Strokes from other Pens

Letter to the Editor,

Proposition 119, on the ballot in your mail box, creates the Colorado Learning Authority to administer money for tutoring and other out-of-school learning opportunities. On the surface, this proposition looks like a good thing. Dig beneath the surface and you’ll find that it isn’t what it looks like.

The brand-new nine-member Colorado Learning Authority, appointed by the Governor, would have absolutely no oversight given by either the State Board of Education or the Colorado Department of Education, according to the 2021 State Ballot Information Booklet, pp. 8-13. None. Zip. Zero.

Money to fund Proposition 119 would come in three ways:

1. Increasing the marijuana tax over three years from 15 percent to 20 percent for an extra five percent or $87 million;

2. Taking $20 million annually from the General Fund; and

3. Diverting approximately another $20 million, again annually, from the State Land Trust.

In other words, Proposition 119 robs Phillips County schools as well as all other Colorado public schools of millions in funding annually in order to create a powerful state board with no visible oversight.

The target of helping low-income students and others sounds good on paper. Who wants to vote against helping children who needs a boost? But — and this is a big but — in addition to taking millions of annual public-school funding, Proposition 119 also “reduces investment earnings in the Permanent Fund by about $48.2 million over a 10-year period, including $30.7 million in interest earnings” for our children’s K-12, according to the voters’ Blue Book, p. 11.

Vote no on Proposition 119 to allow our local school boards, administrators and teachers to continue to have the funding to decide what’s best for our children instead of creating an expensive new level of bureaucracy accountable to no one.

We encourage you to read page 10 and 11 in your blue book and vote NO.

Ellie Beal and Joy Schafer

Concerned taxpayers