Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has announced some amendments to his 2025-26 budget proposal following the most recent economic forecast — particularly for K-12 education funding. The changes made, however, weren’t the ones some educators hoped for.

Polis is requesting $18 billion from the general fund for 2025-26, roughly $1 billion less than the prior year.

The budget amendment request is “mostly good news,” according to Polis, citing a stronger economy and bigger-than-expected population growth as reasons for the changes.

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The letter said the state expects available general fund revenue under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights cap for the 2025-26 fiscal year will be $74 million higher than what was forecasted in September 2024. The projected increase is due to a higher forecasted population growth and a lower projected inflation rate.

Some of the forecasted funds will contribute to an increase of $150 million to Colorado’s $9.8 billion K-12 budget, $35 million more than the $115 million increase proposed in Polis’ November budget plan. 

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The budget update also includes an additional $12 million from the general fund toward at-risk funding for school districts. While these increases spell good news to districts across the state, some of the disliked proposals from the original budget plan remain.

The first draft of Polis’ 2025-26 budget request was published on Nov. 1 and contained a few unpopular changes to Colorado’s public school finance formula and how funding is awarded to districts. One of these proposed changes was to lengthen the implementation of Colorado’s New Public School Finance Formula from a timeline of six years to seven.

Because the $35 million increase to Colorado’s K-12 budget would put the formula on track to be phased in over six years instead of seven, Polis took back his request to lengthen the timeline.

The original budget request also proposed exchanging Colorado schools’ four-year enrollment average model for funding to current-year enrollment estimates, which is already the practice for 40 other states and was kept in the updated proposal. This change alone was predicted to reduce funding for schools by about $190 million because of the consistent decline in Colorado public school enrollment since 2020, with the exception of 2021.

Two studies commissioned by the Colorado legislature in 2023 indicated that state education would require $3.5 billion to $4.1 billion more than what the new funding formula currently proposes to adequately fund schools, according to reporting from the Colorado Sun. Still, the money-saving proposal to eliminate enrollment averaging was upheld in the updated budget request.

“The proposal maintains the Nov. 1 policy change to eliminate the counting of ‘phantom

students’ by funding actual students where they are, rather than where they were four years ago, thus more equitably driving resources to where the need is,” Polis’ Jan. 2 budget letter states.

Polis called the November request an attempt to save the state money as officials prepare to fill a nearly $700 million budget shortfall. The request would also ensure the state would not have to bring back the Budget Stabilization Factor eliminated in 2024, which would underfund schools.

Avoiding another Budget Stabilization Factor is top of the list of priorities for many legislators heading into the 2025 session. However, not all of them agree with Polis’ proposed changes to the funding formula.

“Sitting on the Joint Budget Committee, it’s our job to make sure we don’t backslide and that we don’t decrease this year’s education funding by looking at trying to unilaterally change the formula that was established in (House Bill 24-1448),” said Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, R-Weld County, who sits on the Joint Budget Committee, during Chalkbeat Colorado’s Jan. 6 Legislative preview discussion. “That needs to go through the school finance and through the education committees and have adequate debate on the floor. The government doesn’t get to do that unilaterally through the budget.”

Kirkmeyer said she won’t be supporting Polis’ request to fund schools based on current-year enrollment, and that the rest of the Joint Budget Committee likely won’t either.

“The JBC isn’t going to be making that decision, at least not from my perspective,” she said. “I won’t be supporting a bill that changes that. … I think it needs to go to both chambers for adequate discussion.”

Joint Budget Committee Chair Sen. Jeff Bridges, D-Greenwood Village, said he saw the change as an opportunity to distribute funds more equitably with an improved finance formula.

“If we’re looking at cutting $1 billion out of $16 billion, I don’t know how we manage to do that without impacting in some way the investments we make in Medicaid and the investments we make in K-12,” Bridges said during the discussion. “We are doing everything we can to avoid that … For me, if we have to choose between adequately funding the students we have or funding districts for students they don’t have, I’m going to side with the students that actually exist every single time.”

Before switching to a four-year average funding model during the 2024 legislative session, Colorado was the only state in the U.S. that funded schools based on five-year enrollment averages. While Bridges said he would be supporting the governor’s move toward more accurate enrollment-based funding, the Joint Budget Committee has discussed some middle ground alternatives, such as funding schools based on two-year averages instead of four or zero.

Other supplemental budget requests mentioned in Polis’ letter include: 

• $10 million to support the Child Care Assistance Program to help address new federal unfunded mandates.
• Restore funding of $19.5 million to support pediatric behavioral health.
• Restore funding of $14.6 million to support Colorado’s rural institutions of higher education.
• $5.8 million to increase youth detention bed capacity faster and give youth the tools they need to successfully rehabilitate.
• $3.3 million in increased funding for Colorado’s universal preschool.
• Restore $2 million for crime prevention grants.

More details for Polis’ updated education budget proposal will be provided in the Jan. 15 school finance budget submission. The Joint Budget Committee will release its budget proposal in the spring.