District receipts (B)CDE’s signed FY2026-27 District Funding Calculation Worksheet (28 May 2026) recalculated in place, both legs, phase-in and hold harmless, with the statewide at-risk average held at 46.75%. Unchanged, the recalculation reproduces CDE’s final total program for all 178 districts. The counterfactual removes each district’s charter pupils from its K-12 FTE, online and P-Tech counts, 1-8 and K-12 at-risk and membership, English learner and special education counts, and from the prior-year October counts that feed averaging (assuming stable charter enrollment FY23 to FY26). Size and personnel factors recalculate for the smaller district. Where a district is held harmless, its FY24-25 base is scaled by the share of funded pupils that remain. Note that the worksheet’s FY27 K-12 at-risk figure is not a current count: in 177 of 179 districts it equals the FY25-26 worksheet’s AR6 at-risk count multiplied by the change in K-12 membership (V14 FY27 over V14 FY26), within a tenth of a pupil. Falcon 49 is the one district where the identity does not hold. The district side of every figure here therefore moves when CDE reruns the model on the October 2026 count.
Old rule (A)CDE’s adjusted district in-school per-pupil funding (worksheet line GT8) times each charter’s in-school funded pupils, plus $10,732 for multi-district online and P-Tech pupils. Total program only. CDE builds GT8 by taking total program, subtracting every online and P-Tech pupil at $10,732 and every TREP pupil at $7,104, then dividing by the in-school funded count. The district’s blended average, line GT7, is not used anywhere here. Running that on every pupil instead would overstate A by $3,510,192 statewide, $3,091,007 of it at Falcon 49, where GT8 is $12,073.91 against a blended $11,577.01. GT8 does leave in the at-risk, English learner and special education dollars online pupils generate, so the in-school rate carries them. The online-charter control governs both sides: on flat rate only, A stands on GT8 exactly as CDE publishes it; on plus EL and SPED, the English learner and special education dollars are attributed to the online pupils who generate them, which pays them to the charter in C and takes them out of the rate behind A. At-risk dollars stay in the rate, because online pupils generate none under 22-54-103(1.5)(c). Attribution by school-level share of NEP/LEP and special education counts, from the VAO source workbook of 16 September 2026. It lowers A by $613,752 across the 15 districts with multi-district online pupils, $355,899 of that at Falcon 49.
Charter payments (C, F)The School Check engine: concentration paid only where the district is under 7,000 funded pupils and 70% or more at-risk and the charter is 70% or more, per 22-30.5-112(2)(c.5)(I)(B); online and extended-high-school pupils netted to flat rates, with an option to pay multi-district online pupils their English learner and special education weights on top of that rate; per-pupil rural share. Counts from CDE’s Charter Data tab, 23 July 2026. These figures tie to the School Check to the dollar.
CorrectionsFrom the 15 September draft, four changes. Held-harmless districts were measured on the phase-in amount alone, which ignored their base; Poudre R-1 moves from paying out $468,306 beyond receipts to keeping $1,101,356 on the formula. Adams 12 carried the School Check demo school (450 pupils, $5,453,633). District size factors were held at filed values rather than recalculated. Thirteen districts were excluded; all 43 are in. 22 September, morning. The online-charter setting was paying at-risk alongside the English learner and special education weights. It now pays no at-risk to the charter and takes none out of the old-rule rate, which drops its effect from $10,626,749 to $1,252,650 on the formula, from $2,428,587 to nothing with floors, and the old-rule adjustment from $4,386,262 to $613,752. GOAL Academy’s floor base moved to its confirmed receipt of $78,606,862.92, cutting its FY27 floor by $2,306,444. The floor premium now includes the $886,704 districts front for CSI schools, and the whole-district view runs the counterfactual with both groups of charter pupils removed together. 22 September, later. Two CSI schools that post-date CDE’s signed worksheet were missing and are now carried: American Legacy Academy in Windsor RE-4 and Children’s Kiva Montessori in Montezuma-Cortez RE-1, adding $7,246,854 and 631.5 pupils and giving Windsor a CSI row it did not have. Pikes Peak School of Expeditionary Learning picked up the floor its district worksheet supports, $4,574,684, adding $30,950 to the premium. The note on administrative retention came out; no figure here has ever been net of it. A third control was added for whether multi-district online pupils belong in the district at-risk count behind B. The floor tile now says how much of the premium rests on unconfirmed bases, and the receipts tile names what produces the statewide net instead of reporting it bare. The multi-district online notes were filled out with 22-30.7-107(2), the rate question at 22-54-103.5(9) and its FY32 consequence, and the Byers 32J example. Academy 20 and Montrose County RE-1J now carry modelled CSI figures instead of n/a, tagged and explained. The CSI and whole-district tables sort on every column. The CSI table was then rebuilt around C against B rather than W against B, since withholding is the mechanism between the two rather than the question. That moves the headline from 13 districts and $3,922,556 to 15 and $6,028,977, and reorders the table: Colorado Springs 11 and School District 27J have less withheld than their pupils generate and are still $835,845 and $840,184 short on the real measure.
