Chalkbeat

Prop NN proponents believe the time is right to raise funding for schools after failed efforts

2026-07-17T23:37:33+00:00

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This time will be different.

At least that’s the hope of supporters of Proposition NN, a ballot measure to raise funding for schools. They launched a statewide “yes” campaign on Friday to raise support for the measure.

The November ballot measure represents the fifth attempt in the last decade to ask Colorado voters to make tax changes that would raise more money for public education, among other things. Each of the three previous ballot measures were defeated. Another proposed measure in 2022 never made the ballot.

The revenue from Prop NN would be used to increase teacher salaries, reduce class sizes, and invest in career and technical education. Extra revenue would also be used for other state spending.

More than 100 supporters, who gathered in front of the castle-like West High School near downtown Denver, said they believe Coloradans have finally grown tired of underfunded schools. In recent years, lawmakers have wrangled steep budgetary cuts but continued investments in public education. However, state studies show Colorado needs billions more to adequately fund its schools.

Joshua Duran, a shop teacher at Denver’s Skinner Middle School, said teachers across the state face hardships that he believes voters will find sympathetic. He works about 16 to 20 hours a week driving an Uber to supplement his teaching salary. He also works with his father in the summer installing custom cabinetry and remodeling bathrooms.

That has meant long hours away from his family. The stress sometimes makes it difficult to do his best for his students, he said. The money from Prop NN would help pay his salary, but also go toward bettering instruction and resources in schools, he said.

“I just feel like the mood is different this time,” he said. “We’ve been trying forever, but I think that the time is right.”

Kevin Vick, president of the Colorado Education Association, the largest teachers union in the state, said their polling shows there’s support statewide to raise money for education.

Other issues facing schools include high teacher turnover, teacher wages that aren’t competitive enough, and large class sizes, he said.

“We think voters see that this is needed and it’s time,” Vick said.

The union planned the measure, which lawmakers put on the Nov. 3 ballot.

Prop NN asks voters to allow the state for 10 years to keep some or all of the revenue that would otherwise be refunded under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR, which caps government spending.

A state legislative analysis shows the measure could raise billions more for schools.

Like previous ballot initiatives, the measure faces opposition from many conservative leaders, some who have said the measure represents a hit to Coloradans’ wallet. And conservative groups, such as the Independence Institute, have called the measure a de facto tax increase because it cuts TABOR refunds.

The measure is projected to reduce the TABOR refund of a taxpayer who makes $100,000 a year in 2027 by $28, or $56 for a joint filer, according to a draft legislative council ballot measure explainer.

Parents and school board members at the Yes for Colorado Kids rally on Friday said they’ll work hard to help voters understand why Prop NN is needed, despite losing some of their TABOR refunds.

Jeffco Public Schools parent Jen Wilson said she wants voters to know that her PTA has raised thousands a year to support her kids’ schools with classroom supplies and other materials. But next year, the schools still are scaling back mental health resources for kids, she said.

“We had a shooting at our Evergreen High School last year,” she said. “I feel like if we had more mental health support and more adults in the schools, we wouldn’t be missing these things.”

And Morgan County School Board President Nancy Hooper said she and others are committed to getting out the word about why this is needed for every school in the state.

“We desperately need money and resources to take care of our students,” she said. “They deserve it.”

Jason Gonzales is a reporter covering higher education and the Colorado legislature. Chalkbeat Colorado partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage. Contact Jason at jgonzales@chalkbeat.org.

Sheridan teachers strike: Union and district reach a tentative contract agreement

2026-04-24T16:17:57+00:00

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After more than three weeks on strike, the Sheridan School District teachers union reached a tentative agreement Thursday on a new contract with the tiny district south of Denver.

The agreement came after Colorado Gov. Jared Polis stepped in to convene a day of discussions between the district and the union at the state Capitol. Polis had grown increasingly frustrated with the stalemate, warning on Wednesday that the interruption in schooling meant students had “missed weeks of meaningful instruction.”

Most of Sheridan’s more than 900 students are Hispanic and come from low-income families. The district canceled classes at all five of its schools for the first three days of the strike. Schools have been open since then, but officials said attendance has been low.

