Opinion ID: 2521572
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Local Control

Text: The principle of local control has deep roots in Colorado's constitutional history. The Colorado Constitution was adopted in 1876 in an atmosphere of deep distrust of centralized authority. See Dale A. Oesterle & Richard B. Collins, The Colorado State Constitution: A Reference Guide 1 (2002). The document ultimately adopted was designed to protect citizens from legislative misbehavior, and thus, while the delegates recognized that a legislature must inevitably be created, they assiduously wrote provisions that took away much of [the General Assembly's] discretionary authority. Id. at 1-2. The provisions governing education reflect the delegates' ambivalence about legislative power. Article IX, section 2 empowers the General Assembly to create and maintain a public school system: The general assembly shall, as soon as practicable, provide for the establishment and maintenance of a thorough and uniform system of free public schools throughout the state, wherein all residents of the state, between the ages of six and twenty-one years, may be educated gratuitously. Article IX, section 15 then provides that control over instruction in the public schools shall devolve to local school boards, whose members are elected by the residents of the school districts: The general assembly shall, by law, provide for organization of school districts of convenient size, in each of which shall be established a board of education, to consist of three or more directors to be elected by the qualified electors of the district. Said directors shall have control of instruction in the public schools of their respective districts. As it was initially drafted, however, article IX vested responsibility for public school instruction in the state board of education. See Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention for the State of Colorado 185 (1907). This draft prompted considerable debate, which focused on the wisdom of investing control over the public schools in a political entity. As one delegate put it, the fear was that article IX gave the [State] Board the direction of the schools, therefore making the whole thing a political affair; there ought to be no possibility of a suspicion that politics should run the schools of the territory. Constitutional Convention, Denver Daily Times, Feb. 12, 1876. This distrust of the political character of the state board was voiced in many ways. For example, several delegates expressed distrust of the state board's ability to resist political corruption in the area of text book selection, which they feared exposed the state board to a mine of bribery and corruption. Id. These delegates urged that control over decisions such as text book selection should be taken entirely out of politics, and put as near the people as possible. Id. In a similar vein, one delegate opined that allowing the state board to control text book selection would create a system whereby school officers could line their pockets with money derived from the taxes of the people. The Constitutional Convention, Denver Daily Tribune, Feb. 14, 1876. He insisted that the best way to avoid such corruption was to distribute decision making authority to as small a degree as possible, and bring it home to each district. It should be left to the people at home. Id. This theme of placing management of the public schools closer to the people was echoed in another aspect of the debate, which focused on the people who would comprise the state board. Some delegates objected to state control over instruction on competence grounds, stating [t]he officers whom it was proposed to invest with the management of the schools must of necessity be politicians... and the possibilities are that they would not know much about school affairs. Constitutional Convention, Denver Daily Times, Feb. 12, 1876. Ultimately, the delegates chose to confer responsibility for instruction, not merely text book selection, on the local school districts and entrust the state board of education with general supervision of the public schools. [5] See Colo. Const. Art. IX, §§ 1, 15, 16; see also Bd. of Educ. v. Booth, 984 P.2d 639, 646-47 (Colo.1999). With the adoption of article IX, Colorado became one of only six states with an express constitutional local control requirement. See Booth, 984 P.2d at 646. In that provision, the framers made the choice to place control as near the people as possible by creating a representative government in miniature to govern instruction. And since its adoption, this Court has consistently emphasized the importance of local control to the state's educational system. See id.