should work. The folks in Roaring Fork up in in Glenwood went to their local school board and said, this is important. And the school board, as many of you know, have sat at that board table and looked at a budget and at a curriculum and said, what can we afford to do?
And they were able to do that. I don't think anybody would disagree. Financial literacy is critically important. And I think it's and I want to say this respectfully, it's offensive sometimes when I hear school boards aren't considering that because they have deep thoughts around this. And we are working very hard in many ways to do this. The other piece I'd just like to quickly address is and it hasn't been so far, is the FAFSA requirements. The bill as presented on page 17, lines three to 16, I just think it's completely unworkable and would provide an additional burden on counselors for
very little benefit for students. And, with that, I would like to thank members of the committee for your time and, again, thank the bill sponsors. I'm available to answer questions if you have any. Thank you, mister Cook. Appreciate that. We'll go online, to Frank Reeves, I believe. Yes. Thank you, mister chair, and send the education committee for hearing me again today. I am Frank Reeves, the Executive Director of the Colorado Rural Schools Alliance, representing 147 of our rural districts. We are respectively opposed to House Bill 20 five-eleven 92. We also appreciate the amendments that have been made to address our concerns,
but it's simply a bill that's not necessary. While teaching financial literacy, we agree with Matt, is very vital, it's already being done as a part of those social studies and math standards. I've not had a district tell me that they do not teach financial literacy to their students. Some of those are in stand alone classes, some of those are parts of other social studies classes, but they are taught. Our schools right now are strapped in surviving with fewer teachers, lack of counselors, lack of support staff, and it wouldn't be prudent to add more to their plate right now. We also do not believe we should be creating unnecessary barriers for students to graduate
by taking a course that is not necessarily needed since the content is already being taught elsewhere. Same holds true for requiring the completion of FAFSA or a FAFSA. This is not and should not be put on schools to monitor or place any kind of requirement on. FAFSA is a form for families to decide to choose to fill out. Our schools offer tons of supports for families who need help and will help any family fill it out as needed. They'll promote filling it out. They do all of those things but it's really not a school's decision to tell
a kid you must fill out a FAFSA or a CASA. Especially in today's culture, quite honestly, people are really concerned about their personal data and where that is going. Lastly, and it was brought up earlier, we are still a local control state and both requirements in this bill should and could be decided by local boards, which is where these decisions should be made. I love hearing from those schools to those districts today. I love seeing what they're doing. I just wonder if they put themselves in Cheyenne Wells or Grenada, Colorado if they would feel and could do the same things. Thank you very much and I'm available for any questions.
Thank you, Mr. Riese. Just hold on. We'll see if we have any. Next, I'm gonna go to, Catherine Ritchie Rapp, if you would unmute yourself, I believe. Is she here? Catherine? Richie Rapp? No? Okay. Then Aiden Gallegos. Hello. Hey, Karen. Hello, everybody. I'm currently present. I am a student at Harrison High School, and I would like to talk about House Bill eleven fifty two. I would like to say that it's a great for all the students to have financial literacy and applicable, but I do have some concerns about it.
So currently, there's the issue. Students from diverse, low income, or immigrant families will be temporarily affected. Those students are more likely to be undocumented or come from families that fear government forms, especially asking for personal or financial information. In addition, the opt out becomes a label. If only some students are opting out and they mostly come from diverse schools or noncitizen household, guess what? It's not hard for others to notice. That's essentially creating an other category of students, which leads to stigmatation, exclusion, and inequality. In addition,
it's an it's an access issue MASA equity. Lawmakers might think they're helping students by nudging them into financial aid, but not everyone could safely or legally fill out a FAFSA or CASPA form. The law forgets that for some families, these forms are not just paperwork. There's stress, risk, and trauma. So to sum it all up, requiring a financial aid form as a graduation requirement is basically saying, you don't get the diploma unless this government form is filled out. That's dangerous, especially in the community after navigating systematic hurdles. It's not fair. It's not equitable. And frankly,
it can reduce a lot of work with community. Thank you. And I I gotta ask, are you at the dentist? Yeah. Clearly, I'm here. Thank you to your dentist for letting you, do this. And if you just hang on, tell your dentist to hold on for a few more minutes. We got one more person to testify in case we have questions. Sarah Hunt, can you top that, please? Thank you. I'm not I'm not at the dentist, but I'll give it a go. Alright. Thank you, chair and senate and committee members for hearing testimony today on November. I'm Sarah Hung, president of the Charter Advocacy Coalition, representing 16 public charter schools and 24,000
students, statewide. Our mission is to defend the autonomy guaranteed by the 1993 Charter Schools Act. We urge you to amend eleven ninety two to exempt charter schools from the financial literacy course mandate and graduation requirements. I strongly support equipping students with financial literacy skills. This mandate undermines the flexibility that makes charter schools effective. Charter schools are designed to tailor curricula to the students' unique needs. Most already integrate financial literacy into courses like economics or math or offer innovative electives aligned with their mission.
A one size fits all graduation requirement risks disrupting these approaches, diverting resources from critical programs like arts or STEM, and stifling innovation. Like rural school districts, small smaller charters operate operating on lean budgets face an undue burden. Developing a new course training teachers and ensuring compliance demand time and money money charters lack. This could force cuts to offerings that serve low income families and students of color who rely on certain specialized models. Mandating a stand alone course also risks prioritizing compliance over education.
Students in career focused programs or with unique needs, such as disabilities or nontraditional schedules, may find a full course redundant or a barrier to graduation if they've mastered these skills elsewhere. Instead of the mandate, we propose incentives such as funding for curriculum development to encourage financial literacy while preserving charter autonomy. This would advance the bill's goals without undermining the innovation that makes charter schools, in Colorado so successful. Thank you for your time and consideration, and please amend eleven ninety two to extend charter schools.
And I would just like to close my remarks, by expressing my appreciation for, senator Marchman's comments concerning graduation requirement as well. I I can relate to that, and and I appreciate your comments. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have questions for this panel besides, before Aiden gets his teeth drilled here? Okay. Anybody? Any questions for the panel? I do have a question. Aden, how old are you? I'm a 17 year old student out here. You're very well spoken and very committed to be here. And I really appreciate you doing this,
and taking the time. And that's one thing we haven't heard was the FAFSA, you know, talked so much about. And I appreciate you bringing that up, especially, you know, at this time. So, questions? Senator Marchman. Thank you, mister chair. And I think my question is for the case gentlemen. It's interesting about what you said about the FAFSA. You're saying something I actually agree with, but it kinda goes against what our department of higher education is doing. We are currently, like, forty sixth in the nation maybe for completion of FAFSA.
