CO Code § 2-2-2003 (2021)
2021 Colorado Code|Title 2 - Legislative|Article 2 - General Assembly|Part 20 - Legislative Interim Committee on School Finance (Effective Until July 1, 2023)|§ 2-2-2003. Poverty Study - Contract - Report - Legislative Declaration - Repeal

     The general assembly finds and declares that:   Free and reduced-price lunch eligibility for the federal “Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act”, 42 U.S.C. sec. 1751 et seq., is a measure by which school districts receive additional funding through the at-risk factor in the school finance formula;    While many states provide additional funding based on reduced-price lunch eligibility, in Colorado, at-risk funding has traditionally been allocated only for students who are eligible for free lunch;    The federal “Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act”, 42 U.S.C. sec. 1751 et seq., was designed as an anti-hunger program, not as a single proxy for capturing student need. Economic disadvantage is complex and is affected by many factors beyond income, including wealth, local cost of living, and fluctuating household expenses.    In the long term, Colorado's reliance on free lunch eligibility as the singular poverty proxy for school finance purposes is inaccurate and unsustainable, and serves as a barrier to delivering essential resources to students who need them;    Free lunch eligibility is a binary measure by which a student is considered economically disadvantaged or not and fails to account for varying levels of poverty and the corresponding levels of need that exist among student populations;    The recent changes to federal policy that allow all students to receive a free lunch without submitting an income eligibility form negatively impacted Colorado's at-risk pupil count in the 2020-21 school year and will continue to do so in the 2021-22 school year, which may result in another undercount and underestimation of resources needed to serve economically disadvantaged students;    Additionally, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Colorado's decentralized method of collecting income eligibility data created barriers to reaching families who were eligible for pandemic electronic benefit transfer payments, resulting in fewer than half of the eligible children receiving the benefit;    Due to the continued use of the misaligned proxy for determining student need and the continued underestimation of economic disadvantage, Colorado students who would benefit the most from additional support are going without it; and    State policy can more accurately account for and respond to students' economic circumstances. Other states have moved away from relying on one self-reported measure, such as free and reduced-price lunch eligibility, toward an index of measures of need that automatically qualify students for school meals or for additional funding through the school finance formula.       Therefore, the general assembly declares that studying methods to identify economic disadvantage among students precisely and holistically is an important and necessary goal in providing public schools with the resources necessary to enable all students to achieve academic success.         To understand alternative approaches to better identify economic disadvantage among students, the interim committee, subject to available appropriations, shall contract with a third-party vendor to complete a study to analyze various methods of measuring student economic disadvantage and the necessary data and systems alignment that would be needed to incorporate those measures into the state's school finance formula.    The interim committee shall issue a request for proposals for qualified third-party vendors to complete the poverty study described in this section. By September 1, 2021, the interim committee shall contract with a vendor that has expertise or demonstrated experience assisting states in examining measures of economic disadvantage for purposes of school funding. The chair of the interim committee, in consultation with the interim committee members and the department of education, shall select the third-party vendor to complete the poverty study.       Approaches for analyzing or identifying student economic disadvantage as part of the study may include but are not limited to:   Direct certification;    Direct certification with the inclusion of medicaid;    Free and reduced-price lunch eligibility with hybrid approaches;    Economic disadvantage measures at the census block group level; and    Other more accurate approaches taken by states to measure student economic disadvantage.       For each approach, the analysis must include:   The availability of data by school district, census block group, or other relevant geographic boundaries;    The distributional effects for school district shares of the state count of low-income students;    Barriers to accessing data, including information technology and data-sharing limitations among agencies that may use the data;    The approach's potential to meet important principles and policy objectives, including:   Ensuring the most accurate count possible of students experiencing economic disadvantage;    Maintaining an individual student indicator of economic disadvantage;    Differentiating among levels of economic disadvantage;    Decreasing the administrative burden on schools and school districts to collect data and the burden on students and families to prove eligibility;    Allowing for Colorado's long-term ability to identify longitudinal student achievement trends;    Allowing for coordination across agencies and their use of indicators of economic disadvantage for public program eligibility;    Ensuring student privacy and confidentiality of student records; and    Ensuring that the approach is inclusive of all students, including those who are homeless or who lack documentation.          The study must also determine the estimated costs of linking data across systems that are maintained by different agencies, for example, the cost of system changes or upgrades that would be needed to match student records with the records of other assistance programs in which students are enrolled.    While Colorado continues to use free and reduced-price lunch eligibility as a poverty indicator because of federal program requirements, the study must analyze benefits and drawbacks of making the eligibility form secure and accessible online for families.    Not later than January 1, 2022, the third-party vendor selected pursuant to subsection (2) of this section shall provide the completed poverty study of the measures of economic disadvantage studied and analyzed pursuant to this section to the interim committee, the joint budget committee, and the education committees of the house of representatives and the senate, or any successor committees. The study's analysis must allow members of the general assembly to evaluate each approach, in isolation or as a combination of approaches, according to the principles and policy objectives set forth in subsection (4)(d) of this section.      History. Source: L. 2021: Entire section added, (HB 21-1325), ch. 376, p. 2487, § 1, effective June 29.