{"id":55931,"date":"2013-05-30T23:27:55","date_gmt":"2013-05-31T05:27:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/lobato-decision-disappoints-re-1\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T18:38:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T18:38:30","slug":"lobato-decision-disappoints-re-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/lobato-decision-disappoints-re-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Lobato decision disappoints Re-1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Keefavuer\"
Keefavuer<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Disappointed. Deflated. Depressed.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how two Cortez teachers felt when they learned their side had lost a massive school funding lawsuit at the Colorado Supreme Court this week.<\/p>\n

Cortez Middle School teachers Justine Bayles and Matt Keefauver were two of the star witnesses at the 2011 trial of the Lobato case, named for the San Luis Valley family who started the lawsuit over the condition of their schools more than a decade ago.<\/p>\n

Although the plaintiffs won at the trial court, the Supreme Court overturned the decision on a 4-2 vote announced Monday. If the plaintiffs had won, the Legislature would have had to find a way to provide an extra $2 billion or more per year for the state\u2019s schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is one of the things we were pinning our hopes on,\u201d said Montezuma-Cortez Superintendent Alex Carter.<\/p>\n

The plaintiffs\u2019 opponents in the Legislature, however, were relieved that the court decided not to wade into the business of setting the education budget \u2013 the state government\u2019s single largest expense.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Legislature is given the power to create a state budget for good reason \u2013 the people\u2019s money needs to be protected from any group who would use the court system to bypass the Constitution,\u201d said Senate Minority Leader Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs, in a written statement.<\/p>\n

Montezuma-Cortez School District Re-1 was the only Four Corners district to join the lawsuit as a plaintiff, and Bayles and Keefauver provided some of the most memorable testimony of the month-long trial. Keefauver told the judge he took a second job so he could pay for class field trips and supplies, and Bayles talked about how kids at her school had updated their history books by drawing pictures of airplanes crashing into New York\u2019s twin towers \u2013 still standing in the books.<\/p>\n

\u201cThings have gotten worse since I testified in terms of funding for education,\u201d Keefauver said while shoveling mulch out of a pickup truck.<\/p>\n

He still uses revenue from raising herbs and vegetables to support his classroom. He\u2019s paying his own way to a math teachers\u2019 conference in Phoenix this summer.<\/p>\n

He hated to read about the Lobato decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt made me think that the efforts were for naught. But then I thought again and thought, a statement was made,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The statement the plaintiffs were trying to make was not just that schools lack money, but that there\u2019s a vast difference between rich and poor districts. They sued under the state constitution\u2019s guarantee of a \u201cthorough and uniform\u201d education for all Colorado children.<\/p>\n

The state Supreme Court had never interpreted the \u201cthorough and uniform\u201d mandate until this week. The justices decided the current system meets the definition.<\/p>\n

That puzzles Carter, who just finished his first school year as superintendent of Montezuma-Cortez schools, one of the poorest districts in the state. A year ago, he worked just up the hill at one of the richest districts, Telluride.<\/p>\n

When he sees the contrasts between Cortez and Telluride, he doesn\u2019t understand how the Supreme Court could say Colorado has a \u201cuniform\u201d system.<\/p>\n

Telluride\u2019s budget works out to more than $9,000 per student, while Cortez has two-thirds of that. In Telluride, Carter\u2019s daughter had full-time teachers for physical education, art, music and technology, plus counselors and a full-time certified librarian \u2013 all positions that Montezuma-Cortez lacks at the elementary school level.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese aren\u2019t luxury items. These are standard parts of an elementary school education,\u201d Carter said.<\/p>\n

And even Telluride schools are underfunded when compared to schools in other states, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have kids here. I don\u2019t want my kids to be competitively disadvantaged because I chose to raise them in Colorado,\u201d Carter said.<\/p>\n

Bayles is still teacher at the middle school and \u201cabsolutely\u201d loving it. She\u2019s just starting a three-year online program at Fielding Graduate University, paid for by a full scholarship.<\/p>\n

But one of the biggest challenges for Bayles and her colleagues is the pay, which lags behind other professional jobs, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnyone who is still in the district is there because their heart and soul is in it,\u201d Bayles said.<\/p>\n

Carter said he is hoping Colorado voters will pass a tax increase this November to fund a new school finance system. If the tax passes, Montezuma-Cortez would get an extra $1,200 per student, or about $4 million.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn our district, that\u2019s a game-changer. Is it enough? Not by a long shot,\u201d Carter said.<\/p>\n

Keefauver said he will keep doing his best to insulate his kids from the politics of education funding.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re 14. It\u2019s not their job to worry about things like this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

joeh@cortezjournal.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Teachers had testified that current system is not \u2018thorough, uniform\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55932,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[155,13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-55931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-education","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55931","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=55931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56279,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55931\/revisions\/56279"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55931"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=55931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}