Photo: Pagosa resident Mark Weiler offers public comments at the May 13 meeting the Archuleta School District Board of Education.
According to my reading of the Colorado Constitution, the education system in Colorado was originally built around the philosophy that each town or community was the best judge of what type of education should be offered to the children in their community.
But the Constitution also requires that Colorado’s education system be “uniform.” These two beliefs about education seem to me to be in conflict.
From the Colorado Constitution (my emphasis added):
Section 2. Establishment and maintenance of public schools. 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…
Section 15. School districts, board of education. 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.
Section 16. Textbooks in public schools. Neither the general assembly nor the state board of education shall have power to prescribe textbooks to be used in the public schools.
As time as gone by, the Colorado Department of Education has gradually taken more and more control over how our local schools operate. Some of this centralization of power at the state level has been encouraged — or required — by the U.S. Department of Education, which has had its own ideas about what a “uniform system of free education” looks like. Many of the requirements have been aimed at helping the students who struggle most within the existing system.
It’s been an historical quest, over the past 50 years or so, for equity and inclusion, you might say.
While the state has gradually established more and more regulations for our public schools, related to academics, testing, and safety and security… each local school board has been almost totally responsible for building and maintaining its own facilities.
Then the BEST program came along.
The BEST Program (“Building Excellent Schools Today”) was created in 2008, seemingly based on the idea that “excellent education” is more likely to occur in “excellent school buildings”. The program has since resulted in numerous new and renovated facilities all across Colorado, through matching grants. From the CDE website:
Since 2008 BEST has awarded over $3 billion in grants to more than 600 Colorado schools, improving health, safety and security for over 400,000 students.
A person more cynical than myself might suggest that the BEST program was, in fact, created to provide financial relief for Colorado’s major contracting firms during the Great Recession, by convincing local communities to abandon older school facilities and pass multi-million-dollar bond issues funded by local property taxes. If that was indeed the actual impetus of the BEST program, I would suggest that it succeeded to a significant degree, although it did not help the Archuleta School District (ASD) build a new K-8 school facility in 2011. The $98 million bond issue proposed that year by ASD failed at the ballot box by a 3-to-1 margin.
The funding available for BEST grants has since been significantly reduced by the Colorado legislature, for whatever reasons, which has made the program painfully competitive. For the 2025-2026 school year, for example, the BEST program received 50 qualifying requests for grant subsidies — requests totaling $614 million — and approved $179 million in grants. About half the grants were “lease/purchase” grants, meaning that BEST would be mortgaging the new building.
Of the $179 million approved, about $119 million is dependent upon those local school districts also passing bond measures during the 2025 election, to provide matching funding. (All BEST grants require matching funding from the local district.)
ASD did not apply for BEST funding for 2025-2026.
During the May 13 School Board meeting, the Board heard some recommendations from its the Master Plan Advisory Committee (MPAC), including the advice that more research is needed before the Board makes any decisions about how to deal with ongoing maintenance issues and perceived inadequacies in our school facilities. One possible solution is to build one or more new school buildings — funded by a property-tax-funded bond issue — and abandon older facilities.
Another alternative is to upgrade the existing buildings, to better accommodate the technological and cultural changes that threaten to turn education upside-down.
After hearing advice from the MPAC, the School Board began their regular meeting with an opportunity for public testimony.
Here are a few comments offered by Mark Weiler, a local philanthropist who played a role in helping support the new Building Trades program at Pagosa Springs High School, and also played an important supporting role in starting the community’s District-authorized charter school, Pagosa Peak Open School.
He began by addressing the difficulties the School Board may be facing, if it decides to replace one or more of its existing buildings.
“The incline of the hill, to get over this, is very steep. And I wonder if you, as a Board, would consider researching alternative methods of providing education, that do not involve massive investments in physical infrastructure. There are models that exist, here in the United States, that can deliver a college degree, without a huge campus.
He discussed a couple of examples, with which he has had personal experience: The Peterson Academy, founded by Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and his daughter Mikhaila Fuller, and the Hinsdale College program.
The Peterson Academy advertises its online courses as costing “1%” of typical college tuition. Enrollment costs $399 per year.
Hinsdale College, meanwhile, costs about $48,000 per year.
“Looking forward 30 years, here, I think to myself, that’s $120 million over 30 years, and at the end of the 30 years, you’re going to do it again. And I would just like the Board to consider alternatives…”
Following the MPAC presentation and Mr. Weiler’s suggestions, I found myself wondering if our School Board might seriously consider new ways of thinking about education in Pagosa Springs.
The next person to offer public testimony was Pagosa Springs Elementary School teacher Kristeen Harris, on the topic of educational interventions.
Read Part Four, tomorrow…