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FRISCO, CO – Speaker Julie McCluskie yesterday attended the Summit School District board meeting to discuss her legislative efforts to increase public school funding and drive more resources to mountain schools.
Speaker McCluskie discussed the positive local impact of her law HB24-1448, the new public school finance formula, which will increase funding for rural and underfunded districts and SB24-188, the 2024 School Finance Act, which boosts funding for schools by eliminating the budget stabilization factor (BSF).
“Increasing funding for public schools has been one of my top priorities, and I’m incredibly proud of our legislative efforts to modernize the school finance formula to better support our rural and underserved districts,” said Speaker McCluskie, D-Dillon. “As emphasized during today’s discussion, every student deserves access to a high quality education no matter where they live and this monumental legislation brings us closer to that reality. We’ve also fully paid off the budget stabilization factor – fully funding schools for the first time in nearly 30 years. With this increase in funding, our districts can not only work to retain the educator workforce they have, but recruit and train the next generation of Summit County educators and school staff.”
Beginning in the 2025-26 school year, the Summit RE-1 school district will receive nearly $869,000 thousand more per year or $5.2 million more once the new formula is fully implemented after six years. Additionally, this district will receive an additional $2.9 million annually to support at-risk students, English Language Learners and students living with disabilities. This is more than a 110 percent increase in funding to support each and every student.
Speaker McCluskie has been a longtime champion for K-12 public education in Colorado. In addition to the new school finance formula, Speaker McCluskie supported 2024 legislation to buy down the budget stabilization factor which in turn helps districts increase teacher pay, reduce classroom sizes and purchase new textbooks.
In addition to education funding laws, Speaker McCluskie also sponsored bipartisan legislation during the recent legislative Special Session that responsibly reduced property taxes to make our communities more affordable and mitigate the risk of detrimental ballot initiatives that would have severely jeopardized funding for schools. HB24B-1001 reduces property taxes in a responsible way while protecting funding for crucial institutions, especially Colorado’s K-12 public schools, fire districts and emergency services.