And so that is something that the Department of Higher Education is trying to work on. I would be curious under what circumstances you would encourage FAFSA completion. I tend to think it is also a a a parent and family kind of choice, but just curious kinda where you are on that, mister Reeves. Mister Reeves. Thank you. Thank you, senator Marshland. On a personal note, yes. I I I I wish that that FAFSA was was easy to fill out and and and that everyone had access to it,
but it's neither. And really it's not an easy form to fill out. Those of you who have had kids going to college, know that as parents. And it's also you're divulging a lot, a lot of personal information, which in today's, you know, in today's society is just that there's a lot of mistrust and a lot of concern over that. But ultimately it still is. As a superintendent, as a high school principal that I was for years, the comment I would often get is my child's going to X, and they don't need to fill out the PASA. We're not taking financial aid.
It could be for any any variety of reasons, and it really should be their choice and not a school's choice to say, you don't graduate unless you fill out that form. A little bit I think it's a little bit ludicrous to say, you just need to practice on it. You don't need to actually submit it. If you're gonna work that hard on that form, you darn well better be prepared to submit it, I think. So that that's that's kinda where I am on that. Thank you. Do we have any other questions? See, now thank you again to this panel for for coming, and participating. I really appreciate your testimony. I do have two people who signed up late, who are logging on.
They're remote. Gaddy and Matthew Laden call them up. And this will be our last two, unless there's anyone else in the room who would like to, testify and who hasn't signed up or gotten a chance that'd like to come in person. Someone in the Zoom chat is is saying that they're still waiting. They're still oh, thank you, Sarah. I mean to sign off, but it's Andrew Bristol is still waiting, he said, in the chat. Thank you. Yep. Oh, Andrew Bristol. Let's bring up Andrew also. Thought I called him up. Andrew, we'll start with you since you're up. Go ahead and unmute yourself. Is that I don't maybe I'm not maybe it's not Andrew.
I can't read this far away. Is it Andrew, go ahead. That is correct. Andrew. Yep. I am here. You have two minutes. Good afternoon, chair and members of the committee. Thank you for your opportunity to speak to you today. My name is Andrew Bristol, the director of curriculum and post secondary education in Harrison School District two. In Southeast Colorado Springs, we're a hardworking, proud, resilient, working class community. And special thanks to mister Gallegos, a student, in Harrison High School, so and and, grateful for his his word and comments today. While we support financial literacy education and expanding post secondary access, I urge you to reconsider the requirement for house bill twenty five eleven ninety two
as students complete the FAFSA or CASA in order to graduate. This mandate introduces real barriers for students already navigating poverty, mixed status families, and limited adult support. Many of our families are uncomfortable disclosing financial details, especially under today's political climate, and other face real challenges with reliable Internet access, language barriers, and availability of adult support to complete complex forms, especially the CASTA, which which lacks the same level of infrastructure and awareness and guidance as as FAFSA does. And critically, this does not align to the realities of working class communities like ours,
Where many students plan to enter trades, the military, or workforce directly after graduation, for them, this requirement feels like an unnecessary hurdle, a task that doesn't reflect their goals or serve their future plans. We've already seen the risks. Louisiana had lit the nation in FAFSA mandates, but but then they repealed their requirement in 2024 after a widespread statewide backlash. Their policy created stress, inequity, and logistical burden, not even any long term gains to justify it. Colorado should lead with incentives, not mandates. Respect student choice and invest in support,
not barriers. And honor all post secondary paths, not just the college bound students. Colorado has taken smart steps to incentivize FAFSA and CASA completion such as the Promise Tax Credit and expanding financial literacy instruction. These efforts support postsecondary access through education and opportunity but not adding to the pressure of graduation. Making FAFSA and CASA completion a condition of graduation sends the wrong message that policy matters more than student intention and their choices. Thank you. I'll entertain any questions. Thank you. If you just hold on, we'll we'll see if we have any questions. I'd like to, bring up Matthew Laden.
Hello. Can you guys hear me? I sure can. Just state your name, who you represent. You have two minutes. If you wanna turn your your camera on, that'd be great. There you go. Hi. My name is Matthew Laden. I serve as the co president of Financial Kids Colorado, and I'm testifying in support of house bill eleven ninety two. I wrote this speech for y'all today, but before I begin, I wanna share a story about a girl from Mexico who believed in the American dream, a dream once deeply rooted in the ideals this country was founded on. In Mexico, she grew up in poverty, but she worked tirelessly in high school and then later in university in hopes of creating a better future for herself.
Then one day after receiving a visa to work as a nanny, she flew to Boston, Massachusetts, determined to start a new life. And after several years of hard work and saving, she applied for college and was accepted. But due to her limited resources, she and she relied on student loans and her savings to graduate college in just two and a half years. Then at a time when women made up less than 10% of Wall Street, she defied the odds and became an investment banker, achieving financial stability and eventually starting a family. That girl is my mom, and her story taught me that education has the power to level the playing field for individuals from underrepresented communities by providing them with a fair chance to achieve their
dreams. Yet despite the importance of a well rounded education, many students in low income communities are left without vital opportunities and personal finance. High schools are supposed to prepare students for the future, but without basic financial education, they fail to equip students for real world challenges like building, avoiding debt, and building wealth. This shortfall deprives students of exposure to possible careers in business or finance. If a student ever learns that budgeting, investing, or entrepreneurial thinking could be viable career pathways, they're far less likely to pursue them. Over time, this effect contributes to a lack of diversity in fields such as finance. But it's not necessarily because those careers are too competitive,
but it's because entire demographics were never even shown the door. Ultimately, addressing financial literacy in high schools is a positive step towards leveling the playing field for underrepresented students to pursue paths in business and finance. The next generation of business professionals should be a diverse, inclusive, and innovative group of leaders because everyone deserves a chance to live their American dream just like my mom did. Thank you all for your time. Thank you. I appreciate it. And thank you for, waiting and and and coming on. I believe you were getting picked up from school, if that's right. You know?
So, I I have Gaddy, g a d d I, Ladin. Go ahead and, unmute yourself. State your name. You have two minutes. Thank you so much. My name is Gaddy Ladin, and I am that girl. Matthew Ladin is actually my son. I'm here in support of HB eleven ninety two. Thank you so much, chair and members of the committee. I am an executive at a nonprofit dedicated to empowering Colorado youth through financial literacy. I'm also a first generation college graduate who immigrated to The United States alone, worked as a cleaner and a cook, learned English by watching TV, and went to school at night.
