Three of the largest school districts in Colorado, Denver County, Jefferson County, and Douglas County, are missing superintendents. Two politicians, the current travelin’ Mayor Michael Hancock of Denver and the former mayor of Denver and early retired board member of Wells Fargo Bank Federico Peña, wrote a nasty note about the Denver Public Schools Board chasing out departing superintendent Dr. Susana Cordova.

The two mayors believe that Cordova got the bum’s rush from a new DPS board majority. Allegedly this majority, supported by the Denver Public Schools Teachers Union, has been impolite.

There may be some sour grapes pursing the mayors’ lips. They support the so-called education reforms of former superintendents Michael Bennet and Tom Boasberg that the current majority ran against. Bennet is now a U.S. Senator for Colorado and Boasberg is superintendent of the Singapore American School. These ed reformers take care of their own.

The DPS education reform movement revolves around charter schools used to replace “failing” traditional schools. The charters, according to reformers, provide “competition” to increase education opportunities for poor minority students.

The arguments related to charters vs traditional public schools deserve examination. And while there shouldn’t really be a “versus” in these analyses, as long as charter supporters see their schools as “competitors” and generally superior to traditional public schools, a “versus” seems inevitable.

Charter supporters generally believe that these schools, unencumbered by union contracts, provide superior education compared to traditional schools. Even better, they produce these results more cheaply.

There’s plenty of controversy over whether charters do produce better results, but there should be no arguing, at least in the examples of Denver’s charters, that they do so more cheaply. Here’s a comparison. Traditional East High School over by Denver’s City Park had 2603 students in 2018-19. It received $11,372 per student in that school year, according to the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) school finance data.

Denver School of Science and Technology (DSST) Montview (formerly Stapleton), often touted by education reformers as an outstanding success story, received $14,904 per 582 students. Even more exciting, according to its 2020-21 budget, DSST Montview has $2.2 million+ in its carryover budget balance. In fact, every DSST school except Henry Middle School has from $500k+ to $2.9m as carryover. Guaranteed, no traditional public school has that kind of money. They’re not allowed to.

Based on performance results reported to the CDE, DSST Montview achieved an 86% performance rating. East High School, with more than four times the number of students, achieved a 76% performance rating. It’s more difficult to hit high numbers with a large population than for a much smaller population.

But the most searing fact that pro-charter education reformers dissemble about is the money it takes to get to the higher academic achievement. DSST Montview received $3500 more per student, a 25% advantage over East High. Slide west and south to Jeffco’s Columbine High School and DSST received $4000+ more per student.

Only one Denver high school, Abraham Lincoln, received more money per student than DSST Montview. Not one Jefferson County high school received more money than DSST Montview.

The point is not to begrudge that kids are doing well at DSST Montview. The point is that a decade of so-called education reform with charters as the shining light has substantially undermined the capacity of traditional schools to have the opportunity to achieve greatness with similar resources. In fact, it’s astonishing that so many traditional schools in Colorado have managed to have any success at all given the paucity of resources.

It’s likely that Colorado is missing three superintendents at three of the largest school districts because these education professionals know Colorado’s dirty little secret all too well: we’re too cheap as a voting population to adequately fund public education. Apparently, high school students need about $15,000/year to consistently meet expectations for academics and graduation readiness. Most districts, let alone traditional schools, don’t get close to that number.

It’s past time for guys like Mayors Hancock and Pena to get going on tax reform. If they’d argued for that kind of change a decade ago, this state’s public schools would be in a very different place right now.