We occasionally catch up with our colleagues at ChalkBeat Colorado about the stories they're following. Colorado's Higher Education and Legislative Matters Reporter Jason Gonzales joined KUNC to make sense of a new state budget that could significantly increase spending on students.
"The current year we're in, statewide we're spending about $8.4 billion on K-12 education," Gonzales said.
Colorado lawmakers are constitutionally required to fully fund public education. Some of the money meant to go towards education was withheld from school budgets to go toward other budgetary priorities in the years following the Great Recession of 2008, however.
"The state has not met its actual constitutional obligation over the years," Gonzales said.
According to Gonzales, that's because the state is withholding money from schools to put toward other objectives in the state budget. Special education has been particularly underfunded. In total, more than $10 billion has been withheld from public education since 2010.
Now lawmakers are hoping to get back to the constitutionally-required funding level, which could mean a substantial increase in school budgets across the state in years to come.
"Next year, we're holding back about $141 million (from schools), which brings it down considerably," Gonzales said of the state's budgetary plan for the next school year.
The state plans to stop withholding money from school budgets altogether within the next two years.