What helped me rise from survival to Wall Street was understanding how to manage money. Financial education gave me the power over my future, but I had to find the tools on my own. Most of students don't get that chance. I know some may question whether the state should mandate a course like this. And as a conservative myself, I can tell you I questioned that myself. But I believe this is a rare case where government has the rightful limited role to keep individuals to be self reliant. Financial education isn't about control.
It's about freedom. It's about giving young people the knowledge they need to make independent, informed decisions about their futures. And I tell you this as a conservative, as an immigrant, as a Hispanic female as well. HB eleven ninety two ensures that every Colorado student receives the foundation in personal finance before graduation, a basic life skill that empowers independence, prevent death traps, and promotes generation of stability. Financial literacy is not an elective. It's an essential skill that every single American should have and is long overdue.
Please support HB twenty five eleven ninety two and help the students take charge of their futures, not depend on the government to do it for them. I know there is questions also about FAFSA. FAFSA requirements have been very, very amended so that they can be much easier on the student and more as a practice than a than a, mandate. So because of that, I'm in full support of this bill. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you, miss Lady. Appreciate that. Do we have any questions for this panel? Seeing none, again, all of you, thank you for your time.
And Matthew and Ms. Lading, will you please sign up online so we have record of that? There's a link where you would have gone in and make sure that you sign sign up at to testify even since you've already testified. We just wanna have that record. Thank you. We tried. We we did try, but the link was, the bill was not listed on the sign up link, and I don't know if it's because of timing. Sure. But if there is an update, then we'll be sure to comply. Okay. Thank you so much. Have a great day. Thank you. Do do we have anyone else in the room who would like to testify? Seeing none, the testimony phase is closed.
Back to the bill. Bill sponsors. You wanna come up? We'll have a senatorial five. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think we've heard a lot of really good comments about this bill, ways that folks would like to see it modified in order for them to be supportive. I I know that you have an amendment. There's certainly more changes that can be made. I think I would really appreciate a little more time to do some work on this to see if we can get it to a place where, we can get more support for this. So I would ask that you lay the bill over for action only, in the amendment phase so that we can come back to it.
At the bill sponsor's request, I I can do that. So I will lay Thanks to all the thanks to all the folks who spent time today testifying. Thank you. I will lay over, House Bill twenty five eleven ninety two for action only. Two twelve seventy eight. Senators Kirkmeyer and Michaelson Genet. Thanks. Two, three, Who would like to start us off? Senator Michelson Giney. Thank you, mister chair. House Bill twenty three twelve forty one created a 26 member task force with diverse stakeholders at the table. This task force generated a consensus report recommending 30 changes transforming the K-twelve accountability system.
We have taken a highly stake held task force report and stake held it some more, which has led to the amended bill in front of you, which was highly amended in the house. While the task force could not find consensus on everything and there are plenty of unsolved concerns with the accountability system, This bill brings forward significant and substantial changes to the accountability system for all stakeholders. The biggest changes are in the categories of state testing, data influencing school and district accreditation ratings,
postsecondary workforce readiness, accountability clock, addressing insufficient data, and areas of continuous study. Within an effort to live within the financial constraints of this fiscal year and the coming fiscal years, we removed a package of studies from the introduced bill and found cost offsets for the rest of the bill. Senator Kirkmire? Thank you, mister chair. And I will be brief. I gave you a handout with the high level talking points that my co prime just read to you and detailed summaries there if you need it, so it helps you get through it. Maybe you had some of this before. But just in case you're like me and you lost it and you're you don't
have it someplace, thought we would give it to you again. So I'm just gonna go straight to the fiscal note before I get grilled on it like I did in the last committee and the two committees I was in. Well, you deserve it. So, you know I'm okay with that because this means I get to grill everybody else just that much more in appropriations. But just gonna say, 26 member task force, hundred and fifty hours, thirty recommendations, People like, Shelby from the Department of Education and Jordan, who's sitting behind me here, worked very strenuously to get this done. We've got CEA is in support. CDE is in support. State Board of Education,
if they had time to take a motion, I guess, they would probably be in support as well. But if you look on the newly revised fiscal note that just came out on April 29, your lucky day, you'll see that on page five, it pretty much explains what's going on here and why there is only 182,260 of general fund that the bill increases in appropriations. Gone through and done our due diligence, worked. This bill is combined, with the fiscal note on Senate Bill three fifteen, which is a post secondary, workforce bill.
But, again, the reason there's 4.4 FTE in the second year is because they have to do a whole lot of stuff. There's a lot to do here. When you have 30 recommendations and two years worth worth of work that came through to change this system. I mean, this system has not been changed in the last thirty years. So, yep, it does get expensive, but we found places where we could, like eliminating the writing exam, making changes to the SAT administration, and then, repealing the local accountability grant program, which we did in the long bill, and it was an adjustment there. Stuff like that,
has really worked out to our favor. And so, again, 4.4 FT feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet E because they've got to coordinate studies of new performance indicators, facilitate technical and advisory groups, manage data and calculations of performance indicators, manage creation of accountability dashboards, assist with pathway plans for schools and districts with priority improvement or turnaround plans, and manage and conduct studies and evaluations. So the 4.4 reduces down to 2.8. I think it's a bargain and, I'm okay with the fiscal note. So happy to answer any questions. Great. Question from Senator Kipp. Not a question.
Just a comment. I looked at the original fiscal note, and I'm worried. Really? Are you kidding me? No. I did the same thing. So thank you. Thank you for, getting that too much more reasonable for your life. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Sarah Marksman. Thank you, mister chair. And I think I've made this really clear. I'm really excited about this bill. The 30 options I've been looking at since the report came out and trying to brainstorm ways to save money. And I am just super impressed that all but maybe a handful, of the 30 things got in, for such a it's actually a a really reasonable amount.
So I wanna echo what, senator Kipp said and and just say nice work. I'm really excited about this bill. I I actually have a question on you said, the number of years, the second year. But on the fiscal note, it says the first year, 2526, is 281,000. Is that what you meant to say? And it has 4.4 FTE. Senator Kirk Meyer? Thank you, Mr. Chair. It does say $281,000 in total cost, but the centrally appropriated costs are not appropriated now. They don't actually happen until FTE are hired. So you would deduct the 98,938
from the 281, and that's where you get the approximate 182, hundred and $83,000. But don't we do that? That's how it works even in the long bill, just so you know. Okay. So don't we do that in every fiscal note, senator Kirkmire? Go ahead. I'm sorry. Don't we do what? Do do that hiring the FTE a year later? Yeah. And so I'm just go ahead, senator Kirkmire. So that's why we we really the $98,000 is added on during the next long bill process and as we go through and do our stuff next year and we true up everything. But it's added on when people get hired is when it starts.
