School funding bill headed to Gov. Jared Polis’ desk after Colorado lawmakers approve spending plan
Colorado lawmakers adopted a school funding plan Wednesday afternoon in the final hours of the 2025 legislative session, setting up a new school funding formula that would solidify funding increases for most of the state’s 178 districts next year.
Members of the House passed a school finance act into law with a vote of 57-8 on House Bill 1320 while reviewing a flurry of bills before the end of the regular session.
The bill next heads to Gov. Jared Polis’ desk.
Final legislative decisions around school funding carry good and bad news for public education — the state will spend more money on education next year than this year, allocating more than $10 billion to schools for the 2025-26 school year. However, the amount going to schools is about $16 million less than what lawmakers promised last year when they established a new school funding formula designed to pump an additional $500 million into schools over six years.
Lawmakers revised total funding for schools and made other adjustments to the new school funding formula following a $1.2 billion state budget shortfall this legislative session that forced them to cut programs and services across state agencies. That budget deficit stirred up major debates over whether the state could afford to implement its new school funding formula next year and how much the state should continue softening the blow of significant funding cuts in districts experiencing declining enrollment through a longtime budgeting tool known as averaging.
Under the new school finance act, schools next year will get about $75 million of the $500 million in additional dollars that will flow to them once the new funding formula is fully implemented. When lawmakers designed the new school funding formula last year, they intended to dole out about $90 million of the $500 million in additional funds during the first year of the new formula.
Still, lawmakers have worked to shield schools from budget cuts as much as possible this session, with a decision by the Joint Budget Committee to route $150 million from the general fund to school funding next year.
Additionally, the General Assembly’s spending plan for schools next year increases how much districts will receive for every student they educate, also known as per-pupil funding. Colorado will boost base per-pupil funding by about $195 to spend about $8,692 on every student.
Since districts receive extra state dollars tied to factors like where they are located and the kinds of students they serve, such as kids with disabilities and students learning English, actual per-pupil funding amounts will vary across districts.
The new school finance act will also stretch the rollout of the state’s new school funding formula from six to seven years and will ensure all school districts receive at least as much funding next year as they received this year. It will also fund districts based on an average of their student counts over four years, which helps districts seeing a decline in student counts avoid sudden funding drops. That keeps the state’s averaging tool in place for now, with a plan to incrementally move away from averaging over the next few years.
This is a developing story that will be updated.