HSE Pathways

HSE Pathways · C.R.S. § 22-33-104.3

Model MOU

A fill-in-the-blank memorandum of understanding between a Local Education Provider and a program operator, with drafting notes on every article. Seventeen articles and eight appendices, written to be handed to a lawyer rather than signed as-is.

Open your own copy Read it first

Opening a copy puts the template in your own Google Drive. The master is read-only and nothing you type reaches it.

01

What this is

A board-to-board memorandum of understanding between the LEP, the public entity that holds the legal claim to state funding, and the Operator, the organization that runs the program day to day. It sets out who does what, how money moves, how records are held, and what happens when the arrangement ends.

What it is not: the binding service contract. The MOU is the framework two boards can agree to quickly, usually because an application deadline is close. The service contract is the enforceable document that follows legal review and carries indemnification, insurance, performance standards, remedies, and detailed data terms. Article 14 handles the handoff, and Article 14.2 lists what is deliberately left for the contract.

Write it for four audiences

Expect this document to be read by your authorizer, as part of a charter amendment or expansion application; by the state, if you attach it to an out-of-boundary authorization application; by an auditor at count time, looking for evidence that the LEP genuinely provides the program; and by your own successors, who inherit the arrangement without the conversations that produced it.

The partnership itself, and the obligation-by-obligation split this document formalizes, are covered in the guide.

02

What binds on execution

Most of the document is mutual intent. Eight things are drafted to bind the day it is signed, and Article 16.1 names them. The reason is practical: a reviewer looking at a wholly aspirational MOU can reasonably conclude there is no real arrangement behind it.

Provision
Why it binds
Licensure and supervision Art. 8
BindingInstruction the funding claim rests on has to be delivered by credentialed educators, and the LEP has to retain real authority to supervise them. This is the clause a count auditor tests.
Payment timing Art. 9.3
BindingTwo business days from the LEP’s receipt of the corresponding funds. Deliberately tight: small operators run thin, and a partner that passes money on sixty days late can end the program.
Tuition and no-private-subsidy representations Art. 9.6
BindingThe clause that cannot be drafted around. If families pay for the same instruction the state funds, or public money reaches families as purchasing power, no wording fixes it.
Annual appropriation Art. 9.11
BindingDo not delete this to save space. A Colorado public entity that signs a multi-year financial commitment without it has created a multiple-fiscal-year obligation under Article X, Section 20.
Records custody, audit access, privacy Art. 10.4–10.8
BindingThe LEP is the system of record for everything that substantiates the funding claim. Copies at the Operator’s site are duplicates, not the record.
Immediate-notice obligations Art. 11.7
BindingEvery item on that list is something an LEP otherwise learns from a reporter, an auditor, or a parent, long after it could have acted. A notice obligation nobody is bound by is not a notice obligation.
Personnel screening Art. 12.2
BindingStudents are in the building. This one does not wait for a later document.
Article 16 itself
BindingIncluding conflict-of-interest and related-party disclosure at 16.5, and the no-authority-to-bind flow-down at 16.4 that keeps the Operator’s vendors from believing the public entity stands behind them.
03

What’s in it

Articles

  1. 1Parties
  2. 2Recitals and background
  3. 3Definitions
  4. 4Purpose, scope, and program locations
  5. 5Term, transition, and exit
  6. 6Roles and responsibilities, in nine parts from governance through student conduct
  7. 7Scheduled instructional time
  8. 8Instructional staff, licensure, and supervision
  9. 9Funding and financial structure
  10. 10Data, systems, records, and privacy
  11. 11Oversight, reconciliation, and corrective action
  12. 12Facilities, safety, and personnel screening
  13. 13Insurance, indemnification, and risk
  14. 14Conversion to a binding service contract
  15. 15Termination and wind-down
  16. 16General provisions
  17. 17Signatures

Appendices

  1. AProgram parameters
  2. BProgram locations
  3. CFunding worksheet: what counts as program revenues, the numbers, and a payment structure that works
  4. DCompliance and submission calendar, with a monthly reporting cadence
  5. EOpen items log
  6. FWhere each compliance obligation is addressed
  7. GAnnual operator assurances
  8. HPerformance standards

Appendix E is the unglamorous one and the most useful: every unresolved question, who owns it, and what closes it. Appendix F is what you hand a reviewer who asks where a given obligation lives.

04

How to use it

Fill in the brackets, choose between the variants, read the drafting notes, delete what doesn’t apply, and hand the result to a lawyer.

Convention
Means
[BRACKETED TEXT]
A blank you must fill in. Do not execute a document that still contains brackets. An unfilled bracket is the single most common reason a reviewer sends a packet back.
«OPTION A / OPTION B»
Mutually exclusive variants. Choose one, delete the other, and check that nothing later still assumes the version you deleted.
Shaded drafting-note boxes
Commentary, not agreement text. They explain why a clause exists, what a reviewer looks for, and what you have to decide. Delete every one before execution, or keep them in a separate marked-up copy for your file.
NON-DELEGABLE / OPERATOR-LED / JOINT
The same three labels the guide uses. Where a row says JOINT, name the handoff. “Joint” with no handoff described is how obligations get dropped.

There is a fill-in checklist near the front of the template listing every blank in order, and a substitution table for authorizers other than the one the template assumes. The state-level obligations are the same whoever authorizes you; what changes is who approves the program, what the approval instrument is called, and where the documents get filed.

Section 07 of the guide covers the same authorizer substitutions in more detail.

Fill in the brackets, then hand it to counsel. Nothing in it has been reviewed for your particular program.

Open your own copy

This is a template, not an agreement. Nothing in it has been reviewed by your counsel, your authorizer, or the Colorado Department of Education for your particular program. It is a starting structure and a checklist of what a part-time homeschool enrichment partnership normally has to address. It is not legal advice and not a substitute for it.

Two things make a generic template risky if used carelessly. The rules move: statute, State Board rule, and the audit guidance behind the annual forms all change, sometimes mid-year, so verify every citation and date against the current-year source before signing anything. And the answers are program-specific: where you operate, who authorizes you, whether the operator already ran the program somewhere else, and how funding is structured all change which clauses matter and which are dead weight.

Template version 1.0. Drafted against SB26-023 (C.R.S. § 22-33-104.3), C.R.S. §§ 22-33-104.5, 22-54-103, 22-32-116.5 › 1 CCR 301-39 › CDE Student October Count Audit Resource Guide and Forms AUD-108, AUD-111, AUD-111a, AUD-112 › Colorado Constitution Article X, Section 20.