So That that's the answer I'm gonna use the next time you question me in appropriations. So That'd be fine, but I probably didn't question you on this. See if there's any centrally appropriate money for me. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone? Okay. Do you, we have testimony. Do you have any preferences? I think they're all very favorable. So let's just bring them all up. Bring them all up. To knowing it would be late in the day, knowing that people are tired, let's just get through it. We have one person as they come. We we we have one person in person that signed up,
Brenda, Dichoner and Lisa then we have remotely Lisa Medler, Doctor. Christina Worth Hawkins, Doctor. Rhonda Hannaford, Lindsay Jaekel, Liz Waddick again, doctor Wendy Berhanzl, and Angela Engel. Well, we have four for questions only, so I don't know if we need to bring them up. Doctor Hawkins, doctor Hannaford, and Lindsay Jacol stated and Lisa Mendler stated they're questions only. They're all remote. So I have Brenda right in front of me. So and then we'll go ahead and start with you since you're here and ready to go.
Just want to make sure you turn your mic on. State your name, who you represent, and you have, two minutes. Great. Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. I am Brenda DeConerer, president of REDI Colorado. And we are testifying in a support position today. We're thankful for the sponsors engaging with us and making amendments in the house to get this bill to the strongest place possible. I am also here representing the support position of several other advocacy organizations, including ten Card to Succeeds, the League of Charter Schools, and the Colorado Children's Campaign. I thought I would just keep it to me to get us out of here at a decent hour.
So I did serve on the twelve forty one task force alongside a broad array of education leaders and and stakeholders. And as was mentioned, we had 30 recommendations we came to consensus with, and this bill incorporates the vast majority of those, which is very exciting. These improvements in the bill build on what is already a strong accountability system and just makes it even stronger. One example, one of the core functions of our current accountability system is to identify schools and districts that are performing well and can be looked at for best practices, while schools and districts that are chronically low performing are provided with support, resources,
and interventions. House Bill twelve seventy eight contains changes that will strengthen those supports and clarify the actions available to schools that are on the accountability clock, and we support those changes. Another important purpose of accountability is to provide information on academic outcomes across schools to families and other stakeholders. And I, when I was on the task force, was on the subgroup that worked on public reporting and engagement, and we looked at best practices in other states, and that led us to the recommendation to make a unified dashboard that would present easy to understand information to parents and families and stakeholders.
And ultimately, that is, a recommendation that has been included in this bill. So we're very excited about that. So we wanted to thank, Senator Kirkmeyer and Senator Michelson Janae for carrying this important accountability bill that reflects so many of these consensus based recommendations. We urge a yes vote. Thank you. Thank you. If you just hold on, we have people, popping on here online. And I want to see if so we have a few that are questions only. And we'll wait till the end to call on them. And then I have just waiting. Angela Engel. Angela, good to see you. Will you go ahead and unmute yourself?
Tell us who you tell us your name, who you represent, and you have, two minutes. Thank you. My name is Angela Engel, and, I'm coming before the committee today to ask that you be a no vote on HB twelve seventy eight. I'm a thirty year educator, author, and former director of a nonprofit serving at risk students. For the past five years I've been teaching graduate school for educators that are getting a master's degree in at risk certification. I want you to vote no on HB twelve seventy eight because it takes a bad idea and it makes it worse.
And after twenty three years we know the return on high stakes testing and accountability. Two decades of state mandated testing and evaluating teachers and schools on that basis has resulted in more at risk students to the tune of 355,000, wider achievement gaps, students being less prepared for college in the workforce as reflected in higher college remediation rates and teachers reporting lack of student engagement as their number one problem also being
reflected in declining enrollment statewide. Senator Bridges in the earlier discussion of HB thirteen twenty said we have to make decisions based on the returns. And high stakes testing accountability in the State of Colorado and nationwide has proven to be a poor return on massive investments. How this committee of stakeholders that was not inclusive, I need to specify, how they came to this conclusion is highly suspect and should be closely evaluated. We to look at the needs of Colorado students and our,
budget strap schools and say the answer is a nifty dashboard and more tests and more languages is not only bad policy, but it's unethical. This bill is like buying a new dashboard on a car while the tires right rot and the gas tank goes empty. I'm almost done. And then expecting that the car goes further and faster. Only the problem with the metaphor is these aren't cars, these are children. And they are hurting and they are hungry and they have basic needs that aren't
getting met. So instead of spending money on more FTEs at CDE, buy smaller class sizes, nutritious meals, and books for kids because those do have a higher return. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for your testimony. If you hold on, we'll see if we have any questions. I have Liz Waddick, up. If you would go ahead and unmute yourself, state your name, who can represent. You have two minutes. Hi. My name is Liz Waddick. Thanks for having me again. I'm remote from my child's soccer game, so I appreciate it. Go ahead. Not at the dentist,
but close to the to Adrian's poor plight. So good afternoon. I'm Liz Waddick, high school Spanish teacher, vice president of Colorado Education Association, and I'm here in a support in a support position for twelve seventy eight. As a member of the accountability work group and in my campaign running for vice president, I've heard from educators, students, and parents from across our state that our accountability system, as it currently stands, does not support schools and communities. Rather, it can feel like a compliance exercise, a box to check, or an obstacle to be surmounted in the pursuit of actually supporting and getting through
to students. Sometimes, particularly in our rural and underserved communities, it can feel cruel and punitive, punishing students and educators for factors outside of their control. If the goal of the accountability system is to ensure our schools are serving students the best that they possibly can, we've got a long way to go. Fortunately, twelve seventy eight sponsors have worked hard to reflect what I've been hearing around our state. We must work towards a more holistic community led accountability system, one that respects the unique needs of our students and educators' autonomy to meet those needs in creative ways. Twelve seventy eight has the potential to reorient Colorado's accountability system to better serve its
ultimate goal, educating your students effectively. The sponsors of this bill prioritize collaboration and input from our educators, and, thus, this is a bill that, a, prioritizes community led approaches over more punitive state led actions, such as mass firings, use of external managers, or other things that devalue the efforts of the people in the district. It, b, avoids doubling down on standardized testing. And, c, it promotes the responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars by investing in educator retention, which evidence overwhelmingly shows is the most efficient means to increase student achievement and undertake meaningful school and district improvement efforts.
