It’s official: The groundbreaking “LEAP” proposal to bolster student learning statewide will go to the voters in November. As reported by The Gazette, the Secretary of State’s Office announced Wednesday that the petition drive for Initiative 25 — the Learning Enrichment and Academic Progress Program — had garnered enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.
LEAP promises to be a big assist to our public schools and a windfall for Colorado children. We endorse it and urge the public and particularly parents to get on board.
The release this month of dismal achievement test scores for the state’s K-12 students underscored the urgent need for the kind of intervention LEAP would provide. The test data, compiled by the state Education Department, confirmed what educators, policy makers and of course parents had suspected throughout the past academic year: Student achievement plummeted amid COVID. Colorado’s children, trapped in the online limbo of remote learning for much of the year, posted learning losses across all grades and subjects. That’s not to mention the impact of the prolonged isolation on children’s mental and emotional health.
As Colorado Education Commissioner Katy Anthes put it, the “sobering data … confirm just how hard last year was with school closures, class quarantines and remote learning.”
In other words, there’s a lot of lost ground to make up. LEAP would help in a big way.
It would provide funding for families to choose wide-ranging supplemental learning support for their children beyond the classroom. They could select from a smorgasbord of approved out-of-school learning providers. Options would include tutors in reading, math, science and writing; services for special-needs students, and career and technical education-training programs. Each household could receive up to $1,500 per child for such outside-class support. Priority would be given to children who need it most, i.e., those from low-income households.
It’s the sort of help kids need most right now to climb out of the quicksand. They need tutors and other types of learning support to help them fill in the considerable learning gaps left by COVID and to catch up to where they were supposed to be.
And low-income and other at-risk children suffered the worst achievement setbacks amid remote learning. Their households were more likely to have limited internet access. They also were more likely to have parents who had to work outside the home at jobs that couldn’t be performed online, so the kids had less help and supervision while they were marooned in digital space. Especially for them, this proposal couldn’t be more timely.
Statewide voter approval is needed because LEAP will receive a significant amount of its funding from a 5% sales tax on retail marijuana sales. The tax would raise an estimated $137.6 million a year. The rest of the funding would come from Colorado State Trust land holdings, which are managed and leveraged to support public education among other state institutions.
It’s about time pot paid up. Legalized recreational marijuana poses an ever greater threat to our kids even as it generates tax revenue for public services. The array of easily concealed forms in which it can be purchased and the surging potency of its psychoactive ingredient are taking a toll.
A growing body of research shows the serious psychological harm and learning impairment that can arise from teen and pre-teen pot use. Lawmakers at the Capitol acknowledged as much — if belatedly — by passing legislation this year tightening some of the rules around recreational marijuana pot sales.
LEAP represents a modest effort to make legalized pot pay for at least some of the damage it does to society, and especially to our young, on a daily basis. In that light, a tax on marijuana sales to fund an effort that actually helps children would be a refreshing turnabout.
Some of Colorado’s more authoritative and prominent voices on public education issues have embraced the ballot proposal. They include a host of political luminaries in our state — from across the political and social spectrum — who have endorsed the measure. Among them are two former Colorado governors, Republican Bill Owens and Democrat Bill Ritter, both known for a deep commitment to expanding educational opportunity. Alongside them is a bipartisan coalition of 10 state senators, nearly a dozen state House Republicans and other prominent former politicians from both parties, like former U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Eldorado Springs.
From either side of the political fence, LEAP just makes sense. Learn more at: https://leap4co.com
This content was originally published here.
