Colorado spends about $7 million a year tracking and supporting the education of the children of migrant workers, but federal law prohibits the state from determining whether the families who receive the services are in the country legally.
And while the tax money is federal dollars, some of the state’s spending raises eyebrows, including nearly $20,000 Colorado spent for parents of migrant children to attend a conference at a Breckenridge resort.
“I’m concerned about any tax dollars no matter where it comes from,” said state Rep. Paul Lundeen, a Monument Republican who sits on House Education Committee and queried the Colorado Department of Education about the program.
Before Watchdog.org contacted Lundeen for this story, he had posed questions to the Education Department to determine how much money was spent on the program and whether the tax funds were used for undocumented workers’ families.
He received a reply last week, describing the nearly $7 million federal grant and citing federal law that prohibits discriminating in education based on race and ethnicity.
State officials point out that nearly all the states participate in the migrant education program, and the federal government provided more than $364 million in grants to 47 states last year.
Connecticut, Rhode Island and West Virignia are the only three states that didn’t receive federal grants last year.
Connecticut Education Department spokeswoman Abbe Smith didn’t know why the state declined the federal dollars.
“Connecticut does not participate in Migrant Education Program,” she wrote in an email exchange with Watchdog.org. “From what I can gather, Connecticut has not participated since 2007 and the decision was made under a previous administration.”
A 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision required that states provide education to undocumented students and prohibited policies that block the students from receiving an education.
“These children have their education disrupted as they move from place to place,” Patrick Chapman, the Colorado Education Department’s executive director of federal grant administration, told Watchdog.org. “They need to have some continuity in education and make sure we transfer records from one school to another to maintain their academic record.”
Denying the children of illegal immigrants access to education “imposes a lifetime hardship on a discrete class of children not accountable for their disabling status,” the court ruling said. “By denying these children a basic education, we deny them the ability to live within the structure of our civic institutions, and foreclose any realistic possibility that they will contribute in even the smallest way to the progress of our Nation.”
The U.S. Department of Education also sent out a letter to schools warning against any policies that block or discourage children of illegal immigrants from attending classes.
Along with tracking students’ education from state to state, the program helps with health programs and other support.
A review of four years of migrant program checkbooks from Colorado shows substantial spending on food, conferences and catering. Watchdog’s analysis of 2015-16 and 2014-15 fiscal years data shows $44,117.54 went to Marriott resorts, $19,779.79 to Beaver Run in Breckenridge, $7,457.93 for the Vail Corp.
In the two fiscal years ending 2013-14, the data shows the department paid $194,000 for official functions, usually catered events and conferences. There was also more than $60,000 in in-state and out-of-state travel, the database shows.
The data was stored differently those two years than the more recent years, so year-over-year comparisons were not possible.
Tomas Mejia, state director for Colorado’s Migrant Education Program, said the conferences and food are usually for weekend gatherings of migrant parents and students to determine how to best serve the population.
“We bring together migrants to solicit input on how to make these funds work for them and their families,” he said, adding the Breckenridge conference was the low bidder and was held during the less-expensive summer season.
Records obtained under state open records laws show Beaver Run was the only bidder for the event.
Chapman said the state keeps an eye on the spending to make sure the federal money isn’t wasted.
“We are aware of the public perception and in making those decisions we make sure we determine how this is going to look,” he said. “We try to be as frugal as we can with the funds.”
Much of the federal money is sent to school districts to help educate the children. For example, from 2012 to 2014, more than $11 million of the federal dollars passed through the Colorado Education Department to various schools.
Lundeen said he was interested in the spending for the program overall and specifically for conferences like Breckenridge’s Beaver Run conference.
“That would be something I would want to look at,” he said after Watchdog.org informed him of the spending.
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