So why the delay of the School Finance Act, educators and the public may ask? The House passed the hard-fought School Finance Act, HB22-1390, the Senate Education Committee passed the hard-fought HB22-1390, but now the School Finance bill is stuck and laid over in Senate Appropriations.

HB22-1390 was laid over on Tuesday. This action is apparently the strategy of state Sen. Chris Hansen (D-Arapahoe, Denver), chair of Senate Appropriations, who is playing a game of chicken with his fellow senators and the House in order to get his way with another bill, SB22-197, Innovation Schools and Alternative Governance.

This story is about as byzantine as legislation can get. SB22-197 involves Sen. Hansen and his spouse, Dr. Ulcca Hansen, who is on the governing board of the Northeast Denver Innovation Zone (NDIZ). NDIZ is a part of a uniquely Denver Public Schools (DPS) invention in Colorado, though the strategy is used in other states.

NDIZ in Central Park, formerly Stapleton, contains “innovation schools” that have come together as a zone to have more oomph in how they deal with the DPS district. It’s no surprise that Dr. Ulcca Hansen is on the unelected NDIZ board as her spouse is a state senator. She also has qualifications, no doubt, as defined by certain consultants in the education community.

To solidify its oomph, NDIZ also appointed Anne Rowe and Rachele Espiritu, both former DPS board members, to its board. Espiritu lost her re-election campaign. Rowe is an activist for education “reform” that includes unleashing “autonomous” schools.

Victoria Scott-Haynes of RootEd is also on the NDIZ board. RootEd is an entity that funds “autonomous public schools.” RootEd received a total of $900,000 in 2019 and 2020 from the Gates Family Foundation to support “autonomous public schools.” As stated in an earlier opinion piece, the Gates Family Foundation, Gary Community Venture, Lyra and Boston-based Empower, along with RootEd, are all involved in funding, building and sustaining “autonomous public schools.”

With these three unelected NDIZ board members, it appears the zone has formed an “autonomous” rump government to DPS’s school board rather than established “alternative governance.”

It should be hard to be an “autonomous public school” when the funding source is a school district with its own elected board that sends taxpayers’ dollars to the “autonomous public school.” No way should that money and those schools be without some oversight from district and elected officials. Why?

“Autonomy’ in a district with many schools with differing needs that require give and take among the schools will only benefit the “autonomous” entity. Autonomy is exclusive and will not help other schools in the same district working hard to succeed. If the ‘autonomous’ school makes decisions considering only its autonomous self, and the district and the elected board have no influence or say on those decisions, the district and the board are in breach of their fiduciary and oversight responsibilities.

But autonomy is as autonomy does. Hansen wants these “autonomous innovation school zones” to be able to stuff school districts and their elected boards by requiring third-party arbitration if differences arise between the unelected board and the elected board. That’s what’s in SB22-197 that is currently stalled in the House.

Hansen understands now that the only way he’s going to get his autonomous way is to insert SB22-197 into HB22-1390, the School Finance Act. As chair of Senate Appropriations and as a member of the powerful Joint Budget Committee, he’s holding up the School Finance Act to insert his Innovation Schools and Alternative Governance text into School Finance.

This is hardball, considering that Sen. Hansen has his autonomous interest and perhaps his spouse’s autonomous interest in getting the content of SB22-197 into the School Finance Act, the largest piece of education legislation that the legislature produces every year. Typically, the School Finance Act sets per-student dollars that fund public education. Generally, the bill is not used to cut autonomous side deals to support autonomous innovation school zones in one district in the state.

Sen. Hansen happens to be on the Legislature’s Ethics Committee. There is no financial interest that represents a conflict for the senator with SB22-197. But the bill can certainly be seen as a direct benefit to his spouse and to well-financed education “reformers” who have had undue influence on public education policy in Colorado for more than a decade. Some in the public might see the curveballs flying out of the Senator’s office as unseemly.

At some point in the next days to the end of this session of the General Assembly, it would benefit Colorado’s public schools in general to get the School Finance Act out the door without amendments that advantage a small number of so-called autonomous schools in their autonomous zone in a non-autonomous district in the state.

And by the way, thanks to the teachers in Colorado. It’s National Teacher Appreciation Week. We can show our appreciation by valuing all schools non-autonomously, rather as equally and fairly as we possibly can.

Paula Noonan owns Colorado Capitol Watch, the state’s premier legislature tracking platform.