Chapter 6: Colorado

Colorado enacted its first constitution and was granted statehood in 1876.¹ However, public schools began to dot the territory as early as 1861, and funding for these early schools was exclusively based on local revenue.² By the turn of the twentieth century, public schools had increased services provided for pupils to include a high school curriculum; with these increases in overall quality of the educational experience for school-aged children, state aid was initiated 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 total funding for public education, despite efforts to equally distribute the tax burden between state and local taxes. Two anti-tax constitutional amendments have contributed to the overall overreliance on state aid to fund public education.⁵