The Sheridan Educators Association said its members will return to classrooms after the deal is ratified. The union is expected to vote on ratification on Friday and the Sheridan school board is set to vote Tuesday, according to Polis’ office.

Superintendent Gionni Thompson said in a statement that the district shares “the Governor’s urgency in moving forward toward swift ratification to avoid further delays and ensure students return to a stable, consistent learning environment in which each student can thrive.”

Union President Kate Biester, a social studies teacher at Sheridan High School, said in a statement that she “cannot wait to get back to my classroom and my students.”

“While this entire process has been incredibly difficult, I want to say unequivocally that the challenge has been worth it,” Biester said. “Sheridan will always be a place that gives everyone a chance to succeed. We have shown everyone that big things can happen in a small town.”

The union declared victory in a statement Thursday night, saying the tentative agreement “meets our demands to reinstate our contract, a path to recognize classified staff, and an end to the retaliatory and restrictive policies that have caused instability in our schools.”

Sheridan teachers had been working without a contract all school year. The strike began April 1. The union had several demands, including that the district reinstate the expired contract and allow non-licensed staff, such as school bus drivers and paraprofessionals, to join the union.

Tensions between the union and the district escalated as the strike wore on. A week into it, the union announced an effort to recall the entire Sheridan school board. On Thursday, before the deal was reached, the district said it would no longer cover the full cost of health benefits for the striking employees as it had been for the past several weeks.

A spokesperson for the Arapahoe County Clerk and Recorder’s Office said Friday that the Sheridan teachers union had asked questions about how to initiate a school board recall process but hadn’t yet started the proceedings.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

‘We have to stand together and fight’: Sheridan teachers strike over breakdown in contract negotiations

2026-04-02T00:54:17+00:00

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To Christen Reyes, working in the tiny Sheridan School District for many of the past 21 years felt like a partnership between teachers, administrators, and the community.

But an important part of that partnership has broken down, Reyes and other Sheridan teachers said, and it’s hurting the district’s more than 900 students, most of whom are Hispanic and come from low-income families. On Wednesday, Sheridan teachers went on strike to protest what they say is the district’s refusal to reinstate the teachers union contract.

“We’ve had disagreements, but we’ve always come to the table for the well-being of all,” said Reyes, who teaches high school English and Spanish.

“And then it became them versus us,” said Esther Rocha-Garcia, who teaches math at Sheridan High School and was standing with Reyes outside district headquarters.

“There’s no partnership because we don’t exist,” Reyes added.

Teachers in Sheridan, located south of Denver, have been working without a contract all school year. The Sheridan Educators Association’s previous agreement with the district expired in July after the two sides couldn’t agree on pay raises. Union President Kate Biester said that when they returned to the negotiating table in August, the district refused to budge.

“How I feel is that we were playing a game,” Biester said, “and they changed the rules of the game entirely and told us that we were no longer a part of it.”

In a statement Wednesday, the Sheridan School District said it is “eager and willing to return to the bargaining table to collaborate with our educators to find common ground.”

The district canceled classes at all five of its schools on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. In a letter to families Tuesday, Superintendent Gionni Thompson wrote that the district would not have enough staff to “to safely maintain normal school operations.”

“We understand that this disruption creates challenges for our students, families, and community, and we appreciate your patience and flexibility,” Thompson wrote.

Thompson, who was hired to lead the Sheridan district two years ago, added that the district is “committed to working in good faith with SEA to reach an agreement that supports our students, values our educators, and is fiscally responsible to our community.”

Like many districts in the Denver metro area, Sheridan’s enrollment is declining. Ten years ago, the district had more than 1,500 students. This year, it’s down to 924, according to the Colorado Department of Education. Schools in Colorado are funded based on student counts, and the 40% decline means Sheridan is receiving less per-pupil funding from the state.

Union leaders with the Sheridan Educators Association said they're planning to strike until the district responds to their demands.

Less funding often leads to lower teacher salaries. Last school year, the average Sheridan teacher salary was $71,797, according to the state education department. That was lower than all of the surrounding districts, including Englewood ($72,803), Denver ($76,901), Jeffco ($80,659), Littleton ($85,405) and Cherry Creek ($94,443).

