The Sentinel, publishing a Chalkbeat Colorado story, reports that Colorado lawmakers restricted certain publicly funded homeschool enrichment programs after concerns over cost, oversight, and spending on activities like sports camps, martial arts lessons, horseback riding, and ski passes. The new guardrails target programs authorized by Education reEnvisioned Board of Cooperative Educational Services, or ERBOCES, which had fueled much of the growth in this corner of the education system.
This is a kitchen-table education story, not a homeschool cage match. Most parents are not trying to turn taxpayers into their vacation fund. They are trying to educate their kids, stretch a dollar, and navigate a system that somehow manages to be generous with bureaucracy and stingy with trust. But public money still needs receipts. That is not anti-parent. That is math with a backbone.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Colorado spends more than $100 million a year on part-time students, mostly homeschool enrichment participants, with the state paying about $6,000 a year on average for one day a week of classes. That is enough money to deserve adult supervision.
- Lawmakers were responding to reports that some programs funded activities like sports camps, martial arts, horseback riding, and ski passes. Taxpayers should not be buying ski passes. That sentence should not require a blue-ribbon commission.
- The new law bars homeschool enrichment programs from providing activities not generally available to public school students and bans publicly funded programs from enrolling private school students. That is the state saying, “Maybe public education dollars should look vaguely like public education.”
- ERBOCES had more than 50 homeschool enrichment programs scattered across Colorado, most created in recent years and operated by private contractors. When money starts moving through enough layers, taxpayers have every right to ask whether anyone is still holding the steering wheel.
- State estimates say the changes could save about $21 million next year and about $30 million the following year. That matters, especially when every other budget conversation in Colorado sounds like someone dropped the state checkbook into a wood chipper.
My Bottom Line
Parents deserve room to choose what works for their children. Public school parents know that. Homeschool parents know that. Grandparents know that. Normal people understand that children are not widgets, and not every kid learns best sitting in the same chair under the same fluorescent light.
But public dollars come with public responsibility. If Colorado is going to fund enrichment, the rules need to be clear, fair, and written in normal-person English before families build plans around them. Not after. Not once the program grows. Not when the Capitol suddenly discovers the receipt pile and starts yelling “budget hole” like it found a raccoon in the pantry.
If some spending got silly, tighten it. If families relied on rules the state allowed or encouraged, give them clarity instead of whiplash. Denver should not treat every homeschool parent like they are running a black-market field trip cartel out of the minivan.
Colorado can support educational choice without turning it into a free-for-all, and it can protect taxpayers without smothering families in red tape. Good policy starts with trusting parents, respecting taxpayers, and writing rules that do not require a lawyer, a lobbyist, and three Advil to understand.
Source: The Sentinel
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