News
Opinion
The East Grand School District community has sent a message: We put our children's education first.
We've witnessed a remarkable outpouring of support to ensure that children are secure in their familiar classrooms, taught by the teachers they've grown to know and respect.
With shifted taxpayer dollars, a wealth of private funds and the rearranging of budgets throughout the county, the message sent from the mountain peaks of Middle Park is “schools are important to us.”
As pointed out during one East Grand School Board meeting, these children we educate will one day be our mayors, our police officers, our business owners, our bankers, our judges, our state and U.S. senators, our teachers and the doctors and nurses caring for us.
The outpouring for education in our community has continued beyond the $500,000 challenge grant.
Through its unclaimed capital credits, the Mountain Parks Electric Education Trust Fund has donated $75,000 to each of Grand County's school districts to fund 21st Century education tools for West Grand students and to support reading, writing and language specialists in East Grand.
In Kremmling, Town and Country Insurance has pledged 10 percent of commissions on all new accounts to the school district for the remainder of the year, “in an effort to show creative ways on how businesses can contribute to their local school districts,” said insurance agent Larry Banman.
The private-public partnership to support schools deserves a standing ovation. And, in part, the applause is directed toward taxpayers who provided the political will necessary to take these difficult steps.
That said, the road ahead does not appear to get smoother anytime soon.
It's instructive to remember that the deep state budget cuts at the root of both East and West Grand funding problems has occurred despite the state enjoying a five-year hiatus from TABOR revenue limitations, courtesy of Referendum C. Those limits will be reinstated this year, which is not likely to result in Statehouse purse strings being loosened.
Additionally, as encouraging as is the effort to buy Grand County schools another year before facing closures, there is no guarantee a long-term funding solution will be forthcoming. In fact, at the moment there are strong indications that a county-wide sales tax, to cite but one example, is unlikely to pass. Nor is there great cause to be optimistic about the chances of a statewide tax passing.
It has not escaped notice, either, that much of the money raised by the community is tax revenue diverted from other purposes. Such funding carries with it some political baggage and is stopgap at best.
In a worst-case scenario, the school district could well see a day when it sorely misses the reserves spent during this process. Then again, reserves are accrued for the proverbial “rainy day,” and the monsoons are upon us.
There is always the possibility, too, that the time the community has “bought” could prove invaluable. During that interim, alternative funding for education could be found at various levels, perhaps even by redirecting, with voter approval of course, existing countywide property or income taxes.
Additional efficiencies may be found as well, or a recovering economy could provide an unforeseen boost.
Even if none of these possibilities bears fruit, the community will at least be secure in the knowledge that it gave its all to preserve the best education it could for its students.
And that's no mean feat.
We've witnessed a remarkable outpouring of support to ensure that children are secure in their familiar classrooms, taught by the teachers they've grown to know and respect.
With shifted taxpayer dollars, a wealth of private funds and the rearranging of budgets throughout the county, the message sent from the mountain peaks of Middle Park is “schools are important to us.”
As pointed out during one East Grand School Board meeting, these children we educate will one day be our mayors, our police officers, our business owners, our bankers, our judges, our state and U.S. senators, our teachers and the doctors and nurses caring for us.
The outpouring for education in our community has continued beyond the $500,000 challenge grant.
Through its unclaimed capital credits, the Mountain Parks Electric Education Trust Fund has donated $75,000 to each of Grand County's school districts to fund 21st Century education tools for West Grand students and to support reading, writing and language specialists in East Grand.
In Kremmling, Town and Country Insurance has pledged 10 percent of commissions on all new accounts to the school district for the remainder of the year, “in an effort to show creative ways on how businesses can contribute to their local school districts,” said insurance agent Larry Banman.
The private-public partnership to support schools deserves a standing ovation. And, in part, the applause is directed toward taxpayers who provided the political will necessary to take these difficult steps.
That said, the road ahead does not appear to get smoother anytime soon.
It's instructive to remember that the deep state budget cuts at the root of both East and West Grand funding problems has occurred despite the state enjoying a five-year hiatus from TABOR revenue limitations, courtesy of Referendum C. Those limits will be reinstated this year, which is not likely to result in Statehouse purse strings being loosened.
Additionally, as encouraging as is the effort to buy Grand County schools another year before facing closures, there is no guarantee a long-term funding solution will be forthcoming. In fact, at the moment there are strong indications that a county-wide sales tax, to cite but one example, is unlikely to pass. Nor is there great cause to be optimistic about the chances of a statewide tax passing.
It has not escaped notice, either, that much of the money raised by the community is tax revenue diverted from other purposes. Such funding carries with it some political baggage and is stopgap at best.
In a worst-case scenario, the school district could well see a day when it sorely misses the reserves spent during this process. Then again, reserves are accrued for the proverbial “rainy day,” and the monsoons are upon us.
There is always the possibility, too, that the time the community has “bought” could prove invaluable. During that interim, alternative funding for education could be found at various levels, perhaps even by redirecting, with voter approval of course, existing countywide property or income taxes.
Additional efficiencies may be found as well, or a recovering economy could provide an unforeseen boost.
Even if none of these possibilities bears fruit, the community will at least be secure in the knowledge that it gave its all to preserve the best education it could for its students.
And that's no mean feat.