But Biester stressed the Sheridan union’s strike isn’t primarily about pay.

“It’s just about having our collective bargaining rights back again,” she said.

Those rights are important if the district wants to attract and retain teachers, Biester and others said. Sheridan has a high teacher turnover rate: More than 43% of teachers left between the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years, according to state statistics. By comparison, the teacher turnover rates in all of the surrounding districts were below 20%.

Kelly Landgraf left Sheridan last year after 10 years of teaching social studies and language arts in the district. She took the day off Wednesday from her new job in the neighboring Cherry Creek district to stand on the picket line with her former colleagues.

“The teachers are just turning over, which is terrible for kids,” Landgraf said. “This is such a small community and it’s such a close-knit community that it shouldn’t be this hard.”

Teachers in the Sheridan School District have been working without a contract all school year.

Holding a sign on the sidewalk facing busy Federal Boulevard, Nathan Miller said he was inspired to strike after the Sheridan school board passed a policy in January that union leaders say could make it harder for employees like Miller, who does IT support for the district, to join the teachers union or form their own.

Cars driving by emitted a near-constant stream of honks in support of the strike. Children hung out of truck windows and waved. The teachers waved back and shook their signs. Sometimes they banged on upside-down buckets and chanted, “What do we want? A contract! When do we want it? Now!”

To end the strike, the union has demanded that the district rescind the January policy. It has also demanded that the district reinstate the expired contract and allow non-licensed staff, including school bus drivers and paraprofessionals, to join the union.

Christy DiLuca, a speech language pathologist at Alice Terry Elementary School, said working without a contract has affected not just her paycheck, but her emotional health.

DiLuca has worked for at least seven school districts in six states during her long career, and she said she’s never felt as unappreciated by a district as she does now.

“It’s so disheartening,” DiLuca said. “There’s days when we were all just scared to death and wanting to cry and go, ‘What do we do about this?’ But we have to stand together and fight.

“We’re willing to go as long as we need to.”

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado Springs 11 teachers face warnings, discipline, or termination for strike-related actions

2025-12-10T01:22:05+00:00

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Twenty-five teachers in Colorado Springs District 11 received warnings or were penalized by district officials because of actions during the run-up to a one-day strike by the teachers union in early October, according to union officials.

Union leaders say the district’s sanctions are part of a broader union-busting effort that could push teachers out of the classroom.

Angel Givler-Viers, a fifth grade teacher who is active in the teachers union and has a large social media following, faces the most severe punishment. The district superintendent recommended at the Dec. 3 school board meeting that she be fired for insubordination and neglect of duty.

Jessica Wise, a spokesperson for the 22,000-student District 11, said by email that “a number of staff received appropriate communications” following events surrounding the strike on Oct. 8. She couldn’t confirm whether the number was 25.

The flurry of warnings and discipline measures handed out to teachers involved in the strike comes after more than a year of growing tensions between school district leaders and the Colorado Springs Education Association teachers union. The school board voted a year ago to let the union’s master agreement with the district lapse at the end of last school year, a move that enraged many teachers and helped spark the strike.

David Graf, a union official, said in addition to Givler-Viers a second teacher is on paid leave now for actions prior to the strike. A third teacher was on paid leave earlier this fall for materials distributed during the strike but has returned to the classroom, he said.

Givler-Viers has been on paid administrative leave since Oct. 6. Wise said it could be weeks or months before the school board votes on whether she should be fired.

District 11 has about 1,650 teachers. Last year, about two-thirds were in the union, but that number has gone down, partly because many teachers left the district last year, Graf said.

Besides objecting to the end of the master agreement, teachers union members have cited general concerns, such as low morale and lack of teacher voice in district decisionmaking, and specific ones, including a new policy banning most flags, including pride flags, from district classrooms and a recent decision to cut several pages on gender identity out of a high school health textbook supplement.

Wise confirmed that the district’s curriculum department removed the textbook pages in August because they weren’t aligned with the district’s approved curriculum and standards, according to an October Rocky Mountain PBS story.

