{"id":112883,"date":"2015-04-28T18:13:42","date_gmt":"2015-04-29T00:13:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/state-seeks-help-with-flc-tuition\/"},"modified":"2015-04-28T18:13:42","modified_gmt":"2015-04-29T00:13:42","slug":"state-seeks-help-with-flc-tuition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/state-seeks-help-with-flc-tuition\/","title":{"rendered":"State seeks help with FLC tuition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Colorado
Colorado lawmakers are working on sending a message to Congress asking it to provide funding for Native American tuition at Fort Lewis College. Currently, the state covers the tuition costs of all Native American students from across the country who attend FLC, but it is a growing budgetary burden on the state.<\/span>Shaun Stanley\/Durango Herald file photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

DENVER \u2013 Colorado lawmakers Thursday advanced sending a message to Congress asking it to reimburse the state for Native American tuition at Fort Lewis College.<\/p>\n

The Durango-based college is one of only two schools in the nation that provides free tuition to Native Americans as part of an agreement that dates to 1910. For the past 104 years, the school has honored that commitment.<\/p>\n

But costs have climbed to more than $16 million per year, which represents the primary source of state funding received by the college. That has become an increasing burden on the state budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to continue to remind Congress that the real impact on the state of Colorado is pretty severe when we\u2019re taking every eligible student from all 50 states, saying that they can have free tuition out of our state budget when this is really a national, or even international, program,\u201d said Sen. Kent Lambert, R-Colorado Springs, a member of the Joint Budget Committee.<\/p>\n

The college currently serves Native American students from about 155 tribes across 48 states, a little more than 1,100 students, or about 30 percent of the student body.<\/p>\n

The issue has not fallen on deaf ears for most of the Colorado congressional delegation, including Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, and Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo. But for years, other members of Congress have ignored the subject.<\/p>\n

Tipton introduced legislation, and Gardner is working on a companion proposal.<\/p>\n

Tipton\u2019s bill would require the federal government to help cover the tuition costs for out-of-state students. The University of Minnesota, the other school to participate in the program, also would benefit from the bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe state of Colorado is currently forced to carry the weight of an unfunded federal mandate, which has created uncertainty for this vital program at Fort Lewis College that satisfies our nation\u2019s treaty obligations and ensures that many talented and bright Native American Indian students have the opportunity to get a quality education,\u201d Tipton said. \u201cShould the state face a budget shortfall, this program could be at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Danny Tomlinson, the lobbyist for FLC, said the school\u2019s president, Dene Kay Thomas, has made it her \u201cgoal and mission\u201d to receive federal help. Thomas was in Washington, D.C., as recently as two weeks ago to discuss the issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe sincerely hope that you can support this important memorial,\u201d Tomlinson said. \u201cIt is sometimes termed a \u2018letter to Santa Claus,\u2019 but we\u2019re hoping it has more impact.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

program straps budget<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":112884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6371],"tags":[94,132,13,561,629,547],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-112883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mt-news","tag-colorado-state-government","tag-fort-lewis-college","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-native-american","tag-southern-ute-indian-tribe","tag-ute-mountain-ute-indian-tribe"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112883"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=112883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}