One of the first and critical roles of the state — and consistent failures — has been to adequately provide for public education. 

Since the 1960s, the state has regularly shrugged or outright shirked that role, to the disservice of millions of students, and all its residents. 

For decades, Colorado has slumped toward the bottom of the list of states ranked for how much they fund schools on a per-pupil basis, truly a badge of shame.

The situation grew so dire that in 2000 voters took the extraordinary action of passing a constitutional amendment that forced the state to increase school funding each year at least by the rate of inflation.

Thwarting the will of voters, state legislators in 2010 undermined the spending mandate by creating “negative factors” imposed on the school finance formula, allowing lawmakers to spend money intended for public schools, elsewhere. 

The move has effectively diverted hundreds of millions of dollars from public school funding, at a time when the need for increased resources grew as exponentially as state lawmakers withheld it. 

For the past 20 years, schools in Aurora and across the state have increasingly charged with not just delivering public education, but also for providing a wide range of social services, health care and more.

Increasingly, public schools have had to fill in for families who must work more than ever to keep pace with the region’s exorbitant cost of living.

It doesn’t mean that schools aren’t the best place to provide mental health care for troubled students, or provide a place to get even simple medical treatment, they are. And as the scourge of youth violence continues to escalate in the metro region, and across the country, it only makes sense that public schools become the nexus for preventive programs.

But as public schools become increasingly responsible for all kinds of children’s services, besides education, the state Legislature must provide the money to make it all possible.

Some progress was made this year, in the regular and special legislative sessions. State lawmakers created a system to “fully fund” public schools, which actually works to ensure schools are funded more closely to what Amendment 23 detailed. During the special session, lawmakers and Gov. Jared Polis headed off state ballot questions that would have seriously undermined school funding.

But the problem hasn’t been resolved.

State budget officials say a peek into the fiscal future of the state is troubling, and built into the “full-funding” measures from earlier this year is an escape clause.

Meanwhile, the responsibilities for school districts across the state, and especially here in Aurora Public Schools and Cherry Creek Public Schools, continue to expand.

Both school districts have taken on large numbers of migrant students and others who need a great deal of additional assistance to catch up to their peers.

While the state has boosted per-pupil spending for some of these students, it does not pay for what local schools need to provide.

And all kinds of students increasingly need physical and mental health services, aspects of their lives that directly affect their ability to learn.

This year, both school districts are asking voters to approve measures that would raise money to pay for a wide range of construction, repairs and investments in education projects, as well as provide funds for teacher salaries and a variety of instructional programs.

The Aurora Public Schools ballot questions both come without any tax increase.

The Cherry Creek schools questions, raising $9 million annually for operations and $950 million for construction funds, would cost the owner of a $500,000 home in the district an additional $15 a month in new property taxes.

Given the unsettled financial situation in the state, and the crucial need for resources in both of these large Aurora school districts, voters should look seriously at approving both questions. 

These school districts, like so many others, have become responsible not just for teaching kids and preparing them for careers or college, but for helping them to steer clear from lives of addiction, depression and violence.

Never has so much depended on what’s deemed merely as “school funding.”