Author: Paula Noonan

The General Assembly finished its work with a flurry, not a whimper. The Joint Budget Committee (JBC) managed to outplay Gov. Jared Polis with its final amendments to the School Finance Act. Polis is all in on “innovation” with public school money, even if innovation includes jiu-jitsu lessons for private school students. He didn’t want…

Gaslighting has become a contagious political virus. The contagion has spread from the White House to state, county and school-board government. Shame doesn’t prevent its spread. President Donald Trump fails to justify his attacks on Iran to Congress or to the American people. Gov. Jared Polis is stiff-arming the General Assembly with his bill to…

The primaries are about 60 days away. The large majority of statewide races will be decided on June 30. Those contests will be between moderate and progressive Democrats and moderate to super-conservative Republicans. Analysis of voter registrations does not look pretty for either party. Coloradans are not reupping or registering in either party. The sum…

Colorado Senate President James Coleman and state Rep. Jennifer Bacon have introduced a bill, Senate Bill 26-170, to form an education task force, for the umpteenth time, to identify and expand “effective public schools.” Their goal, for the umpteenth time, is to find public schools that have addressed “opportunity gaps” based on race, geography and…

Colorado’s K-12 school finance, transparency and accountability systems have urgent, connected problems with a slow-motion state response. Money is spilling out of school finance funds to home-schooled and private-school students. This multi-million-dollar flood of funds to cooked-up micro schools, home-school “campuses,” and ersatz “enrichment” programs reveals the grift at the heart of Colorado Department of…

It’s dangerous, even fatal, when government goes rogue whether in a democracy or autocracy. Government officials who ignore or taunt laws that constrain bad acts should be given the heave ho. We’re witnessing these egregious scenarios now at the federal and the Douglas County level. Scorn of basic rules of governance at the federal level…

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…

Head spinning is the unwanted reality of today’s world. Let’s start at the international level. The wars in the Middle East since the 1950s have never ended. Though religion and ethnicity are factors, oil and gas access is always predominant for the U.S. Since oil-and-gas tankers moving through the Strait of Hormuz controlled by Iran…

Leadership of Colorado’s General Assembly introduced the Fiscal Year 2026-2027 Legislative Appropriation bill, HB26-1333, at $75.72 million. That will be the budget to run the state legislature next year. About $74 million comes out of the general fund and the remainder from other sources. The allocation works out to about $12.80 per Colorado resident at…

Last session, the General Assembly took in a report on K-12 public school funding. The legislature ordered the report because an idea circulated Colorado was among the bottom five states in dollars allocated per student even though it is one of the most highly educated states in the nation. The facts proved the poor conditions…