Wise said the district has made big investments in teachers in recent years, including this year giving licensed teachers a 4% recurring raise and a 6% onetime bonus. The district has also launched a districtwide teacher coaching program and eliminated central office jobs in order to preserve classroom positions, she said.

Givler-Viers, who taught literacy at McAuliffe Elementary and often goes by Dr. G., believes the district’s effort to terminate her is part of a broader effort to silence and scare educators.

“It’s just way bigger than me,” she said. “It impacts all of us. And if they get away with it now, they’re going to continue doing it.”

Social media posts lead to district investigation

Givler-Viers received a letter that outlined four allegations against her on Nov. 21, about seven weeks after being put on administrative leave, said Graf, who’s been involved in the case.

One allegation in the Nov. 21 letter cites unprofessional conduct stemming from inappropriate social media posts. The other three allegations cite issues that arose after she was placed on leave, including that she set foot on district property and talked to district staff in violation of the leave conditions and that she didn’t answer questions fully and truthfully during the district’s investigation.

Givler-Viers said she stood on a step leading to the district administration building to make a speech to union members during a censorship vigil while she was on leave.

Graf and Givler-Viers said the district hasn’t specified what social media post or posts prompted the first allegation.

Wise said the district can’t comment on individual cases or timelines, but said “employees recommended for termination are provided information regarding allegations and findings at the appropriate stage of the process, consistent with those legal requirements, prior to any Board of Education consideration.”

Givler-Viers, who’s taught in District 11 for eight years, has more than 18,000 followers on TikTok. Many of her posts are short videos in which she speaks directly to the camera about issues ranging from the unpaid work teachers do to the challenge of taking sick time as a teacher.

About a week before the strike, she posted a video in which she suggested that parents seeking to support the union keep their children home on the day of the strike. She cautioned that children attending school that day could end up in large classes staffed by central office employees with no teaching experience.

“ … that means your kids could be in a classroom with however many other kids show up, with an accountant," she said in the post, which has nearly 90,000 views.

A week after the Sept. 28 TikTok post, Givler-Viers said she was going over Latin and Greek roots with her students when she was asked by her school principal to come to the office. A district human resources official told her she was being put on administrative leave while she was investigated for her social media posts. She went back to her classroom to gather her personal items and was escorted to her car.

“I just took my cell phone and my car keys and I left, and the kids … they’re like, ‘Are you OK? Where are you going? What’s happening?’” she said.

‘I can’t do it anymore’

Graf said 22 teachers received either a conference memo or a letter of reprimand because they referenced the strike in messages or in plans for substitute teachers who worked on the day of the strike.

A conference memo is one of the district’s mildest responses to an infraction and warns employees about a violation of board policy but isn’t placed in their personnel file. A letter of reprimand is a more serious penalty.

Jim Dobyns, who goes by the first name Talsen, is a physical education teacher at Rogers Elementary School. He received a conference memo around the time of the strike. He said it was the last straw that prompted him to resign. His last day is Dec. 19.

“It’s a terrible working environment to be in when you’re constantly under duress and afraid,” he said. “I just can’t do it anymore.”

The conference memo Dobyns received cited a message he left prior to the strike in the online system for lining up substitute teachers. He wrote, “This leave was posted without the consent of the teacher. You will be required to cross a picket line to accept it.”

Dobyns said district administrators, not him, posted the request for a sub to cover his classroom during the strike.

The conference memo, which was reviewed by Chalkbeat, said, “This unsatisfactory inappropriate conduct negatively impacted the operations of the school and caused harm amongst the Guest Staff and/or District Staff that were covering your classroom on that day.”

Dobyns said he wrote the message in the online system because he didn’t want his sub to be surprised by the strike.

“A lot of subs didn’t know [about the strike]” he said. “A lot of people don’t watch the news these days.”

Dobyns expects more District 11 teachers to quit in the coming months.

“I know from the talk around the water cooler that there is going to be an exodus of educators from D11 come March when hiring season starts,” he said.