CEA greatly appreciates the sponsor's willingness to work with us to ensure that December moves the accountability system in a direction of best serving our students, and we hope that you'll stand with us today. Thanks. Thank you. And then doctor Wendy Berhansl. Is that correct? If you go ahead and, state your name, who you represent, and you have, two minutes. Good afternoon, chair and members of the senate education committee. My name is doctor Wendy Berhanzl, proud superintendent of Harrison School District two in Colorado Springs. You serve 13,000 diverse students. I'm here to represent our district. Chair of I was the chair of the state accountability task force,
also representing CASE and the Pikes Peak Alliance. I wanna express my sincere gratitude for the opportunity to speak with you today on this bill. As you know, education is the cornerstone of our community and our society. And to make the kind of changes that will move our system forward, we must have accurate, reliable data to measure student outcomes. Data is the heart of any improvement effort. It gives us the tools to make informed decisions that will help us meet the needs of our students. House bill twelve seventy eight provides us with the structure and tools to create that data driven approach to student progress. Our work with the task force has already helped us identify key areas where the
system can and needs to improve. Specifically, this bill will allow us to refine our approach to measuring student success, ensuring that we have clear, accurate indicators of how all students are progressing. This will not only improve how we assess performance, but also help us understand where our students need more targeted support and resources. For example, with better data, we can ensure that students who are struggling get the interventions they need sooner, and those who are excelling can be challenged and pushed to continue growing. However, it's important to know that it's not just about measuring student success. It's also about improving the system so that we are supporting both students and educators
in a more meaningful way. Our educators deserve a system that supports them as they do this incredibly important work. They need a system that accurately reflect reflects their students' progress, but they also need the resources, professional development, and support to help students succeed. House Bill twelve seventy eight brings much needed changes to the way we measure success, but it also helps us build the infrastructure that will support our teachers, admin, and staff. At the end of the day, our students are our primary focus. They deserve a system that that can clearly measure their growth, their challenges, and their achievements.
They deserve a system that will allow us to make the right decisions for their futures. Our school staff also deserve the opportunity to work in an environment where their efforts are recognized, supported, and guided by clear, actionable data. We owe it to both our students and educators to create a system that works for everyone, and these accountability changes help us get there. Thank you. Thank you so much. Do we have, questions for this panel from, our members? I do have a question and I just want to talk to you, Doctor. Berhansl, about this, since you were on the committee. How have we reduced the reliance on standardized testing in this specifically?
Thank you, chair. There are a few ways that are included within this bill. First of all, I will say the bill does not go far enough. Our goal is this is the first step step, and we need to continue the work. Because as you heard from, the bill sponsors, we haven't relooked at our system for too many years. But to answer your question, a few ways that we address that is looking at how we do testing. And with adaptive tests, that will change how much time is done with testing, because we adapt to what students need. So not everyone has to take three days of ELA testing,
three days of math testing, one day of social studies, and one day of science. It will determine where they need to test based on how they answer the questions. The other thing, that is very important is the, dashboard where we will be able to tell a story of more than just one test score. And so it is very hard on teachers who put their life's work into this and then to have one test score, how we measure teachers. It's unfair and it's unrealistic. So a dashboard gives a school, a district, a chance to tell what else they're doing to help students succeed besides just one
test score. And would that dashboard include, interim assessments that, schools are using that are you know, there are five proof, assessments from, Department of Ed. They go through every five years. Is that what we're thinking about with that dashboard? I It could Go ahead. Thank you, chair. It could include that. It could also include some of the SCAP data that, you know, some of our districts have worked on their own local accountability measures. It can include anything that a district or a school thinks that will help parents know how their students are doing and help share the story of what schools are
doing to address student needs. And one final question for you, Doctor. Perhansl. Thank you again for, taking my questions. The, assessments, you stated that, you know, they'd have to answer a question. Because I see in our summary that the, assessments are to be cut into shorter sections with age appropriate time frames for students with disabilities. Would they be shortened for kids without disabilities? Is that what you're referring to in the questions that they asked? Doctor. Berhangel? Yes, chair. So, the assessment framework of how we're proposing assessment to change is that assessments are adaptive,
and so an assessment for you and I would look different based on how we answer the question. So So if you got it right, it would give you a harder question. If I got it wrong, it would give me the same level question, and then it would level us out of where we really perform. This typically, in any kind of system that I've experienced in my twenty years of education, shortens the testing time because it really gets to the nitty gritty quickly and personalizes the outcome for students and really tells us better information as educators of where our students are succeeding or not. Thank you. I appreciate that.
Are there any other questions for this panel from our members? Seeing none, thank you all for participating, and sticking around here on this late Wednesday. Is it Wednesday, see? I don't even know the day. Thank you all. Is there anyone left in the room who would like to testify, who has not had the chance, not been called up? Seeing no one else, the testimony phase is closed. Back to the bill and amendment phase. Do we have amendments, bill sponsors? No amendments. Are there amendments from anyone in the committee? Seeing none, the amendment phase is closed. Would you like to wrap up? We'll start.
Senator Michelson Janae. I was gonna go with good bill. Vote yes. Ditto. Alright. That's a very short summation. Appreciate it. Any questions or comments from the committee? Lynn, do you need to be back? No. Alright. You sure? Alright. We'll go ahead and, move the bill. Senator Michelson Giney? Yes, mister chair. I move house bill twelve seventy eight to the committee on appropriations with favorable recommendation. Thank you. That's proper motion. Will you please take the poll? Senators Bright? Yes. Kipp? Yes. Lundeen? Excused. Michaelson Janae? Aye. Rich? Aye. Marchman?
