AURORA | In post-election season Colorado, Aurora legislators said they heard constituent concerns during the election ranging from immigration reform to school vouchers. But it doesn’t seem the lawmakers are proposing any bills in direct response to Trump’s rhetoric and cabinet choices. For most of the representative and senate elects, the 2017 legislative session will be business-as-usual with bills related to education, health and housing.
EDUCATION
Democrat Mike Weissman, representative-elect for House District 36, is looking to clarify how Colorado determines its high school graduation rates after constituents brought this matter to his attention.
“It’s been brought to my attention that there might possibly be some intersection between the way students proceed through the concurrent enrollment program and the way that the state collects data on who is graduating ‘on-time’ meaning within four years,” Weissman said. “And I want to make sure the data tracking aligns with the reality of folks going through concurrent enrollment program, so as not to inaccurately record someone as not graduating on-time just because they’re taking a fifth year to finish the associate’s degree.”
In 2014-15, Aurora Public Schools had about 130 students in ASCENT, a program that allows students to concurrently enroll in community college courses while technically still in high school. Qualified students begin to accrue college credits their senior year of high school and take two semesters of college classes for free the following year — considered a fifth year of high school.
Because the district pays the students’ tuition, they are still considered to be high-school students and cannot be factored into annual graduation rates — despite meeting all of the requirements. This is what Weissman wants to address with his concurrent enrollment bill.
“I just don’t want there to be an disincentive of utilization of the program,” he said.
Also responding to constituent concerns in House District 40, Democrat Rep. Janet Buckner is proposing a parental involvement bill similar to the one she proposed during the last legislative session. The bill allows parents to take unpaid leave from work for their child’s academic activities, such as parent-teacher conferences.
The bill died on a party line vote in the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee for the second consecutive year in 2016.
“I’m running it again because teachers are telling me that they want the parents to be more involved. So if they feel like they can leave without fear of being let go from their job, maybe they’ll come to more conferences,” said Buckner, who is also vice chair of the education committee.
Democrat Sen. Nancy Todd is also tackling education with a bill that aims to increase the number of school counselors at the secondary and elementary levels. According to Todd, who represents Senate District 28, there is only about one counselor per 500 students in Colorado.
“We’re seeing more and more students that have more severe issues at an earlier age and so (this bill) tries to address that,” Todd said.
Todd also wants to give school districts a choice when it comes to standardized testing for ninth graders. The Colorado Department of Education currently requires high school students to be tested at least once in English and math, and usually this occurs with ninth-grade PARCC testing. During the 2015 legislative session, PARCC testing in English and math was done away with for 10th and 11th graders.
Todd is concerned that students aren’t taking the validity of the test seriously, and too many choose to opt out of PARCC testing, not seeing where they have academic shortcomings. In the 2015-16 school year, nearly 30 percent of ninth grade students opted out. She wants districts to have the choice to replace PARCC with the PSAT or ACT.
“(Students) never opt out of ACT or SAT,” she said. “They see the validity of that, they see it’s moving them in the right direction of future planning and where they’re going and what their direction is and it also shows the deficiencies they need to work on before they graduate high school.”
Representative-elect for House District 30, Democrat Dafna Michaelson Jenet, is also proposing some education bills. One measure will address how the state monitors the progress of students who are in the corrections system and ensuring they don’t fall back into the criminal justice system as adults.
“We have a responsibility as a state to follow their individualized education plans and how those IEPs are evaluated or reevaluated once enter into our corrections system,” Michaelson Jenet said. “I’m really trying to look hard at how we provide for our youths the best we can once they come into our care so they come out of youth corrections unlikely to (repeat offenses.)”
In addition, she is proposing a higher education bill to help students in the military earn college credits while still serving. The freshman legislator has a son in the U.S. Marines and wishes there was a way for students to serve in the military without falling behind peers who went straight to college.
“(I’m) working on a (bill with a) statewide metric that would evaluate the classroom time our young men and women in the military experience, the tests they take to earn rank and equate it to a credit equivalency, so they’re not coming out of the military at ground zero,” she said.
Democrat Rhonda Fields, who will be making the move from House District 42 representative to Senate District 29, is also proposing a higher education bill.
Fields is concerned with the transparency of privately-owned business schools like the ITT Technical Institute, a for-profit college that closed campuses in Aurora and Westminster last year after being sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Education.
“I’m really concerned about these private occupational schools and would like to see a bill that provides transparency for students in reference to accreditation, how many students are able to find meaningful employment after getting their degree, cost — a whole host of things so we can minimize the harm associated with bad business practices that some of these schools have,” Fields said.
In addition, Fields is also introducing legislation that aims to decrease sexual assault on college campuses. Though no details have been finalized on how this will be accomplished, Fields said she is looking for the best approach to reduce sexual violence on college campuses in Colorado and will be hosting a roundtable discussion on the matter.
HEALTH AND HOUSING
Aurora legislators are also tackling wellness issues with bills that address mental health, organ donation and housing.
Michaelson Jenet is looking at ways to reduce the prevalence of suicide in Colorado, which has the seventh-highest suicide rate in the country, especially for children and young adults.