Dobyns has a job lined up in home remodeling sales once he leaves the district.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Denver class sizes: Teachers union alleges in grievance that not all schools are reporting the data

2025-11-21T23:44:45+00:00

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The Denver teachers union is alleging that Denver Public Schools is violating a new provision of the teachers contract that requires schools to publicly report class sizes.

The contract, which went into effect in September, requires each principal to report class size data to their school’s collaborative school committee, or CSC. The CSC is a group of parents, teachers, and community members who advise the principal on budget priorities and other decisions. State law requires every school to have one.

The latest Denver teachers contract says that by Nov. 1 each year, CSCs must publish meeting minutes on their school website that list the number of students in each class.

But President Rob Gould said that by the union’s count, just 43 out of 139 district-run schools reported class sizes in publicly posted CSC meeting minutes by Nov. 1. The Denver Classroom Teachers Association filed a grievance Wednesday asking the school district to ensure that principals are trained and schools comply.

“This is about reporting to parents and reporting to the community and making it very transparent what our class sizes are,” Gould said in an interview. “We can’t tackle class sizes unless we have an idea of what those class sizes actually are.”

In a statement, Denver Public Schools said it “looks forward to working with DCTA through the grievance process to resolve this alleged violation on class size reporting.” The district said it couldn’t comment on the content of the grievance because the process is confidential.

The Denver teachers union has long pushed for smaller class sizes, but it ramped up its advocacy during contract negotiations earlier this year. The union wanted strict caps on class sizes. Instead, the two sides agreed to a compromise that calls for the district to “make reasonable efforts to reduce oversized classes” and aim for elementary class sizes of 30 students by 2026-27, with the caveat that several factors “may impact compliance.”

The contract also requires the public reporting of class sizes through CSC meeting minutes and the formation of a committee to identify “patterns deserving of further attention and analysis.”

A spot check by Chalkbeat on Friday afternoon revealed wide variation in whether and how schools are reporting class size data. Some schools didn’t have a CSC webpage at all. Others had a CSC webpage but didn’t list any meetings or minutes for the current school year. Others had meeting minutes from this fall but no mention of class sizes.

Even among schools that reported their class sizes, how they parsed the data differed. South High School reported average class sizes, including an average of 24 students per English class and 25 students per math class.

West High School’s CSC minutes simply said, “Class sizes - 18.” Northfield High School listed class size averages by teacher and course, among other data. The grievance asks schools to report individual class size numbers, not averages.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Why teachers union-backed school board candidates won in Denver — and what it might mean

2025-11-06T23:42:39+00:00

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A “blue wave” swept across the country on Election Day. But in Denver, all the school board candidates were Democrats.

So, faced with similar choices, voters bubbled their ballots for the candidates endorsed by a Democratic stalwart: the teachers union.

“If you’re in a blue city and you’re a blue voter, you’re going to vote for the true-blue candidates — and the true-blue candidates were the union candidates,” said Van Schoales, a longtime supporter of the Democratic brand of education reform.

For many years, Denver Public Schools was considered a national exemplar of the type of education reform that favors school choice and charter schools but not private school vouchers. A 2019 teachers strike sparked in part by pushback to reform policies helped flip control of the school board back to members who had union support. The board has been chipping away at the district’s reform policies ever since, though some are coming back under new names.

Denver voters on Tuesday elected one union-backed incumbent, Xóchitl Gaytán, and three newcomers: Amy Klein Molk, DJ Torres, and Monica Hunter. All were decisive wins.

Hunter was at The Abbey Tavern, an Irish pub on Colfax Avenue, on election night. A former teacher with a blended family of six children, she said she was shocked when the first returns came in at 7 p.m. and showed her ahead of her three opponents.

Hunter hadn’t prepared a victory speech. She entered the race late and had been outspent by deep-pocketed pro-reform groups. She wasn’t expecting to win. On Wednesday, she said she attributes the union sweep partly to “the state of the world.”

“People don’t have food right now,” Hunter said, referring to the millions at risk of losing SNAP benefits due to the federal government shutdown. “They’ve seen so much on a global and federal level and they’re worried about their kids. They know they can trust teachers.”

