Dear Editor,

Colorado’s lawmakers are hemorrhaging money. They’re bleeding out the taxpayers of Colorado by spending more dollars than revenue currently coming in.

I attended the Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026, School District 51 Board meeting where Chief Financial Officer Mel Trujillo had to give a very painful midyear financial report for D51 that was due by the end of January. Mel’s report came right after Amy Atwood’s, who is the legislative liaison to the district. Amy stated that on Friday, Jan. 16, because of the way the Colorado Department of Education and the legislature ran the formula for funding D51, it would be cutting the current year’s budget by $600,000. Mel would be required to revise the entire budget with the new information to comply with state reporting laws for school districts.

Amy describes how Colorado lawmakers on that Friday found it convenient to describe the cut as a “glitch” with budgeted numbers as the reason for reneging on promised funding to schools in order to compensate for the state’s own budget shortfall. Find this report online at www.d51schools.org/board-of-education under board meetings for Jan. 20, 2026.

The legislative guardians of state tax dollars overspent more than $850 million of money they didn’t have. Read that number again. So, to balance the state’s books they rob from the budgets of public education and children’s programs to deal with it. FYI, this has impacted all 178 school districts in Colorado with School District 51 ranked at 171 in the state in receiving funding.

My thought is ALL school districts should be automatically released and unburdened from any and all unfunded program mandates imposed by the state, so classrooms can return to the very basics of education: reading, writing, mathematics, history and civics.

In addition, invite the Bible back into our school’s classrooms as a reminder of the 8th and 9th Commandments, “You shall not steal, You shall not lie,” and hold accountable those in Denver that do.

– AC Elliott, Grand Junction