Aye. Mister chair. For today, yes. K. Thank you so much. The off to appropriations that passes unanimously. Next, we'll hear, house bill ten thirty eight with centers Marchman and Bazely. Is your cosponsor gonna be here, senator Marchman? Actually, I don't know. He was here very early. Oh, I am. Very early. I'll call him. We'll give you, we'll take a senatorial five while we get ready. Like to start us off. Senator Marchman. Okay. We're trying to figure out who wanted to say the words. Okay. So Colorado was touted as having one of the better statewide transfer ecosystems in the
nation. However, stories from students about a disconnected transfer experience are common. In '21, 'twenty three through 'twenty three, Colorado participated in a multistate initiative to promote the development and adoption of state and system wide transfer standards and equity focused transfer reforms that contribute to equitable postsecondary attainment. Key findings demonstrated that growth opportunities exist to improve the student transfer experience. Surveys of both transfer students and institutional personnel across the state show showed there's a
distinct disconnect in key areas, such as identifying transfer students upon admission, advising transfer students, periodically assessing a student's interest in transfer, and communication and understanding of state transfer policies. When asked about the degree to which transfer students are informed on the transferability of their courses, we discovered there's a distinct disconnect between institutional personnel and transfer students. Seventy two percent of institutional personnel surveyed indicated that students were informed on the transferability
of their courses at a high to very high degree, while only 41% of students surveyed indicated they were informed at those same levels. Of the 40 plus recommendations from the final report, the creation of a centralized statewide web based tool that equips students to navigate and explore their options across multiple institutions with within Colorado was recommended several times. This bill will create a website that'll be Colorado specific. It would include transfer history for credit for prior learning,
concurrent and dual enrollment credits, MOUs between schools, and GT pathways, making this an invaluable resource to our students. Thank you. Senator Beasley. Thank you, mister chairman. So this is an important bill to me, and I appreciate being invited, to to join in as a senate sponsor. It's important to me because, I took advantage of that this years ago after attending a trade school. It was a computer trade school, how to learn how to program in four different software languages. And then but they were not accredited to a school to by universities.
But later on, I found that, that could be accepted towards credit. And that just gave me encouragement and a boost towards getting my ultimately getting my degree. So I understand the frustration that students, especially adult students, will come in and say, why do I have to learn this stuff in the beginning when I can kind of test out? But then to be able to transfer between institutions, which this facilitates, to be able to have the visibility and the instruction and show how they can apply those credits to be transferred is,
I just think, is invaluable. So it's a great idea. Everybody wins here, and it even includes private institutions of higher education. So I like the idea a lot. I think it will do a lot of people a lot of good in helping them to get where they can find those fulfilling jobs, where they can cover the expenses and make a living for their family and to help others on top of that. So I appreciate your positive reception of the bill. Thank you so much.
And I just want to, see if we have any questions from the panel. Senator Kipp? Honestly, just a comment. I was really excited when I heard this spill was coming this year and excited to support it today. Yeah. And I reiterate that it's, I think it just opens up so much more and more information, more understanding of what's available. So, we'll go ahead and go to testimony. Do we have our list? I have a lot of people in person. I have Carl Einhaus, Kennedy Evans. This is for questions only, so you don't need to come up unless we have questions. Tricia Johnson, Mark Nelson,
Heeler Spear, Adam Bello Bellomo, and Cameron Ditello remotely. I got three people up, but I'm not sure what three came up. So Tricia Johnson. Tricia Johnson. Carl Lighthouse. And? Gheeler Spear. Gheeler. And? Adam. Awesome. Great. And then we have one person online. We'll see if they we pull them up. So we'll start with Adam. Since you're last down, you want to start us off. Just make sure the microphone is on, the green light is on. Pull the microphone closer to your mouth because it's a little more sensitive. And state your name, who you represent.
And you got three minutes. We have a smaller panel, so three minutes. Go ahead. Good afternoon, members of the senate. Thank you for letting me share my thoughts with you all today. My name is Adam Balomo, and I'm here in affiliation with the Colorado GT Student Board to support this bill. At its core, college is an investment, which means it requires a great deal of commitment and trade, of course, for opportunities. Now, I hardly need to tell all of you just how expensive college is, but let's get some basic facts out on the table. According to the Education Data Initiative, most students that pursue college end up with $37,000
in debt in debt totaling more than $128,000,000,000 across America. And that debt doesn't disappear either, and it often sticks around for another twenty plus years of their lives. As a student myself, staring down the barrel of twenty plus years of debt, it's frightening. And I'm not alone in this experience. Every year, half of all Colorado high school graduates go to college, about 29,000 students. And they're faced with the exact same dilemma, finding a school that both accommodates their credits and academic goals. With this bill, we get a cost effective a cost effective opportunity to arm 29,000
students annually with the information they need to make their investment in college worthwhile. But don't just but don't vote for this bill just for the sake of students like me. In an article by the college, by College Board, they found that college graduates annually bring in 7,800 more tax dollars than high school graduates, an 86% increase. When students lose credits during transfers or can't apply prior learning or AP coursework, they take longer to graduate, or they don't graduate at all. These delays reduce their lifetime earnings and cost the state and lost tax revenue.
So let's make the process of reaching higher education and the opportunity associated easier on students. Let's shrink lost tax revenue, and let's lend a hand to the next generation of Coloradans to give them the information they need to make the right decision about their future. Vote yes on HB ten thirty eight and vote yes for the future of this state. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you. If you just hold on, we'll see if we have questions. Great job. Next. Alright. Go ahead. State your name. Long day. Chair Kolker,
esteemed members of the senate education committee. My name is doctor Tricia Johnson. I'm the deputy executive director of the Department of Higher Education. Thank you for the opportunity to express, my and the department's support of HB twenty five ten thirty eight. Thank you to senators Marchman and Bazely for championing this important legislation that increases both accessibility and equity among our Colorado students. The Department of Higher Education, the Commission on Higher Education, the General Assembly, and the governor have continuously made strong commitments to improve access to post secondary education
for all students. An important next step is simplifying the transfer experience for all Colorado students. We continue to hear that students lack access to appropriate information before they make an enrollment decision, preventing the most efficient use of students' time and money. While some institutions offer transfer visibility, it puts the onus on the student or the family or the counselors, requiring additional support and resources that many students do not have. House Bill 20 five-ten 38 tasked the department with the creation of a website that
will allow students to see how their previously earned credits will transfer and apply across different institutions before they make a decision to apply. With the house amendments, this bill kicks off phase one of the project, funded by a roughly $850,000 grant. Phase one will create and implement the transfer pathways, transfer website with AP credits, IB courses, DSST equivalency for military credits, guaranteed transfer. It also will allow us to work with institutions of higher education to beta test the software. For willing institutions,
we'll be able to include on the platform how general education credits and industry recognized credentials will move between institutions for credit. By passing this legislation, our legislature will showcase Colorado's commitment to making the higher education ecosystem work for students regardless of where they are in their postsecondary career. Vote yes and please show your support. Thank you very much. If you just hold on for questions, Mr. Einhouse, go ahead. Chair Kocher, Vice Chair Marshman, members of the Southern Education Committee, my name is Carl Einhouse, and I am the Chief Student Success and Academic Affairs Officer for for the Colorado
Department of Higher Education. And I am enthusiastically here to provide support and the Department's support of House Bill 20 five-ten 38. And thank you, Senators Marchman and Bazely, for your great support of this very critical college transfer improvement for our students here in Colorado. This legislation creates a vital opportunity for our department to support students, not only as they enroll in college for the first time, but also at any point along their educational journey. This includes those returning adults completing who want to complete a credential that they never did the first time by providing a tool to help them find the best institutional
match for accepting the most credits to award toward their career aspirations. In the last few years, we have seen inspiring engagement for students and as well as today, ranging from freshmen in high school to seniors in college, demonstrating the need and the desire for this tool. Furthermore, it was mentioned on the mic by many Colorado legislators, both current and past, that our state would benefit from this transfer website. Through thoughtful engagement, DHU decided that now was the time to create this transfer portal that we believe that will be seen as an enhancement to our state's higher education services.
