December 2010

Please come to my next Legislative Coffee this Thursday, December 2, 7:30 – 9:00 a.m. at Panera Bread, 7739 Wadsworth Blvd.  I will continue to hold coffees on the 1^st Thursday of each month throughout the year.  These informal meetings provide us with lots of time to chat about whatever topics you choose. 

 

NO TOWN HALL MEETING IN DECEMBER

Please note that December is the only month I do not hold a Town Hall meeting. The meetings will resume in January, on the 3^rd Saturday of each month at 10:30 a.m. at the Standley Lake Library. If there are topics you are interested in having presented in 2011, please let me know.

 

On November 19, after the show “Colorado State of Mind” was broadcast on Rocky Mountain PBS, the live audience (which I was in) was able to ask questions of the panel (which I did). It was live-streamed on the RMPBS website; see it at http://www.rmpbs.org/schoolreform .   

REVIEW OF LAST TOWN HALL MEETING
My Town Hall Meeting on Saturday, November 20, focused on the future of higher education in Colorado, with a panel discussion by Dr. Kim Poast, Deputy Director of the Department of Higher Education; Jim Polsfut, Chair of the Colorado Commission on Higher Education (CCHE); Hereford Percy, Vice Chair of CCHE; and Ruth Annette Carter, member of the CCHE Advisory Committee. The three presenters from CCHE all live in Arvada, and since I am also a member of the CCHE Advisory Committee, you can see that our district has a significant voice in the decisions made for our state’s higher education.

 

The presentation focused on the Higher Education Strategic Plan (HESP), entitled “The Degree Dividend: Colorado Must Decide.” This plan is required by law to be done every 5 years. A 13-member committee was appointed to seek input from around the state, working in four main areas:  governance, accessibility, sustainability, and “pipeline” (meaning the connection of higher education in the P-20 system). 

 

The HESP committee first looked into what are the current dynamics of the Colorado population and the institutions of higher education in the state. We have what has been called the “Colorado paradox” – the fact that although about 60% of our adult citizens have a college education, we have the second worst ethnic achievement gap in the country, and only 22% of our own high school graduates get a bachelor’s degree. Also, 29% of college freshman require some remediation. Also, the state has about 640,000 people who attended college but didn’t graduate. Colorado has 470 institutions of higher education, of which 100 are private colleges and 330 are private occupational schools. Although CCHE exists to provide some coordination and oversight, the Board of Regents oversees the University of Colorado system, and the other universities and state colleges have their own appointed boards. The community colleges have their own governing board, as well as the two “local district community colleges.”  

 

Colorado is the second “most efficient” state in degree attainment (in the number of degrees granted for the amount of funding received). Yet state funding for the public institutions of higher education has dropped from 23% of the state’s General Fund to 9% over the last decade. With the federal recovery money going away, funding will drop to 2005 levels. Because higher education funding is not a mandated portion of the state budget, and the state continues to have large revenue shortfalls, the future of funding looks bleak. State law requires all the colleges to have a plan approved by CCHE for how they will be able to cut their budgets significantly while remaining affordable for low-income and middle-income students.

 

The HESP offers some suggestions for improving the funding for higher education, but they all require a ballot issue approved by the voters:  Restore the state income tax to 5% and the state sales tax to 3%; increase the surcharges on oil and gas extraction; allow counties containing colleges to approve a local mill levy to fund them; or institute a statewide mill levy.

 

In my previous newsletter, I promised to tell you about the legislative study tour of Israel that I was very fortunate to be selected to go on. I have done my best to summarize my learnings and experiences on the trip, but the write-up is very long, so here is a list of what I described for each day; you can visit the blog on my website for the details (the write-up will go on there in parts, a review of a few days at a time):