Chapter 6: Colorado

Colorado was granted statehood and enacted its first constitution in 1876.¹ However, public schools started to dot the territory as early as 1861 and the funding for these early schools was exclusively based off of local revenues.² By the turn of the twentieth century, public schools increased the services provided to students to include a high school curriculum and, with these increases in the overall quality of the educational experience for school-aged children, state aid was included to augment local efforts to fund schools.³ Eventually, state sales and income tax revenues were used to supplement the overall funding for public education.⁴ By the time Colorado entered the twenty-first century, state aid accounted for roughly 60% of the total funding for public education, despite efforts to equally distribute the tax burden for public education between state and local tax revenues. Two anti-tax constitutional amendments contribute to the overall overreliance on state aid to fund public education.⁵