Research shows teachers union endorsements carry great weight in school board elections. But they haven’t always translated to victory in Denver. Two years ago, three candidates backed by organizations that support charter schools and education reform won all of the seats up for grabs, ousting two union-backed incumbents and the newcomer on the ticket with them.

The 2023 election was a clear call for change. Voters were mad about a string of high-profile shootings at Denver’s largest high school. They were also mad about infighting on the school board that got so bad the now-mayor said the board had made DPS “more of a public embarrassment than a source of pride."

But that election wasn’t enough to take control of the seven-member board away from union-backed members. And Tuesday’s results solidified that majority.

“The union’s messaging clearly resonated with voters,” said Parker Baxter, the director of the Center for Education Policy Analysis at the University of Colorado Denver, whose research found that DPS’ reforms were effective.

“It is possible that people who voted in this election thought they were voting to protect public education in Denver,” he said, referring to attempts by the Trump administration to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. “It’s very difficult to disentangle the atmospherics.”

Different factions interpret Denver election results differently

The teachers union and the pro-charter organizations have different takes on the results.

Denver Classroom Teachers Association President Rob Gould said voters “are sick and tired of billionaires coming in and trying to steal elections.” The pro-charter group that spent the most toward political ads, Denver Families Action, has ties to Netflix founder Reed Hastings and Texas philanthropist John Arnold.

Although the big spending isn’t new, more media coverage of so-called dark money, plus word of mouth spread by teachers, meant voters were more aware of that factor this year, Gould said.

“Our educators really stepped up and reached out,” Gould said. “We told our educators, ‘Call everybody you know. … Talk to people about what’s going on.’”

The head of Denver Families Action said Wednesday that it’s too early to draw conclusions about whether the election was a rebuke of that spending. Clarence Burton Jr., the group’s CEO, said he sees the results as a continued call for change.

Even though the four candidates endorsed by Denver Families Action lost, so did two incumbents, Scott Esserman and Michelle Quattlebaum. Both were previously backed by the teachers union but lost that endorsement this year because the union disagreed with some of their positions on teacher pay and union contract rights.

“People like their public schools,” said Burton, whose organization led a massive door-knocking effort in which paid canvassers talked to voters for more than a year. “They say, ‘We like Denver Public Schools.’ They say they don’t like the current board.”

Quattlebaum declined to speculate about the results. “The election is the election,” she said.

Gaytán, the only incumbent to win reelection, said that when she was knocking on doors in her southwest Denver district, her message of protecting teachers and paying them more resonated with voters, many of whom were new to the gentrifying neighborhoods.

“When I shared my values and accomplishments, especially in support of our teachers, I earned those votes from people,” Gaytán said.

A phenomenon noted by almost all observers was that the reform-backed candidates sounded more like the union-backed candidates this year. Burton said that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

“When we’re also focused on issues of increasing funding, decreasing class sizes, increasing mental health supports — you want to hear all candidates talking about that,” Burton said. “It’s reflective of what the community actually believes.”

But Gould said that when the candidates sound similar, endorsements really matter.

“The voters looked at who was supporting them and why,” he said.

Both sides hope new DPS board is more civil

While voters’ preferences were clear, it’s less clear what the new board will mean for the direction of DPS.

In Chalkbeat’s candidate questionnaire, the union-endorsed candidates gave Superintendent Alex Marrero higher marks than the candidates endorsed by Denver Families Action did. But it doesn’t appear they’ll back his every move. Gould said the union is “not wholeheartedly against” and “not wholeheartedly in support” of the superintendent.

“There are things Dr. Marrero can do better, period,” Gould said. “With this new board, they can have more of a critical lens at what the policies are, what we’re doing, and ways to shift resources and funds to make sure all dollars are maximized and support students in the classroom.”

One hope winners and losers from the election both share is that the new board will be more civil.

The public disagreements and social media sniping that characterized some board members’ interactions several years ago have died down. But a just-released investigation into the behavior of member John Youngquist and a possible censure vote have reignited concerns about division.

“We’ve all watched a lot of the infighting,” Hunter said. “My mentor sat me down and said, ‘You can’t pass a resolution alone. You better figure out how to get along.’

