By Erica Breunlin | The Colorado Sun
As Colorado lawmakers try to solve a state budget crisis, Gov. Jared Polis’ office is advocating for a new set of changes to student averaging that would significantly impact a handful of rural school districts and charter schools that found a lifeline for their budgets by enrolling online homeschool students.
Vilas School District RE-5, in far southeastern Colorado, along with Plainview School District Re-2, about 100 miles to the north, and three Colorado Early Colleges campuses in recent years ran online enrichment programs for homeschool students with help from an outside vendor.
Those programs — which the districts and charter schools no longer operate — emerged during the pandemic, when the Colorado Department of Education relaxed rules around modes of learning for students, according to CDE officials.
When they did operate, Vilas, Plainview and the charter schools were allowed to include the online homeschoolers in their overall student counts.
But Polis’ office says they should never have been included and wants them removed from student totals from the past few years, pointing to current school funding rules. Those student counts from recent years factor into enrollment averaging and help calculate how much funding the districts and schools receive.