Treasury

School Capital Funding

In November 2007, State Treasurer Cary Kennedy, Speaker of the House Andrew Romanoff, and Senate President-elect Peter Groff announced an ambitious plan to provide up to one billion dollars towards fixing and replacing K-12 schools across Colorado.


The Building Excellent Schools Today - or B.E.S.T. - Plan creates a statewide solution for Colorado's crumbling schools. The Plan will leverage income from the School Trust Lands, property the federal government granted to Colorado for the benefit of its schoolchildren upon statehood. The School Trust Lands are dedicated to the support of K-12 public education. For more information about Certificates of Participation (COPs) related to the B.E.S.T. plan, please click here.

 		   Sangre de Cristo
The Problem: Crumbling Schools

  • Every day across Colorado, parents send their children to unsafe schools.

    • Our schools are aging. Kids are going to school in 100-year-old buildings.
    • In many cases, replacing buildings would be cheaper than paying for ongoing repairs, replacements, and quick fixes.
    • Schools have failing roofs, broken boilers, asbestos contamination, structural problems, inadequate fire safety systems, inadequate water treatment systems, faulty electric, and pest infestation.
    • A 2003 State Auditor's Office report estimated the statewide need at $4.7 billion - and that was four years ago.

 

  • This is a statewide problem and cannot be solved by local school districts alone.

    • Almost half of Colorado's school districts (more than 80 of 178) do not have the tax base to build a single, new school.
    • Poor, rural districts have the greatest needs.
    • Fast-growing districts across the state receive hundreds of new students each year and cannot keep pace. They cannot raise local dollars for new school buildings.
    • Some districts have nearly half of their students in trailers and Quonset huts. For many, temporary facilities have become a permanent solution.

The Solution: The BEST Plan: Building Excellent Schools Today


BEST is a $1 billion plan to repair and rebuild Colorado's crumbling schools.

  • We can fix this problem without new state taxes or fees by putting existing assets to their highest and best use.
  • The BEST Plan will dedicate a part of the School Land Trust revenues to school capital construction to repair and rebuild Colorado's schools. $30-$40 million annually will leverage about $500 million today. With a matching portion from school districts, the BEST Program would put the total investment in schools at nearly $1 billion, enough to build scores of new schools or repair hundreds of existing ones.
  • The School Land Trust encompasses three million acres of Colorado's land. The federal government gave this asset to the school children of Colorado in 1876, exclusively for the support of the state's K-12 public schools.
  • Colorado can dedicate revenues from the School Land Trust for K-12 capital construction. Revenues include mineral lease revenues and royalties, rents, and interest. Revenues from the School Land Trust have grown significantly in recent years as mineral and commercial developments have expanded. Revenues have grown from almost $57 million annually in 2004 to over $90 million next year.

BEST: Background Information


Many neighboring states use school trust lands to support school capital:

  • Washington dedicates all of the income from their School Trust Lands to their state school capital program (whose budget is $950 million for the current two-year biennium).
  • Arizona uses income earned from their School Trust Lands to repay bonds used for school buildings, these funds have contributed to the $2.5 billion the state has invested in K-12 school buildings since 1999.
  • Wyoming has dedicated $1.9 billion for K-12 capital since 2002 including a portion of royalty payments from School Trust Lands.
  • Montana uses a portion of the state's mineral royalties from School Trust Lands to fund school capital projects.

How BEST will prioritize funding:

  • The first step for the BEST Program will be to conduct a statewide assessment of the health and safety needs of our schools.

Once that assessment is done, grants will be awarded based on a few guiding principles:
  • Meeting health and safety standards
  • Helping poor, rural districts that have the oldest infrastructure
  • Building 21st century schools throughout Colorado