There are quite a number of education related bills being discussed currently. One of them is Senate Bill 131 which would mandate four years of math and three years of science for high school graduation. See the Rocky Mountain News article.

The article lists the current requirements for 12 "selected districts" but what was the basis for selecting these districts? One very notable omission to me is the St. Vrain Valley School District. It's the district my children are in so naturally I'm more concerned about it.

But it is, according to the Colorado Department of Education, the tenth largest district based on the number of students. Included in the selected districts were Boulder, eighth largest, Mapleton, 27th and Englewood 37th.


So maybe the selection of districts has more to do with the paper's circulation ? But does that make greater sense? With the joint operating agreement between the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News, we get the RMN because we subscribe to the Post. While the Post has covered this bill I haven't seen any comparative data for school districts in the Post.

Of course, not everyone supports this bill. Rural superintendents are opposed to it apparantly because they have difficulty attracting qualified teachers.

But consider this - there are 184 school districts in Colorado, according to the CDE. The largest district has 86,154 students this year. The smallest has 12 pupils. Only the 30 largest have more than 5,000 students. Wouldn't that point to a need for some of these districts to consolidate? Surely there must be some efficiencies to be gained from doing so, not to mention greater educational benefits for students in those districts?

Should it be left to individual districts to determine graduation requirements? I think not and House Bill 1118 is proposing state regulation of graduation requirements but that's another subject ......