“I’m trying to look at some ways we can support our youth and help them take some charge of their mental well-being and provide some support structure around them so they have access to mental health care when they realize they need some support,” she said.
She also wants to increase access to walk-in mental health crisis centers. Colorado Crisis Services currently has 11 walk-in locations across the state for those experiencing a mental health problems.
Bucker is also co-sponsoring a health bill with Republican Rep. John Becker that aims to renew the sunsetting Emily Maureen Ellen Keyes Donation Awareness Fund, which expires in 2018. The fund, managed by Donor Alliance to provide public awareness on organ and tissue donation, was established in 1999 and is financed through voluntary citizen donations of a dollar or more when getting a Colorado driver’s license or ID card.
The bill holds special significance for Buckner. Her late husband John Buckner, who held the HD30 seat before passing away as a result of a respiratory illness, was an organ donor.
“It really means a lot to me…(when my husband died) we were able to donate his eye tissue and corneas so somebody got the beautiful gift of sight because of my husband,” she said.
Bucker will also be introducing a bill that aims to increase early-cancer detection.
Addressing a different issue that can affect a person’s well-being, Democrat Dominique Jackson is introducing legislation pertaining to housing and homelessness. The representative-elect for House District 42 was homeless as a teenager in Denver and said she understands how this can affect a person.
According to the Apartment Association of Metro Denver, the average rent for an Aurora apartment in May 2015 was at $1,040 per month while Denver came in at about $1,215 a month.
“I have a visceral understanding of what having a safe and affordable place to live means in order to be able to become self-sufficient and pursue the things you want to pursue in life,” Jackson said. “I’m definitely looking into some affordable housing options. The conversations I’ve had with people have to do with buying housing, renting housing, affordable housing, homelessness and accessible housing. There are numerous areas to work on. It’s an issue that’s certainly going to affect the health and well-being of families across the state.”
PREDICTIONS
Aurora lawmakers are also weighing in on perennial transportation issues.
“I think there will be some discussion of transportation funding and how we bring forth the sources to keep our transportation infrastructure growing in a way that our state’s growing population requires it to,” Weissman said.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Colorado’s population is booming at the rate of about 100,000 newcomers each year, making it the second-fastest growing state in the country.
“Transportation is without a doubt our number one issue,” Michaelson Jenet said. “It’s something that I will be working on and paying very close attention to. We’re at a very critical time.”
Jackson echoed a similar sentiment.
“Taking a peek at the budget, (we) know we have no transportation funding,” Jackson said. “If anybody has looked around, they know we’ve got a lot of people who have moved to this state. How we pay for transportation is going to be the biggest sticking point.”
During the 2016 legislative session, a senate bill allowing voters to decide on whether to borrow $3.5 billion for transportation projects died in a House committee, leaving the transportation issue lingering for 2017.
But bridges and roads aside, the other issue up in the air centers around one of the most talked about figures of 2016: President Donald Trump.
Trump’s selection of school-choice advocate Betsy DeVos for U.S. Secretary of Education has made some legislators skittish about what this means for school vouchers in Colorado.
Vouchers are a kind of scholarship funded by state dollars that parents can use to send their children to private schools. Typically, state legislatures set standards for schools to accept vouchers and eligibility requirements for students to receive vouchers, such as meeting a certain income threshold for low-income students to attend private schools or attending a poor performing school.
Colorado is not among the 14 states that currently offer traditional student vouchers statewide.
“I personally have concerns about vouchers and how they would be used,” Buckner said. “It’s a huge concern and the parents I’m talking to in my house district, they’re already concerned about vouchers and how it’s going to affect the traditional schools.”
Fields had similar concerns regarding school vouchers coming to the state under Trump.
“As a parent, I know how important a child’s education is. I wanted my kids to go to the best possible school and that was a public school,” she said. “I did try sending my kids to a private Lutheran school, but ultimately, being a single parent I wasn’t able to keep up with the demands and the cost of tuition. I believe parents should have options to do what is best for their kids but not at the expense of taking away funds from our public schools.”
In addition, Trump’s rhetoric pertaining to immigrants and refugees has also sparked some uncertainty among constituents and legislators.
“As we pivoted from pre-election to post-election I am hearing more (concerns) related to immigration,” Weissman said. “I think those of us in the state legislature and around the Aurora community are really going to be wondering and seeing what the new administration does. I’m seeing as everybody else is seeing, incidents of hate and bias-motivated crimes going on in Aurora and around the country. Some of it targeted at people who are believed to be immigrants and some not, and I believe that is deeply, deeply concerning.”
More than one in five Aurorans were born in another country, making it the most diverse city in Colorado and home to a large immigrant and refugee population.
“I have heard concerns, of course we don’t know yet what’s going to happen and it’s difficult to respond with anything substantive…without knowing what’s going to happen,” Jackson said. “I stand boldly on the side of all of our refugees, immigrant communities.”
But Buckner remains confident that even under a Trump administration, Colorado’s legislature will still be able to operate across party lines to address the most important issues.
“I think we’re still going to be able to work together and collaborate even though Donald Trump has some real specific views,” she said. “I’m not sure how many of those views are totally being embraced by the Republicans.”