Additionally, due to a timely grant funding, we'll be able to do so at no cost to the state. Hospital two thousand five hundred and ten thirty eight will create minimal long term workloads for institutions and is a tool for students to increase college access and allow them to make more informed choices about their education. Further, this tool can increase exposure to institutions in the state. Our website will be Colorado centric and will assist high school counselors and students pursuing concurrent enrollment to select courses that will apply to their intended program of study after
they graduate from high school. And they will include agreements, especially our guaranteed transfer agreements, interstate wide transfer agreements as well. It can lead to improved outcomes in college going and completion rates for students with transfer credits and will support keeping students in state as transferring courses will appear more seamless and inviting. By passing this legislation, the Senate Education Committee will be supporting students, institutions, and the department as this tool will be beneficial for all students. The department is committed to fostering the success of our Colorado students, and our ability to do just that will be enhanced by passing House Bill 20
five-ten 38. I respectfully encourage you to vote yes. I had my mic on the whole time. Thank you. And I have key is it, Keeler? Yes. Go ahead. Keeler, Spear. Go ahead. Mister chair, Kolker and members of the senate education committee, my name is Keeler Spear. I am a senior in high school and an executive chair of the Colorado gift and talented student board, whom I am representing today. We are a student led organization of students across the state dedicated to empowering gift and talented students. Our membership consists of students from 17 unique districts and 27 unique schools. We are here to support HB251038 so gifted students are given the assistance they need
to thrive in high school and college. These days, Colorado high schoolers, particularly those identified as gifted, are drawn to advanced coursework. According to the College Board, the organization that manages AP or advanced placement courses, twenty six point five percent of Colorado high school students or high school graduates took an AP exam and received a passing grade in 2023. Similarly, the Colorado Department of Education reports that in 2021, approximately forty percent of public high school graduates participated in dual enrollment, which is a program that allows high school students to take college level coursework via local community colleges and universities. Earning college credit coursework in high school is no longer an issue activity.
Colorado high schoolers are regularly pursuing advanced college level coursework, and we must support them in this endeavor. Personally, I hold an associate's degree from Arapahoe Community College, and I have accumulated around 160 college credits during my time in high school. During the application process, finding out which colleges will transfer is a mess, especially with 160 issues. It's going to all different schools. It's just something you don't wanna go through. We need to be able to have a centralized platform where students like myself can just consult a single database, and we don't have to do this whole loop. College admissions are already stressful. We shouldn't be putting students through more. Just it's already terrible. We need to reduce the stress on them.
And while some of Colorado's public higher education institutions offer data regarding the transfer transferability of college credit earned in high school, this is not true across the board. To ease the burden of high school course planning, the college admissions process for the for Colorado's best and brightest is imperative that they have a central source to determine public in state college credit transferability, something HB twenty five ten thirty eight will provide. On On behalf of the Colorado gift institutions board and gift institutions across Colorado, please vote yes on HP twenty five ten thirty eight. Thank you for your time and your opportunity. And I will vote for questions. You bet. Thank you so much. Thank you for everyone, for being here. We have one more online,
Cameron DiTolo. Cameron, if you go ahead and unmute yourself, state your name, who you represent. You have three minutes. Which which one's testifying is the question from the panel here. That would be me today. He will be probably testifying hopefully next year. We'll get him ready. Okay. Go ahead. Hi, everyone. My name is Cameron Gittello. First, thank you, mister chair and members of the committee, for allowing me to share my testimony today. I am the Rocky Mountain engagement manager at Young Invincibles. Our mission is to amplify the voices of young people in the political process and fight to expand economic mobility for that younger generation,
and house bill twenty five ten thirty eight is vital to achieving that mission. Students today, especially those who are first generation, rural, or low income learners, face a complex and costly landscape for credit transfer. I experienced these challenges firsthand. As a concurrent enrollment student, I earned two associate degrees from Pueblo Community College and additional credits from Colorado State University Pueblo before graduating high school. But when I moved to Denver to finish my bachelor's degree, I struggled to navigate the transfer process and lost many of those hard earned credits, making what should have been a smooth path far more complicated and discouraging.
Yes. Yes. A 25 year old Lenley Lenley Davis from Montbello shared, I've attended five Colorado schools. I've been the victim of credits failing to transfer and felt the discouragement of not knowing how long my academic journey will extend or how much it would cost. But few social science and art credits didn't transfer. I spent an extra $5,000. My sister couldn't afford those unexpected unexpected costs and did not finish her degree. And a CU Denver student, Ariel Tomlinson, testified in the House Education Committee earlier.
When I returned to school after homelessness, I didn't know that essential credits from CCD would have transfer. Credits are tuition money, and it was disheartening to pay again for those classes I had already taken. An accessible transfer map would have helped students make fill make better financial decisions, get into the workforce sooner, and carry less debt. Our rural access to higher education research conducted by rural young adults show that rural young adults rank these top barriers to post secondary education, financial burden, food and housing insecurity, academic prepare preparedness,
transportation, and work obligations. House bill ten thirty eight provides a common sense equity driven solution, a centralized website showing course equivalencies, prior learning, and work based credit pathways, and degree maps. It reduces unnecessary costs and delays, empower students to plan strategically, and ensures Colorado retains homegrown graduates. I urge you to vote yes on house bill twenty five ten thirty eight and close this damaging information gap so every young Coloradoan can pursue and complete a degree with confidence, clarity, and less debt. Thank you.
