COLORADO EDUCATION CALL TO ACTION!!!!!

COLORADO EDUCATION CALL TO ACTION!!!!!
I will preface the below with my usual disclaimer, I am a dad, not a lawyer. I do this on my time, by foregoing sleep! (It is that important to me.) I do the best I can to make sure my facts are clear and honest. If I am wrong, let me know where and how. Give me a better resource, share your opinion, lets educated each other. There is no right or wrong only opinion for most issues and I have no problem hearing alternate views. My goal is to blend extremes into the middle and leave the politics and special interests behind. Having said that the one thing I will not bend on is that children are not a “special interest lobby”, they are a special responsibility. I was recently told that what I was doing was self serving, so let me clarify. What I am trying to do is to ensure that this next generation is smarter and better prepared than mine was. If I am serving anyone one it is the children. Every word I say or write is motivated from me by their need.Colorado is already talking about a water shortage this summer. One way to save is to cut back on watering parks! The half acre park just down from where I live is watered like an oasis in the desert, you would think it was the front lawn of the Taj Mahal. All this watering necessitates mowing 2 times a week. Do we need to waste that resource? Do we need to fund that waste? If we are asking our children to tighten their belts we better make certain sure we have tightened up every other belt first! A source at Lotto told us (this was confirmed by several state legislatures) that GOCO/Lotto funds are used pay a subsidy to farmers on the western slope to not sell their land to developers. This is flawed logic especially in a recession. We are a state of roughly 5 million people, we are the physically 8th largest (104,100 square miles) with unemployment at 7.5%. Some experts are saying the it will go as high as 11% in Colorado before we see a slowing. I say if the farmer wants to sell, great, sell and put someone to work building something! Why am I paying a subsidy to someone who is already making a living on the land they own? Am I against the farmer? No I support our farmers too, but they are grown adults with options, working in a “for profit” business. Children have no such luxury. The law is compulsory, children must be educated, and schools are “non-profit”, which means there is little to no control over revenue. If a farmer cannot make a living on his/her land there is the option to sell or to change businesses. Children are professional students with a mandate to learn. There is no choice (nor should there be) in this, wants come after needs; the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, the clichés can go on and on but the facts are that children and schools cannot raise meaningful sustainable revenue streams. Only we can do this, it is time to change how education is funded and start putting wishes behind requirements!In these difficult economic times every cent counts, schools across Colorado are squeezing each penny until Lincoln screams! Many Colorado families are doing the same thing. Lotto money does not represent new taxes; it represents a wiser investment with current money. Our research shows that once a state lottery is tied to education there is a lift in sales, as much as 20% in 2 years! Let GOCO go hat in hand asking for a bond or a Mills override, this would be an excellent test as to what the tax payer’s value more. I believe the reason that schools are funded differently than parks is because there is a better chance to raise a bond or levy for children than there is for a park. So parks (the luxury) are funded without having to beg the voters and schools (the need) boil their shoe leather to stay alive.Lotto employees are in the same boat as our teachers in regards to PERA, their retirement is your retirement, increasing Lotto sakes could help ease this burden.We want to know where you see money being wasted, post your ideas / findings to our blog or here on facebook. Apparently we need not just to make a point, or prove a point; we will have to drive the point in like a stake through the heart. GOCO has deep pockets and will work to save itself. GOCO is a bureaucracy like all governmentally funded or run institutions and a bureaucracy by its very nature wants to grow. It will not willingly cut off a branch to benefit the whole. We must do the pruning. We are not anti-parks or anti-GOCO we are pro children and in a time of recession children come before parks.Lastly I spoke to a community member the other day who told me that there was no direct value to them in public education as they had no children in school and felt that their money should go towards things that affect them directly. I explained the value of good schools in terms of increased home values, but the message was not hitting home. So I made the point in a more colorful way, “The community paid to teach you. If you do not want to pay to teach someone else, fine, just return all the money the community spent educating you and we will let you off the hook”, the argument was over. Do not be afraid to spread the word in different and sometime very direct ways. The coming months will be difficult. We are talking about changing Colorado’s constitution which will not be easy. But if each of you will please reach out to a friend, coworker or family member and tell them from your heart why this is so crucial and why they should be involved we will grow and growing is how we will win. Good night to some, good morning to others. With sincere thanks, Dave and Brad......