Online weightsThe plus EL and SPED setting pays multi-district online pupils the English learner and special education weights and no at-risk. 22-54-103.5(2) adds the components, and only foundation (5), cost of living (11), locale (12) and size (13) take online pupils out; at-risk (6), English learner (7) and special education (10) do not. At-risk fails on its own definition instead: 22-54-103(1.5)(c)(II)(B) and (III) limit at-risk pupils to those in the district pupil enrollment, and 22-54-103(8.5)(a)(II) puts multi-district online pupils in online pupil enrollment. 22-54-103(6.5) and (10.8) carry no such limit, and SB26-023’s charter substitutions add “who are part of pupil enrollment” only to the enrollment count at 22-30.5-112(2)(c.3)(IV). That is the opposite drafting choice from at-risk, which is why the text leans toward those two weights riding on top. Cutting the other way, 22-30.7-107(2) points at the flat rate as the whole entitlement for a multi-district online pupil. That is the strongest argument for the flat-rate reading and the reason this stays a control rather than a finding. Paying at-risk as well would add $10,626,749 on the formula and $2,428,587 with floors, against $1,252,650 and nothing on this setting. Both readings sit against CDE and CSI guidance that the flat rate is the whole amount, so the setting tests the text rather than estimating a distribution. The mirror question, whether CDE’s worksheets should count these pupils in the district at-risk figure behind B, has its own control below.
The online rateOpen, and this page does not test it. 22-54-103.5(9) sets $9,588 indexed for inflation without saying which year that figure belongs to, which puts FY27 somewhere between $9,818 and $10,566 depending on the base year read into it. The $10,732 applied now comes from the 1994-act chain instead. SB25-315 updated (8)(a) to $10,480 and left (9)(a) at $9,588, so reading the weights strictly from the text argues for reading the rate that way too. None of it moves FY27: the new-formula leg falls below the 1994 leg for every online charter, and 22-54-103.3(3)(b)(II) bars a negative phase-in. It moves FY32, when the hold-harmless floor expires and the 1994 leg stops protecting the result. On a strict reading most base years pay an online charter less by FY32 than the flat $10,732 does, a cliff an FY27 page cannot show. The four readings are priced year by year in the VAO MDOL flat-rate workbook of 17 September 2026.
Online pupils in district at-riskThe third control puts the same reading of 22-54-103(1.5)(c) to the district side that the weights control puts to the charter side. On as CDE filed, B stands on the signed worksheet as published. On taken out, each district’s grades 1-8 and K-12 at-risk counts and memberships drop by its online charters’ pupils, prorated by each school’s online share of its funded count, and the worksheet recalculates from there. Only the at-risk rows move. Online pupils already sit outside the funded pupil count, so base, cost of living, locale, size, English learner and special education are untouched, and 22-54-103(6.5) and (10.8) carry no pupil-enrollment limit anyway. Run on the filed inputs the method reproduces CDE’s FY27 total program to the cent for all four districts. It lowers B by $6,392,385 at Falcon 49, $1,370,018 at Douglas County RE 1 and $106,434 at Academy 20. Delta County 50(J) moves by nothing, because its FY24-25 hold-harmless base binds and the at-risk change never reaches the total. Falcon and Douglas both flip from receiving more than they pay out to paying out more, and the statewide net moves $7,868,836. The charter side does not move, because CDE and CSI have both said the flat rate is the whole amount, so the control asks only whether the district should be receiving the money. It covers district-authorized online charters; Colorado Early Colleges Online Campus sits in a CSI accounting district whose B is built separately. The membership file confirms the premise school by school. District 49’s K-12 membership of 25,932 includes GOAL Academy’s 6,988, Douglas County’s 59,289 includes HOPE Online’s 1,302, Academy 20’s 26,131 includes TCA College Pathways’ 555, and Delta County’s 4,093 includes Vision Charter Academy’s 457. Falcon 49 is the one district whose at-risk count still does not reconcile to the membership file with the online charter included, by about 3,765 pupils, so its figure is the least secure here under either setting.
The wider at-risk problemByers 32J shows it plainest and is not on this page. Its worksheet carries an at-risk count of 4,793.8 against 486.5 in-school funded pupils and 7,516.3 multi-district online pupils. Run through the same recalculation, taking those pupils out drops Byers from $95,400,577 to $87,890,935. Byers has no charter, so it is not one of the 43 districts here and cannot be. On VAO’s reading about $36.1 million of new-formula at-risk across 19 districts rests on pupils the definition excludes, and most of it never passes through a charter. Where a district’s online pupils sit in a district-run program, the overstatement lifts the filed total and the counterfactual by the same amount and cancels out of what this page measures. That is why the control covers the four districts with online charters rather than every district with online pupils. The rest is a district-funding question and needs its own analysis. It reads as a data problem rather than a decision. CDE already takes online pupils out of base, cost of living, locale and size on its own worksheet. At-risk is the one place it does not, and that number arrives from the October collection across every school in the district with no population qualifier on it. As of mid-September 2026 nobody has settled how these pupils should be treated: CDE applies factors its own definitions do not support, CSI pays the flat rate with nothing on top, and this page carries both readings as controls.
