It’s April Fool’s week and ERBOCES, Education Re-envisioned BOCES, is one of the state’s biggest jokers. This untraditional education platform authorized through five founding school districts including Falcon School District 49 in El Paso County has played the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) and its state board for chumps. The legislature has yet to stop the boondoggles.

CDE has allowed ERBOCES trickery to go on much too long. There are layers to how ERBOCES games the system. Let’s start with academic accountability through CMAS testing. These standardized tests are supposed to give the state a common measure of how public schools perform their core academic responsibilities for reading, math, social studies and science.

One criterion for the reliability of CMAS data is the student participation rate. That is, test participation measures how many students who are supposed to take tests actually do take the tests. Colorado has an “opt-out” policy that allows parents to keep their children out of the tests. If parents opt their kids out, those kids are not included in the participation rate calculation.

ERBOCES has messed with this principle. In 2025, with just more than 3,800 students eligible for the tests, only 26.3% participated. That’s down from 2024 when 29.6 participated. In 2025, because 2,791 parents out of 3,808 sent in opt-out notes, ERBOCES received a 98.4% participation score, exceeding the required 95% standard. That is an upward trend from 2024 when the participation rate was 92%. ERBOCES improved its opt-out numbers while it worsened its actual participation rates.

Even with this low participation allowing for cherry picking the best test-takers, ERBOCES barely cleared the 2025 “performance watch” cut point. Its 47.1% overall achievement score signifies “accredited with improvement plan.” But ERBOCES has not developed a uniform improvement plan, or if it has, it is not available on the CDE website. Regular school districts are held to account while ERBOCES meets faux participation standards and thus inflates its underwhelming achievement scores.

ERBOCES doesn’t just skirt annual testing requirements and improvement planning. It also takes advantage of a gaping school finance hole that allows “contractors” to use state funds to deliver “enrichment programs” for private school and home-schooled students. Contractors receive these funds based on a CDE ruse the programs are “innovative.”

Here’s the gimmick. In 2010, the legislature passed a bill to allow home-schooled and private school children access to school finance dollars for ”enrichment” courses. As an example, St. Vrain School District allows non-public school students to take advanced placement classes on its campuses.

Today, at-school classes for private and home-schooled children are uncommon. Most free-to-students, publicly-financed programs use “contractors” to provide enrichment content off-site and across districts. ERBOCES is the principal organizer of courses and distributor of funds, with a cut to ERBOCES for administration. The “contractor” concept is an untested, sleight-of-hand work-around cooked up by ERBOCES.

These so-called innovative programs are funded at half-time levels so even if a student takes only one-quarter time enrichment, that student is funded at half-time budget. For a 5-hour, once-a-week program, contractors can receive some portion of $5,500 to $6,500 even if the student is receiving only $2,750 to $3,250 service value.

Payment procedures follow this path: the ERBOCES school district authorizer passes state funds to ERBOCES that then funnels dollars to contractors. ERBOCES offers a Colorado Home Enrichment enterprise where parents can start an enrichment “campus” and benefit from the public funds. “A CHE Campus can be made up of two or more homeschool families in Colorado wanting to amplify their homeschooling. Campuses access funding for flexible and approved academic and extracurricular activities.” Approved by whom and operated by whom are the most important question marks. These activities include after-school lacrosse and soccer, ski schools and contracted “public school” classes presented in the middle of private school days.

ERBOCES makes sure the non-public school students are enrolled for the state’s October count to receive the public funds. In 2025-2026, 18,695 part-time students will take up more than $100 million in school finance dollars. According to state audits, “the greatest growth is from students receiving part-time public-school programming from private individuals or entities. These are the contracted services.” During an eight-year period from 2018 to the present, the program has grown from about 8,000 students to 18,000 students. The state Board of Education has yet to make rules that define “flexible” and “approved” enrichment courses or commit to rigorous oversight.

The legislature’s Joint Budget Committee (JBC), trying to scrape up money to fill the state’s budget gap, is unhappy with CDE’s dilatory oversight of these “contract” programs. The JBC does not want public funds squandered on programs unavailable to public school children and that may not comply with curriculum standards.

ERBOCES is expert at pushing envelopes, as exemplified by its lawsuit to get taxpayer funds for a Christian charter school. Its leaders use “school choice” and “innovation” as a cover for chasing precious public school finance dollars for private uses. It’s no joke when the punchline is more than $100 million out of school budgets needed for public school kids.

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