And thank you. Do we have questions for this panel from our committee? Senator Senator Lundy? Thanks very much. Question is for either or both, Keeler Spear or Cameron D'Atello. The question is this. There are seven days left in the legislative session, and I'm looking for a proxy to carry out my duties for the next seven days. Would either of you care to improve the office that I hold? And I believe you were asking Adam. You meant to ask Adam. I meant Adam. And Keeler. I'm sorry. I'm looking at the witness list, and I've got one of the bookends here on this panel.
Either of you Keeler. Go ahead. I'd recommend Adam. He's great. Oh, Adam. In humility, he wins. Okay. There we go. There we go. Mister Terry, in all seriousness, appreciate the testimony. You give me hope for tomorrow, gents. Stay with it. Thank you. Thank you. And I agree. I can only concur. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you so much. I appreciate you coming in. Appreciate your testimony. You did a great job. We do not have anyone else, I believe, on our testimony list. Wait, we do. One more. Oh, I'm sorry. Is that Mark Nelson? Oh. Come on up. Come on up. Anyone else in the room like to testify?
Come on up. Just make sure you go and sign up. Just make sure after you testify, you sign up on the using the QR code that's back there on the the table. So if you'd like to state your name, tell us, who you represent. You have three minutes. Make sure that is on. Go ahead. Thank you, mister chair Kolkar and members of the senate education committee for allowing me the opportunity to speak today. My name is Ty Barwick, and I am speaking for myself with affiliation to the Colorado Gifted and Talented Student Board in support of this bill. I'm here to urge you to vote yes on House Education Bill HB twenty five
ten thirty eight, postsecondary credit transfer website. For high school students that are pursuing post secondary education, having a centralized, efficient, and user friendly platform that provides all the information students need to know about transferring credits between colleges is not only useful, but necessary to their futures in education. First of all, I believe that this bill will increase simplicity and transparency for all students. Students, on average, lose 43% of their credits upon transferring from one institution to another, according to the US gov Government Accountability Office.
And with standardized equivalency data, students will always know which courses are guaranteed to transfer over, which would help them a lot. Additionally, this bill will lead to cost savings for students, which will greatly greatly relieve them of much financial stress. College courses in high school, such as APCE or IB courses, could all cost around $100. And by providing students with information regarding which classes transfer to colleges, they won't have to retake courses that aren't necessary, saving them money. As someone earlier already said,
they lost a lot of money from having to, repeat courses because those didn't transfer, and so this would be really helpful. And for more simplicity and transparency, as well as cost savings for the students in Colorado, please pass this bill. This website would be an invaluable source for tens of thousands of high school students that could train that could refer to and could help them in numerous ways. Please vote yes on this bill. Thank you. Thank you, Ty. Appreciate that. Do we have questions for Ty? Anyone? Thank you. Again, being up there by yourself is a little it's a little intimidating. I appreciate your your confidence in being able to testify,
and being on board here with this bill. Is there anyone else in the room? Seeing no one else, testimony phase is closed. To the amendment phase. Bill sponsors? Senator Mushman? We have no amendments. No amendments. Does the committee have any amendments? We don't see any amendments from the committee. The amendment phase is closed. To the summary. Senator Marshman? Thank you, mister chair, and thank you everyone for hearing this. I also wanna thank our spectacular witnesses. Always great to see the GT group, as well as our amazing adults too. But thank you guys for coming.
This is a very important bill because we continue to encourage students to take advantage of college credits. And yet many students like my own who has a very very clear career path for where she wanted to go when it was time for her to register for concurrent enrollment, she was not sure what to take. This website in I'm hopeful will be, will allow students to know exactly what to take. And it also, we passed a bill last year,
in this committee, senate bill one sixty four. And it's, what this bill does is makes true the promise that we made in 01/1964 that students would have the right to seamless transfer of courses in the guaranteed transfer pathway matrix. So, with that, I'll go vote yes. I probably should have started with that. Thank you. Senator Majesley. Yes, Mr. Chairman. Yes, for three great reasons. One, just improving the student experience, which we know it's a challenge, selecting classes and all the other paperwork and so on that we've always had to
go through, to improve that that interaction that they frankly anticipate having after all the other, systems interactions they do in the rest of their lives, and towards efficiencies. And lastly, as we heard from, the witness, Adam, just the cost effectiveness, is just it would just save students so much dollars if they can, use that tool towards the efficient selection of, classes towards achieving their degree goals. So please vote yes. Thank you. Do we have any final comments from the committee? Seeing none, miss Chris excuse me. Senator Marshall,
will you move the bill to appropriations? Yes. I move house bill ten thirty eight to the committee on appropriations. That's a proper motion. Miss miss Chris Feeney, we take the poll. Senators Bright? Yes. Kipp? Yes. Lundin? Aye. Michael Sande? Aye. Rich? Aye. Archman? Aye. Mister chair? Aye. And that passes unanimously off to appropriations. We do have one more bill, maybe two, if I can get it. I might have to call the senatorial five. So I'm gonna call senatorial five for about five minutes. You take the poll?
Senators Bright. Hi. Kip? Yes. Lundin? Aye. Michaelson Janae? Aye. Rich? Aye. Marchman? Aye. Mister chair? Aye. That passes unanimously. Senator Marchman? I would recommend the consent for this. Any any, objection to consent? No objection to consent. That will be on the consent calendar, October. Then November. I don't know why we're okay. Do you wanna do eleven eighty six right now? I don't know. Let's see. We have, also eleven eighty six that we can motion to the, appropriations committee center in Michelson Janae.
Do you wanna do this or not? Yeah. I make a super motion on November to the Appropriations Committee. That's a proper motion. Will you take the vote? Senator Bright. Hi. If you wanna know what it is, that's what it is. Gavin Dean. Hi. Michael Sandejanae. Hi. Rich. Hi. Archman. Hi. Mister chair. Aye. And that passes unanimously. We do have to meet again. This that was the last bill we had on our calendar. But, we will have to meet again for the late over bill, just to either vote it down or vote it out,
because we cannot let it die on the calendars. Senator Lundin? Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I want to just want to put on the mic what's going on for people that are tracking. So the financial literacy graduation requirement, Bill eleven ninety two, there is a conversation saying senate rule 22, left pran f, right pran, requires action on the bill today. I myself am still I'm reading the rule. I don't see it in the rule, but apparently, the secretary of the senate is specific about that. So, just so people understand what's going on, that is what we're dealing with in this moment. Because I cannot get ahold of the bill sponsor,
we're just it's laid over for action only. We'll have to meet again. Today? No. To vote on it. Before. Okay. Fair enough. So I wanna make sure the bill sponsor is here. And seeing no other, work, the senate education committee is adjourned.