Legislative Narrative
February 10-14, 2014
Overview
The first week of February was filled with decisions on widely-anticipated
education legislation, including significant amendments and votes from the House
Education committee and a much-anticipated, yet controversial, Senate Bill 14-136
that drew six hours of witness testimony. The House Education committee passed
HB13-1156, sponsored by Representative Dominick Moreno (D, Adams County),
increasing state appropriations for the Breakfast in the Classroom program to $3.5
million annually and extending the eligibility to 12th grade. The same committee
passed HB14-1102, Representative Cherilyn Peniston (D, Adams County) measure
to increase state requirements for Gifted and Talented programs across the state by
a 7-6 party-line vote. The committee also passed SB14-004, Representatives Jim
Wilson (R, Salida) and Jenise May’s (D, Adams County) measure to allow state
community colleges to offer four-year Bachelors of Applied Science Degrees in
approved fields by a 11-2 vote with only 2 committee Republicans voting ‘no’.
SB14-004 also passed a voice vote of the entire House of Representatives on Friday
2/14 and now faces an individual vote on House third reading before being sent to
the Governor for signature into law. Additionally, the House Judiciary committee
killed Representative Stephen Humphrey’s (R, Weld County) HB14-1157, a bill that
would have allowed public school officials to carry firearms with concealed carry
permits.
The coming weeks are scheduled with additional significant bill
introductions, committee hearings and floor votes, including hotly-debated school
finance legislation, Joint Budget Committee decisions for the Fiscal Year 2015-16
school finance budget and Representative Carole Murray’s (R, Douglas County) bill
requiring the state Department of Education to report a variety of collected student
data measures.
School Finance
School district officials released a letter from 170 of the total 178 school
districts in Colorado to state legislators and the Governor asking for $275 million in
state funds above the Governor’s current State Education Fund budget proposal.
The letter suggests the state appropriate $200 million in additional funding in order
to reduce the $1 billion negative factor and designate $75 million towards a
multitude of district high-priority budget needs, specifically programs designated
for at-risk students. Senate Majority Leader Rollie Heath (D, Boulder) met with
districts and stated his skepticism of the plan. Governor Hickenlooper’s current
recommendations allocate an additional $241 million in state funds towards the
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State Education Fund for Fiscal Year 2013-14. A final dollar amount recommended
by the legislature to the Joint Budget Committee is yet to be determined.
Joint Budget Committee figure setting discussions for the Department of
Education are scheduled for Thursday March 6th and the next quarterly state budget
forecast is scheduled for Tuesday March 18th.
Legislative Committee Hearings
- JBC Action – Bills Adjusting FY 2013-14 Requests
During the regularly-scheduled Friday morning Appropriation committee
hearings, the Senate Appropriations committee heard and passed the Joint
Budget Committee bills adjusting state dollar amounts for state departments.
K-12 funding issues include increases in state funding to adjust for higher
than predicted enrollments of at-risk students, lower than predicted local
district revenues and unanticipated district costs related to the 2013 floods.
State Board of Education – February 2014 meeting
The State Board of Education conducted their monthly meetings this week on
Wednesday 2/12 and Thursday 2/13. Up for discussion was the state’s use of data
in the ‘cloud era’ and the initial results of the state principal evaluation system. The
data discussion included consideration of Representative Murray’s CDE data privacy
bill draft, which the department has taken a Neutral position and stated that they
already collect a report a majority of what is required in Murray’s draft.
Several hours of the meetings on Wednesday were filled with discussion and
testimony from parents across the state regarding the Common Core Standards and
SB14-136, Senator Marble’s assessment and standards study and implementationdelay bill. State Board Chairman Paul Lundeen (R) restated his dissatisfaction with
the Common Core Standards and committee Democrats expressed concern over the
entire issue, which has been approved by the board by vote for several years. He
also stated that the Board has ‘failed’ to conduct a January 2014 review of the
PARCC testing consortium called for in SB12-172, the bill that required Colorado to
join the multi-state testing development group. The State Board has officially taken
a Neutral position on this session’s SB14-136. SB14-136 was killed by the
legislature the next day by the Senate Education Committee on a 4-3 Democratic
majority partisan vote. Also during the State Board discussion of the topics,
Department Staff was given an opportunity explain their work on each of the issues
and to answer a variety of committee questions. February’s meeting is not expected
to be the last State Board discussion about the common core and assessments issue.
Postponed Indefinitely – killed in committee meetings
SB14-136 (Sen. Marble) Delay Statewide Testing Study Academic Standards
On Thursday 2/13 afternoon and evening the Senate Education committee
heard over six hours of testimony and voted to postpone indefinitely SB14-136. The
bill would have created a task force to study and delay the implementation of the
new statewide student assessment system, currently being developed by the
national PARCC testing consortium, and the Common Core Standards. The State
Board of Education originally adopted the Common Core in 2009. Legislation
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instructing the state to join the consortium also contains a requirement for a state
review of the PARCC consortium in January 2014 but the review has yet to be fully
completed and discussed.
In the afternoon, parent after parent testified in favor of SB14-136, the
standards and assessments delay bill, and committee proponents of the recent
education reform measures said they ‘struggled to understand’ the entire issue due
to the overwhelming complexity of the Common Core Standards and statewide
assessments’ data links to other significant district rating tools. Traditional
education committee stakeholders, including Stand for Children, the Colorado
Education Association and the Colorado Children’s Campaign, all testified against
the bill for similar reasons. The bill was killed in a 4-3 partisan vote, with all 4
committee Democrats voting to postpone the bill indefinitely.
Upcoming Hearing Schedule
- Wednesday 2/19
o House Education, Upon Adjournment, HCR0112
 HB14-1136 (Rep. Primavera): Regulation Of Continuing
Professional Education
- Thursday 2/20
o Senate Education, 1:30pm, SCR356
 SB14-114 (Rep. Todd): Student Access To CSU Global Campus
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