Disappointed. Deflated. Depressed.
That’s how two Cortez teachers felt when they learned their side had lost a massive school funding lawsuit at the Colorado Supreme Court this week.
Cortez Middle School teachers Justine Bayles and Matt Keefauver were two of the star witnesses at the 2011 trial of the Lobato case, named for the San Luis Valley family who started the lawsuit over the condition of their schools more than a decade ago.
Although the plaintiffs won at the trial court, the Supreme Court overturned the decision on a 4-2 vote announced Monday. If the plaintiffs had won, the Legislature would have had to find a way to provide an extra $2 billion or more per year for the state’s schools.
“This is one of the things we were pinning our hopes on,” said Montezuma-Cortez Superintendent Alex Carter.
The plaintiffs’ opponents in the Legislature, however, were relieved that the court decided not to wade into the business of setting the education budget – the state government’s single largest expense.
“The Legislature is given the power to create a state budget for good reason – the people’s money needs to be protected from any group who would use the court system to bypass the Constitution,” said Senate Minority Leader Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs, in a written statement.
Montezuma-Cortez School District Re-1 was the only Four Corners district to join the lawsuit as a plaintiff, and Bayles and Keefauver provided some of the most memorable testimony of the month-long trial. Keefauver told the judge he took a second job so he could pay for class field trips and supplies, and Bayles talked about how kids at her school had updated their history books by drawing pictures of airplanes crashing into New York’s twin towers – still standing in the books.
“Things have gotten worse since I testified in terms of funding for education,” Keefauver said while shoveling mulch out of a pickup truck.
He still uses revenue from raising herbs and vegetables to support his classroom. He’s paying his own way to a math teachers’ conference in Phoenix this summer.
He hated to read about the Lobato decision.
“It made me think that the efforts were for naught. But then I thought again and thought, a statement was made,” he said.
The statement the plaintiffs were trying to make was not just that schools lack money, but that there’s a vast difference between rich and poor districts. They sued under the state constitution’s guarantee of a “thorough and uniform” education for all Colorado children.
The state Supreme Court had never interpreted the “thorough and uniform” mandate until this week. The justices decided the current system meets the definition.
That puzzles Carter, who just finished his first school year as superintendent of Montezuma-Cortez schools, one of the poorest districts in the state. A year ago, he worked just up the hill at one of the richest districts, Telluride.
When he sees the contrasts between Cortez and Telluride, he doesn’t understand how the Supreme Court could say Colorado has a “uniform” system.
Telluride’s budget works out to more than $9,000 per student, while Cortez has two-thirds of that. In Telluride, Carter’s daughter had full-time teachers for physical education, art, music and technology, plus counselors and a full-time certified librarian – all positions that Montezuma-Cortez lacks at the elementary school level.
“These aren’t luxury items. These are standard parts of an elementary school education,” Carter said.
And even Telluride schools are underfunded when compared to schools in other states, he said.
“I have kids here. I don’t want my kids to be competitively disadvantaged because I chose to raise them in Colorado,” Carter said.
Bayles is still teacher at the middle school and “absolutely” loving it. She’s just starting a three-year online program at Fielding Graduate University, paid for by a full scholarship.
But one of the biggest challenges for Bayles and her colleagues is the pay, which lags behind other professional jobs, she said.
“Anyone who is still in the district is there because their heart and soul is in it,” Bayles said.
Carter said he is hoping Colorado voters will pass a tax increase this November to fund a new school finance system. If the tax passes, Montezuma-Cortez would get an extra $1,200 per student, or about $4 million.
“In our district, that’s a game-changer. Is it enough? Not by a long shot,” Carter said.
Keefauver said he will keep doing his best to insulate his kids from the politics of education funding.
“They’re 14. It’s not their job to worry about things like this,” he said.