“That is my goal, truly, to figure out how we can all work collaboratively,” she added.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Denver teachers union endorses four candidates for school board

2025-09-22T22:11:55+00:00

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The Denver teachers union is backing three newcomers and one incumbent in November’s Denver school board election. With a majority of board seats up for grabs, political control of the state’s largest school district is at stake.

The Denver Classroom Teachers Association has endorsed:

Amy Klein Molk for an at-large seat representing the entire city.
Xóchitl “Sochi” Gaytán for a seat representing District 2 in southwest Denver.
DJ Torres for a seat representing District 3 in central-east Denver.
Monica Hunter for a seat representing District 4 in northeast Denver.

Gaytán is the only incumbent to be endorsed by the teachers union. Two other incumbents, Scott Esserman and Michelle Quattlebaum, did not get the union’s endorsement this year after being backed by the union when they ran in 2021.

Quattlebaum is running for reelection in District 4. Esserman currently holds an at-large seat representing the entire city but is running for reelection in District 3, where he lives.

The union wasn’t happy with the way Quattlebaum and Esserman voted on a few key issues, union leaders said. In 2022, Quattlebaum voted against a policy to require Denver’s semi-autonomous innovation schools to abide by the teachers union contract. The policy passed on a 5-2 vote, despite Quattlebaum’s “no” vote.

In March, Esserman voted with a majority of the board to accept an arbitrator’s decision in a pay dispute between the union and Denver Public Schools. Accepting the arbitrator’s decision meant that teachers did not get a bigger cost-of-living pay raise last school year.

“It’s all about the votes,” said Patrick Jiner, a teacher at Lake Middle School.

Jiner is one of nine educators on a committee that decides which candidates the union will endorse. Endorsements matter in the Denver school board election. Historically, the only candidates who’ve won have been backed by either the teachers union or by deep-pocketed advocacy organizations that support charter schools and school choice.

In the last election, in 2023, the advocacy organizations outspent the teachers union by 5 to 1. All of the candidates backed by those organizations — primarily, an organization called Denver Families Action — won their seats. All of the union-backed candidates lost.

This year, Denver Families Action has endorsed a different slate of candidates than the union.

Union President Rob Gould said the union’s candidates — Klein Molk, Gaytán, Torres, and Hunter — stood out because of their knowledge about both education and workers’ rights.

Klein Molk worked as a paraprofessional for students with disabilities at a Denver elementary school, a perspective that Gould said has been missing from the Denver board. Torres is a former Denver Public Schools special education teacher who belonged to the union.

Hunter is also a former DPS teacher and helped found a union caucus for Black educators. She now works for the statewide teachers union, the Colorado Education Association.

Gaytán is not a teacher. She is a real estate agent and DPS parent. But in her four years on the board, she has advocated for the union’s positions on issues ranging from contract rights to teacher pay. Gould repeatedly described Gaytán as “consistent.”

Some of the other candidates are also educators. But Erica Atchison, a special education teacher at Park Hill Elementary who serves on the union’s endorsement committee, said these four candidates best aligned with the union’s core values of “respect us, pay us, value us.”

“We take it seriously for sure,” Jiner said. “That school board has a lot of power and affects real people and real lives, and that sometimes gets lost in the arguments and the debates.”

Candidates’ opinions on charter schools have historically been a dividing line in Denver school board elections. Jiner said that if a candidate supports charter schools, he sees it as “not a total red flag, but something that gets my ears up.” Charter school teachers are not unionized, and critics say the independent public schools compete with traditional district-run schools.

Gaytán has been sharply critical of charter schools, saying charters “siphon” students from district-run schools. But other candidates have taken more measured stances. For instance, Hunter said she would never judge another parent’s choice to enroll their child in a charter school, even though she noted that charters “often disappoint families.”

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Denver teachers union, district reach tentative agreement on pay and class sizes, among other issues

2025-06-24T22:08:59+00:00

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Denver teachers would get a $1,000 annual cost-of-living raise for the next three years under a tentative contract agreement reached Tuesday by the teachers union and Denver Public Schools, according to press releases from both sides.

The agreement would also require the district to work toward capping elementary class sizes at 30 students starting in the 2026-27 school year. And it recommends that the Denver school board put a measure on the ballot to increase funding for DPS.

