Brandon Leuallen, The Business Times

A $600,000 school-finance “glitch” that temporarily threatened Mesa County Valley School District 51’s funding has been corrected through a supplemental bill at the Colorado Capitol, but longer-term budget uncertainty remains, according to the district’s lobbyist.

Amy Atwood, who represents District 51 at the state legislature, told the school board during its Feb. 17 business meeting that the issue stemmed from how “hold harmless” language was written in the new school-finance formula.

“If you remember last time I spoke, we had the glitch or the hold-harmless problem that was found in school finance, where D51 was supposed to be held harmless between the old formula and the new formula,” Atwood said. “And it turned out that the legislation wasn’t written that way. The new school-finance formula wasn’t written the way that everyone intended.”

Atwood said district leaders were alerted to the issue on a Friday afternoon and immediately began working with lawmakers.

“We found that out on a Friday afternoon, activated and worked with Representative (Rick) Taggart. We worked very closely with the Speaker of the House and were able to get that fixed in the supplemental bill that is moving through,” Atwood said.

The supplemental bill, which addresses the current 2025-26 school year, had passed the House and was moving to the Senate at the time of the board meeting.

“No one has pushed back on the fix for the hold harmless,” Atwood said.

District 51 Superintendent Brian Hill credited Atwood for alerting district leadership early.

“It’s another reason why it’s great having your support, because you were able to give us a heads-up on that before we even got the phone call,” Hill said.

Hill also said the Colorado Commissioner of Education reached out afterward “and was apologetic about the way the information was delivered and, you know, said they’re in our court, and they’re fighting for us as well.”

Atwood told the board the supplemental bill corrects the issue for the current budget year. A parallel correction for 2026–27 is expected to be included in this year’s main school-finance bill.

Atwood said district leaders have commitments from legislative leaders, the Joint Budget Committee and the Colorado Department of Education that the same correction will be carried forward.

“This current year there were only four districts that were impacted; D51 was one of them,” Atwood said. “Next year there’s 12 or 14 districts, so we also have allies.”

While the $600,000 issue has been resolved for now, Atwood cautioned that larger state-budget pressures continue to pose risks to K-12 funding.

“The state budget is still down 850 million to a billion dollars,” Atwood said, adding the most likely outcome for school districts next year is flat funding.