The Colorado Senate is working on a bill to create a fund to pay educators more. The hitch is that the fund doesn’t have any money in it.

Senate Bill 172 passed 5-2 out of the Education Committee Thursday afternoon. If it becomes law, a fund would be waiting at the ready for lawmakers to someday decide to put money in it.

The Democratic-led legislation is sponsored by Sen. Jessie Danielson of Wheat Ridge and Senate President Leroy Garcia of Pueblo with Reps. Julie Gonzales-Gutierrez of Denver and David Ortiz of Centennial.

Danielson ran a similar bill with Garcia and Gonzales-Gutierrez (before Ortiz was elected to the House) last year that got washed out with the health emergency tied that roiled last year’s session.

That bill, however, had money, $15 million to raise every school’s minimum teacher salary to $40,000 a year and wage-earners to a minimum of $15 an hour. The bill passed two committees on party-line votes before it was effectively tabled last year.

RELATED:

Danielson told the Senate Education Committee Thursday that this year’s version has “a lot of changes.”

“The need is still present,” she said, reminding fellow lawmakers of the oft-cited statistic that teachers make 40% less than the average income earner in Colorado, and many work second jobs and can’t afford to live in the communities where they teach.

Danielson said the state’s teacher shortage can be attributed to the educators who aren’t going into the profession or opting out for better pay.

“We don’t pay these people enough to keep qualified teachers in the classroom,” she said.

Annually lawmakers talk about putting more money into schools, but the question most often is left to local governments to pass higher property taxes for education, while rural and low-income schools fall farther behind.

Despite its empty fiscal promise, the bill was supported by education advocates, as well as by committee members who voted against it Thursday.

Amie Baca-Oehlert noted the legislature technically owes K-12 education $9 billion from the amount passed by voters and delineated in the state constitution, which is frequently talked about at the Capitol but left resolved as the state’s operating budget covers expenses and other priorities in good years and bad.

“So many teachers are not just educators and paraprofessionals, but they’re also counselors and coaches and referees and, at times they act as parents, friends and mentors,” she said. “Yet we’re at the bottom of the barrel nationally with how we pay educators for what we expect of them, not the least of which is the education of our children.”

Colorado teachers are among the lowest paid in the country, despite an economy that was annually one of the best before the pandemic, Baca-Oehlert said.

Education is often pitted against transportation funding, but neither get enough to satisfy their respective proponents, and that could be the case again this year, as Gov. Jared Polis looks for $500 million annually to cover the 10-year plan the state Department of Transportation released a year ago.

The two Republican lawmakers who voted against the bill, Sens. Paul Lundeen of Monument and Barbara Kirkmeyer of Brighton, who both supported the bill, wanted to designate that the any money that ever goes into the fund goes first to teachers, then administrators and support staff.

Danielson pushed back, saying all educators covered by the bill impact a student’s education, including bus drivers, custodians or assists the classroom teacher.

“These people are just as important as the classroom teacher,” she said. “And, unfortunately, we in Colorado underpay them as severely as we do classroom teachers.” 

Lundeen said the committee on Thursday was answering the question akin to how you eat an elephant. “One bite at a time,” he said.