District as a whole (E)A separate re-run of CDE’s signed worksheet for each of the 47 districts with charter pupils, with the district-authorized charters’ pupils and demographics and the worksheet’s CSI lines removed together in one pass, the statewide at-risk average held at 46.75%, and a held-harmless district’s FY24-25 base scaled by the funded pupils that remain. Run unchanged it reproduces CDE’s final total program for all 178 districts. Run one group at a time it reproduces the two tables above: every district-authorized figure to within $26, at Falcon 49, and every CSI figure exactly except Douglas County RE 1, which is $173,432 apart because CDE’s Charter Data tab accounts Colorado Early Colleges Online Campus to Douglas while CSI accounts it to Poudre. The combined figure is not the sum of the two. The difference runs from $197,558 at Park County RE-2 and $176,184 at Adams 12 down to nothing, and nets to −$59,582 statewide, because size, personnel and the at-risk ladder all move with the count. Pupil counts come from CDE’s Charter Data tab of 23 July 2026; prior-year October counts assume charter enrollment was stable from FY23 to FY26.
Charter floor basesGOAL Academy’s FY25-26 base is the school’s confirmed receipt of $78,606,862.92, its certified October 2025 count of 6,983 times Falcon 49’s FY26 per-pupil funding of $11,256.89. Falcon paid the district rate on GOAL’s 6,949 online pupils, where 22-30.5-112(2)(a)(III) as it then read gave an online pupil the district’s online rate of $10,480. CDE’s Charter Data tab carries $80,890,470.84 for the same year, $2,283,608 higher and equal to no certified count times any published Falcon rate, so GOAL’s floor here is $79,392,932 rather than $81,699,376. Pikes Peak School of Expeditionary Learning runs on Falcon 49’s own FY26 charter calculation worksheet, $4,529,390, giving a floor of $4,574,684 against a phase-in amount of $4,543,734. CDE’s stored $4,436,496 would leave it unfloored. A district’s own worksheet is the better source for a district-authorized school, but this one is unconfirmed against receipts and should be checked with D49. Every other base is still CDE’s stored figure. HOPE Online and TCA College Pathways tie exactly to their districts’ FY26 per-pupil funding times their counts, the same pattern that made GOAL’s figure wrong, so confirm those with the schools first. CDE counsel’s position of 19 August 2026 is that the floor runs on what the charter actually received, so a base that overstates receipts overstates the floor and the backfill behind it.
CSI schoolsB comes from CDE’s signed worksheet recalculated with each accounting district’s CSI enrollment, online count, averaging add-on and special education line zeroed, and the CSI schools’ at-risk, 1-8, membership and English learner counts (from CDE’s Charter Data tab) taken out of the district’s own counts, where the worksheet’s at-risk totals show they sit. W is the worksheet’s own withholding line. It is shown because it is the district’s actual cash exposure, but it is the mechanism rather than the measure: CDE withholds what its formula withholds and the Institute passes through regardless, so C against B is the comparison that matches the district table. C uses CSI’s own FY27 counts and engine, and every school on the page ties to CSI’s published FY27 final total program to the dollar once the floor is counted. The Institute’s count and CDE’s worksheet count differ in several districts, noted by the table. Four schools on CSI’s roster post-date the signed worksheet and have no district-side figures: Ascend College Prep, VIVO Colorado, Children’s Kiva Montessori and American Legacy Academy. They are carried in C, with B and W left out or flagged.
Not coveredCategorical programs, mill levy overrides and buyouts. ASCENT pupils stay in the district count because the worksheet carries no ASCENT line. The two charter baselines treat them differently: A pays the 103 ASCENT FTE at 16 schools the in-school rate, about $1.07 million, while C nets them out and pays nothing, SB25-315 having repealed the program after FY26. Power Technical’s 22 P-Tech FTE are paid the flat rate in A and netted in C, though 22-35.3-104(1)(a) places only grades 13 and 14 in extended high school enrollment and the grade levels are unconfirmed. Vista Charter School is carried on the CSI side, because it moves to CSI authorization for FY27 while CDE’s file still lists Montrose County RE-1J as its authorizer. The CSI table flags what that does to its figures. Montrose Classical Academy, opening in the same district in FY27, is not modelled anywhere here. Every FY27 count is an estimate until CDE’s January 2027 true-up.
