By Vince Bzdek

When I was a kid going to St. John’s Catholic grade school in Denver, I remember asking my mom if she and dad minded paying taxes for public schools since all her kids attended Catholic ones.

We don’t mind, she told me. It’s our choice to send you to St. John’s for religious reasons, but as citizens, we still need to support strong public schools for our city. It’s our shared duty to make sure all children have an opportunity for a good education.

I thought it was a pretty good answer to a question that has been asked nonstop for 40 years now.

Gov. Jared Polis just gave our state a new answer to that question.

Last week, Polis said he plans to opt Colorado into a brand new federal tax-credit scholarship program, opening the door to a form of private school choice for the first time in Colorado’s history.

“It is a life changer,” said Steve Schuck, a longtime advocate of school choice and founder of the education nonprofit Parents Challenge. “It’s a game changer for the country, for education generally, and sure as hell for the kids stuck in underperforming, failing schools.”

But Lisa Weil, executive director of Great Education Colorado, a nonprofit dedicated to grassroots education activism, believes this program is the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent that will lead to a much broader, universal voucher program in Colorado.

“We believe that public dollars should stay in public schools,” said Weil. “This voucher program is about privatizing — treating education like a commodity rather than the public good that we do together as a community.”

Essentially, Polis has agreed that if you send your child to private school, you can now claim a federal tax credit for doing so, thanks to the new federal program. But his decision is a little like my mom’s in that it doesn’t mean state funds for public schools will be impacted. Parents who send their kids to private school still have to pay state taxes that support those public schools.

And here’s the thing: The new voucher-like program, which was part of President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget bill, can also be used to support programs used by public school students.

Starting in 2027, the tax-credit scholarship program will offer taxpayers a dollar-for-dollar credit on their federal income tax for donations up to $1,700 to eligible scholarship-granting organizations (which doesn’t go very far toward paying average total private tuition these days, by the way). The money can go to expenses such as tuition, tutoring, specialized services for children with disabilities and computers.

But governors have to sign off on the program, and Polis is only the second Democratic governor in the country to do so.

The law allows donations to pay for essentials like after-school programming, transportation, books, uniforms and summer programs for both private and public school students.

Polis spokesperson Shelby Wieman said in a statement last week cited by Chalkbeat that Polis simply does not want to leave hundreds of millions of dollars in federal money on the table that could provide additional funding for such programs.

“This tax credit creates an immense opportunity for Coloradans to support students in our state, but only if we opt in,” she said. “He welcomes the opportunity to work with school districts and other education stakeholders to help ensure this credit can benefit the greatest number of students across our state with evidence-based programs that supplement school days.”

Polis made it clear that he doesn’t see this program as a traditional voucher program. He called the decision a “no-brainer.”

That reasoning didn’t stop over 570 community members and 15 organizations, in an effort spearheaded by Great Education Colorado, from sending a letter to Polis last week strongly denouncing the program.

“Colorado children will be better served by a laser focus on growing the resources available to our public schools across the state than by siphoning off students — and the funding that follows them — to private schools assisted by school vouchers,” the letter states.

It’s true that public schools are reimbursed by the state according to the number of students they have. So if more public school students shift to private schools, those schools lose funding.

And it’s true that Colorado voters have spoken out strongly against school vouchers each of the three times they have appeared on the ballot. Just this past year, voters rejected constitutional Amendment 80, which would have allowed state funds to be spent on vouchers for private schools.

It’s also true that many of our public schools, well, suck.

Around 50-60 percent of Colorado students in public schools aren’t meeting grade-level expectations, while large achievement gaps for minority and low-income students persist. In math, about 36% of students met or exceeded expectations this year.

Colorado’s biggest obstacle to creating a better public school system is simply funding.

Colorado spends about $2,100 less per student than the national average, and ranks about 27th-30th among states on spending per student, depending on the year

“We were above the national average in the 80s, and ever since we’ve been falling and falling. And actually, we end up in the bottom 10 if you adjust for regional cost differences,” said Weil.

Why do we spend less? “TABOR,” Weil said. TABOR caps government revenue growth to the rate of inflation plus population growth and requires voter approval for tax increases above that cap. Weil said that has constrained the state’s ability to increase contributions to education.

And now those constraints are amplified because we’re in a budget crisis thanks to dropping state revenue and reductions in federal money to help pay SNAP and Medicaid benefits. The state is picking up much of those costs.

“In other states around the country, they can say ‘Oh my goodness, we need to protect ourselves against these cuts that are coming down the pike,’” said Weil. And those states can raise taxes. In Colorado, we have to go to voters for every tax hike to plug these gaps, Weil points out. “We’re like a boxer in the ring with the federal government getting gut punched with our hands tied behind us.”

But Polis sees this new program as a way to get all Colorado’s schools more federal funding and close that gap somewhat.

“This is not anti-public schools. It’s pro-parent empowerment, giving parents the ability and resources to spend on their kids’ education as they see fit,” notes Schuck.

Though few blue states have jumped on board this bandwagon, I’m not surprised Polis has. He has long been a proponent of alternatives to traditional public schools. He helped found charter schools before his political career, which were publicly funded but privately run by nonprofit groups. More than 15% of Colorado K-12 students attend a charter school, the third-highest rate in the nation.

In 2003, Polis publicly backed a measure that was touted as the country’s largest school voucher bill and which eventually was signed into law by Republican Gov. Bill Owens. The law was later struck down by the Colorado Supreme Court.

The bill allowed districts “to provide assistance for an eligible child to attend a participating nonpublic school, under the terms of an opportunity contract between the child’s parent and the school.”

Over 30 states now have such school voucher programs or private school choice programs.

“It took extraordinary political courage for Jared,” to take this step, Schuck believes. “And standing up for it on its own merits.”

Polis said his final approval is still pending because regulations, rules and metrics of accountability haven’t been figured out yet.

Weil now worries that what happened in Arizona will happen in Colorado.

“Arizona started this way,” she said. “They started off saying we’re going to do vouchers just for low-income students or special needs students. Now they’re at universal vouchers. It’s taken a billion dollars out of public education.”

Per-pupil state and local spending on public schools has indeed decreased in states that have adopted voucher programs. In 2021, states with voucher programs spent $10,054 per pupil, and states without voucher programs spent $12,820 per student, according to research from the Economic Policy Institute.

But this is not a state voucher program. I’d say let’s give this new program a chance to shake out some before dismissing it out of hand in favor of the status quo, which is failing many of our students.  

For now, Polis has chosen the pragmatic path forward, one that focuses on parents and kids rather than the desires of teachers’ unions and educational lobbying organizations.

I think my mom would approve.