Supporters turned in signatures Friday for a statewide ballot initiative that would fund out-of-school educational opportunities for Colorado children by raising the sales tax on recreational marijuana.

Learning Opportunities for Colorado’s Kids, the committee behind Initiative 25, delivered petitions a spokeswoman said contain more than 200,000 signatures to the Secretary of State’s Office on Friday in hopes of making the November ballot. Measures need 124,632 valid signatures to qualify for the statewide ballot.

The LEAP initiative – it stands for Learning Enrichment and Academic Progress – asks voters to OK a tax increase of 5 percentage points on recreational pot sales, as well as pull additional funding for its programs from leases, royalties, rents and timber sales on state property. Backers estimate those sources will yield $150 million a year to pay for tutoring, career training, mental health services and support for students with special needs and learning disabilities.

“Colorado kids who were struggling in school before the pandemic are even farther behind now,” said Stephanie Perez-Carrillo, a manager with the Colorado Children’s Campaign, in a statement released by the initiative’s supporters. “The LEAP initiative will make Colorado the first state in the country to offer a statewide approach to helping kids recover from current COVID losses, while also creating a long-term plan to prevent opportunity gaps from developing in the future.”

The measure has broad, bipartisan support from across the political spectrum – from former Govs. Bill Owens and Bill Ritter, and an array of current and former state lawmakers, including Democratic state Sens. Rhonda Fields, D-Aurora, and Brittany Pettersen, D-Lakewood, and Republican state Sens. Bob Gardner, R-Colorado Springs, and Rob Woodward, R-Fort Collins. Other supporters include the African Leadership Group, Colorado Springs Conservatory, Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education and Thorne Nature Experience.

“The more than 200,000 signatures we submitted today underscore the broad level of support for the measure to help close the opportunity gap that exists throughout Colorado,” added Heidi Ragsdale, CEO, with STEM is my Future in Grand Junction. “We want Colorado kids to be able to get the help they need and pursue out-of-school opportunities that help them grow as learners and citizens.”

Peter Marcus, a spokesman for Terrapin Care Station, a national recreational and medical marijuana company based in Boulder, said increasing pot taxes could drive customers from state-regulated dispensaries to the black market.

“It’s less about the specific issue and more about the slippery slope,” Marcus said in an email. “State lawmakers worked carefully to craft a cannabis tax structure that balances revenue with maintaining a regulated market. At some point we will tax cannabis so high that it will empower an illegal market and cause regulated marijuana to unravel. We can’t balance the state budget with fringe taxes that do nothing to address the state’s very real structural deficiencies. This is a misguided proposal.”

Colorado Freedom Force, a conservative organization generally opposed to tax increases, opposes the initiative.

“While some of those dollars may go towards the kids, the initiative really just creates a new trough for bureaucrats and politicians to feed at for their pet projects and their own pockets,” the group said last week in a newsletter to supporters.

“Not only are other states quickly legalizing recreational marijuana, but there is still an active black market which will only grow stronger as taxes raise the cost of purchasing legally,” the group wrote. “If you jack up prices on a products to pay for schools, and those higher prices kill the market, that means those higher prices will also hurt schools by stripping away funding, bringing us right back to where we started.”

Through July 28, the committee supporting the measure reported raising $1.16 million and spending close to $850,000, mostly on signature gathering.

Gary Community Investments, a philanthropic organization led by former state Sen. Mike Johnston, D-Denver, and which recently changed its name to Gary Community Ventures, contributed about $950,000 to the campaign when it launched in April. Conservative education advocacy group Ready Colorado chipped in $200,000 in July.