Public school funding advocates are reduced to fighting over scraps lately, with two bills attempting to “equalize” school finance from different directions.

The big picture is that the state Legislature, since the Great Recession, hasn’t come up with any solution to public school underfunding. Governor candidate and former State Sen. Michael Johnston ran his “Future School Finance Act,” 144 pages of a billion dollar ask that didn’t cut it with Colorado voters in 2013. So the future school finance act is still, indeed, in the future.

That default position leaves public schools, district and charter, holding a bag half full with no, on-the-horizon chance for more pennies.

Senate Bill 17-061, a charter school equalization bill, is up for consideration in the Senate. It argues that charter schools are left hanging more than district schools because districts have won tax increases and don’t share the additional money with their charters.

Opponents argue that a deal is a deal, and a contract is a contract. Districts won tax increases that didn’t include funding charter schools. To give over those dollars to charters breaks faith with voters. Further, the original deal allowing charter schools was that they would get a certain percentage of public school dollars that follow students, but districts would not have to fund charters with additional money unless they wanted to.

Meanwhile, SB 61 stipulates that Charter Institute schools, charters authorized by the state rather than districts, would receive funding equalization from the state at about $17.5million. That’s a big tab, yet the bill to districts would be much higher at $96.4 million in 2017-2018. If the bill passes, legislators will hit districts at a time when their budgets are already uncertain and under water because of the state’s poorly financed School Finance Act.

The bill would also push a consequent policy change that is problematic. From the time the legislation goes live, all the financial incentives would be on districts to disallow charter schools and push them over to the Charter Institute. That way, districts would be off the hook for their financing, and since they don’t have control over where the charters are located anyway, they may as well get charters out of their financial pockets.

HB17-1182, the Charter School and School District Revenue True Up bill, attacks a different issue related to students who move from charters to district schools during the school year. If students leave a charter school after the state takes its annual enrollment census, the receiving school district doesn’t get the students’ dollars. The money stays with the charter school even though the district school picks up the cost of educating the student. The problem is financially disruptive to both charters and districts.

SB 61 sponsors Sens. Angela Williams from Denver and Owen Hill from Colorado Springs argue that charters are at the butt end of a bad set up. But many charters get millions of extra money from private donors, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and from John Malone with his cable fortune. The charters don’t share with districts, probably because they’ve made contractual agreements with their donors and would show bad faith if they breached those terms. One reason charters are successful in Williams’ district is due to ongoing multi million dollar donations from the private sector.

If the state goes for a tax increase election for transportation needs, educators can expect that their piece of the state’s financial pie will not change for many more years. So fighting over scraps will continue, pitting charters against district schools, not a happy scenario.