LOCAL
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DTC business leaders get their Irish up
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FLEURISH
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SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS
Midnight in Paris draws Families First supporters to Steppin’ Out
Greenwood Village got a little greener on March 14 when the DTC/Greenwood Village Chamber held its St. Patrick’s Day party.
The Window Doctor is in
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The Window Doctor custom-cuts and constructs in vinyl, fiberglass or wood for each glass and all are built with energy efficiency in mind.
Friends for Families First took a gamble March 15 by taking the annual fundraiser, Steppin’ Out, to a new venue and the gamble paid off.
Volume 32 • Number 17 • March 20, 2014
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www.villagerpublishing.com
303-773-8313 • Published every Thursday
Index
Page 5........................................ Opinion Pages 9-15.................................Fleurish Page 16............................................digs Page 17............... South Metro Chamber Pages 18-21...............Legals/Classifieds TheVillagerNewspaper
@VillagerDenver
Cherry Creek Schools board chides state lawmakers Unanimous resolution seeks restored funding
The legislature’s implementation of the ‘negative factor’ leaves Colorado education funding at 42nd in the country.
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By Peter Jones ne month after Cherry Creek Schools Superintendent Dr. Harry Bull fired off a politically charged letter about school budget cuts to parents, the district’s Board of Education has officially joined the crusade. Last week, the school board unanimously OK’d a resolution calling on state lawmakers and Gov. John Hickenlooper to “immediately eliminate the negative factor cuts in K-12 education funding” and to end the imposition of unfunded mandates on school districts. The resolution comes four months after the failure of Amendment 66, a voter initiative that would have infused Colorado’s school system with $950 million. The declaration approved March 10 accuses the Colorado General Assembly of flouting a 2000 voter-approved state constitutional amendment that proponents said would reverse a decade’s worth of education budget cuts. “In contravention of this expressed will of Colorado voters, the legislature’s implementation of the negative factor leaves Colorado education funding at 42nd in the country, more than $2,500 below the national average in per-pupil funding,” the resolution reads in part. Education-funding proponents have opposed the legislature’s so-
- Resolution by Cherry Creek Schools Board of Education
Superintendent Dr. Harry Bull
File photo
called “negative factor,” a legal work-around that has been used to cut about $1 billion from school budgets despite provisions of the voter-approved Amendment 23. Many opponents of 23 said the measure did not account for periods of falling revenues and thus forced the legislature to make cuts in other important programs while funding PERA, the Public Employees’ Retirement Association.
In any case, the legislature effectively lowered its obligation to 23’s per-pupil rate by excluding such district-specific factors as size, cost of living, personnel expenses and number of at-risk students, reducing the per-pupil calculation to the base rate, critics argued. “Without the implementation of the negative factor, the schoolfinance formula would have provided [Cherry Creek Schools]
with an additional $47,379,814 in the 2011-2012 school year, an additional $61,966,641 in the 20122013 school year, and with an additional $61,432,260 in the 20132014 school year,” the board’s resolution says. As a result, the board said it has done the following: • Asked taxpayers for a $25 million property-tax increase • Cut 148 instructional positions, resulting in increased class sizes and less one-on-one instruction • Reduced the teacher compensation schedule by $2.5 million • Eliminated 104 educational support positions • Reduced instruction supply costs by $1.1 million The board’s resolution goes on to criticize the legislature’s enactment of unfunded mandates, effectively adding insult to injury, the board infers. “Since state revenues are increasing and the legislature has discussed the replenishing of cash
funds, the legislature must make it a priority to return to a sensible and constitutional system of school finance, consistent with the mandate of Amendment 23,” the board’s resolution concludes. The March resolution follows Bull’s sharply worded letter last month encouraging Cherry Creek parents to take such issues to their representatives at the state Capitol. Bull and other superintendents from across Colorado have banded together – in what one has called an “insurrection” – to ask the legislature to allocate $275 million of recurring funds to schools, plus a separate increase proposed by the governor. “We ask that you call your state legislators and tell them that your neighborhood schools belong to you,” Bull wrote to parents. “Let them know that we, and they, have a moral obligation to provide adequate resources so that each child has access to the best possible educational opportunities we can provide.”
Centennial, Littleton score in national surveys Cities make mark in pay equity and sociability
By Peter Jones Six is the lucky number for two south metro cities that have made the grade in income equality and friendliness, respectively. Centennial ranks as the sixth most “equal” among large communities in the United States when it comes to household income, while Littleton is “golden” when it comes to sociability, as the nation’s sixth friendliest small city. According to consumer-trends website NerdWallet, Centennial’s above-average income equality was in comparison to more than 300 surveyed cities that have populations of at least 100,000.
A graphic from NerdWallet lists Centennial as the sixth greatest city for income parity.
[Centennial’s official population is little more than 100,000.] NerdWallet compared and contrasted the median household incomes
of those cities’ top and bottom 20 percent. The data came in the context of the growing politics of income
disparity. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has called the income gap the most Continued on page 4