Lawmakers Find More Money For Schools, Start Preparing For Looming Crisis

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Photo: School Bus Lafayette (Flickr/CC)

Public schools in Colorado will get more money from the state next year. But many lawmakers see a crisis coming down the road when it comes to funding for kindergarten through high school, so they passed a bipartisan bill to study school finance issues, including the complicated school funding formula in Colorado, over the next two years.

Other accomplishments included bills to address Colorado's teacher shortage and to streamline standardized tests for high school students. One surprise this session was the failure of a bipartisan bill to lower the number of preschool and elementary school students getting suspended and expelled.

Nic Garcia, deputy bureau chief of Chalkbeat Colorado, discussed the action in this year's legislative session with Colorado Matters host Ryan Warner.