Bill would let approved independent receiving schools charge extra fee for grades 9–12 under conditions

Legislative Council staff walked lawmakers through an amendment on June 12 that would let certain approved independent receiving schools charge an additional fee equal to up to 0.05 of the base tuition amount for students in grades 9 through 12 if specific conditions are met.

The change, described by a Legislative Council staff member, would amend Section 27 and Title 16 to make the tuition statute apply to all grades and add a new subsection allowing an extra fee “in the amount of the product of the base amount and up to 0.05 for each student attending the receiving school in grades 9 through 12 only if all of the following conditions are met.” The staff member said the proposal keeps the existing “money follows the student” language for base tuition and weights but adds the new conditional fee authority.

Why it matters: the amendment would extend a mechanism similar to local supplemental district spending to eligible independent schools but only after multiple approvals. Under the language recited by Legislative Council staff, the extra fee could be charged only if (1) the receiving school is an approved independent school functioning as an area career technical center or meets education quality standards; (2) the State Board of Education approves the school to charge the fee under rules the board adopts; and (3) the electorate of every school district with at least one student attending has approved supplemental district spending in an amount sufficient to cover the fee.

The staff member said the State Board would be required to adopt rules and that those rules must require a receiving school to “demonstrate that an additional fee is necessary to educate the specific students the fee is being applied to and that the fee would be used to educate such students and not used to shift costs elsewhere within the applicable school's budget.” The State Board rulemaking requirement would take effect on passage and must be completed on or before July 1, 2027, the staff member said.

The proposal also places conditions on when the new subsection becomes operational. The staff member said subsection b (the new fee authority) would take effect July 1, 2028, only if several contingencies are met: new school districts are operational, the Section 45a cost-factor foundation formula report contains evidence that it costs more to educate secondary students (grades 9–12), and the General Assembly has failed to enact legislation adding a secondary student weight. The unchanged tuition language would go into effect contingently along with other foundation formula provisions when new districts are operational and the General Assembly has had the opportunity to act on the Section 45a report.

Lawmakers at the meeting framed the amendment as an attempt to provide assurance to multiple constituencies. One legislator worried about local disruption if changes moved too quickly, saying, “If you take Addison County as a whole, if it were its own district, we are going to be the financial loser in this,” and asked for guarantees his constituents would not be disrupted. Another attendee pushed back on calling the provision a guarantee, saying, “we never thought this is a guarantee,” and characterizing it instead as a default mechanism meant to be revisited in subsequent years.

A separate speaker suggested increasing the Joint Fiscal Office appropriation for consultants to broaden consultant options and ease trust concerns about how cost and weight analyses are done. Participants emphasized that the amendment is part of a multi-year transformation of the foundation formula and that technical work on weights and costs will continue in later sessions.

No formal motion or vote on the amendment is recorded in the excerpt reviewed at the meeting. Discussion focused on the bill text, the rulemaking deadline for the State Board of Education, voter approval requirements for districts, and political and fiscal concerns raised by representatives of smaller or rural areas.

Next steps discussed at the session included the State Board beginning rulemaking after passage to meet the July 1, 2027, deadline and continued legislative work next year on secondary weights and the foundation formula. Lawmakers said caucus support would be needed before advancing the measure and that the bill’s drafters intended the provision to be revisited as the larger reform process continues.