The tentative agreement comes after DPS declared an impasse in negotiations last month. The impasse meant that the two sides continued bargaining with help from a mediator.

The next step is for the tentative agreement to be ratified by members of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association and the Denver school board. If that happens, the three-year agreement will be in effect from Sept. 1 to Aug. 31, 2028.

Lower class sizes and higher teacher pay were two of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association’s biggest priorities going into negotiations. Class size caps were last changed in 1994, when the union went on strike and the district agreed to a cap of 35 students.

While Denver’s student enrollment is expected to decline, an influx of migrant students has caused some classroom sizes to swell. District data from the 2023-24 school year showed 9% of elementary classrooms had more than 30 students.

Going into negotiations, the union was hoping for a lower class size cap. Instead, it got a compromise that says DPS must set targets and better track the data.

“While DCTA was hoping for stronger limits on class size, we believe the tentative agreement reached today offers a better path forward, particularly for grades Kindergarten through 5th,” union President Rob Gould said in a statement. “We’re also looking forward to continuing our work and advocacy through a class size committee.”

The tentative agreement also guarantees pay raises, though they won’t be as big as the union hoped.

In addition to the $1,000 cost-of-living raise, the average DPS teacher would get a 2.97% increase in their pay next school year from “steps” based on teachers’ years of experience, and “lanes” that are based on teachers’ own education, according to DPS.

Starting teacher pay in Denver would go up to $57,666 next year from $55,257 this past school year, a 4.4% increase. Pay for teachers at the top of the pay scale — those with a doctorate and 20 years of experience — would increase to $124,233 from $120,169, a 3.4% increase.

All DPS teachers would also get a 2.55% pay raise next school year as a result of a law passed this spring that lowers the district’s contribution to the state pension fund. The district says that savings will be passed along to teachers union members.

Teachers would also get a $1,000 onetime bonus next year but not in 2026-27 or 2027-28.

A memorandum of understanding that is part of the tentative agreement says the two sides agree that the Denver school board should put an initiative to increase funding for DPS on the November 2025 or November 2026 ballot.

The memorandum says the union and the district “will engage in discussions on the potential use of the increased funding.” The union’s press release says it could be used to boost pay.

School board President Carrie Olson said it would be inappropriate to answer questions about the tentative agreement until after it is ratified. The board won’t meet again until August.

“This is a topic we will discuss, if the DCTA membership ratifies the agreement, when we return in August,” Olson said in a statement.

Sept. 5 is the deadline to put a measure on the November ballot, according to a spokesperson for the Denver Clerk and Recorder’s Office.

Denver voters last passed a ballot measure to increase teacher pay in 2020.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Former Colorado teachers union chief announces Democratic primary bid to unseat U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans

2025-06-05T19:48:27+00:00

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Educator and teachers union stalwart Amie Baca-Oehlert announced her bid Thursday to run against Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans in this November’s election to represent Colorado’s 8th Congressional District.

Baca-Oehlert joins a congested field of Democratic candidates who will face off in the June primary. The winner will go up against Evans, who is serving his first term representing the 8th District, a highly competitive district that includes Weld and Adams counties.

In an interview with Chalkbeat Thursday, Baca-Oehlert said she will lean on her experience as an educator and leader of the Colorado Education Association — the state’s largest teachers union — to focus on the issues that impact everyday Coloradans, such as the economy.

As an educator, she saw how people struggled sometimes to put food on the table or pay rent, while President Donald Trump’s agenda has focused on billionaires, not ordinary citizens, Baca-Oehlert said.

“I plan to work on the things that allow people to live the American Dream,” she said.

Baca-Oehlert will officially announce her bid at Adams City High School where she started her career 28 years ago as a language arts teacher. She has been a teachers union member since the start of her career and spent six years as the president of the CEA.

State Treasurer Dave Young announced this week that he will also join the race. State legislators Shannon Bird and Manny Rutinel have also announced bids to challenge Evans. Yadira Caraveo, who lost the seat to Evans in 2024, is seeking to reclaim it.

Baca-Oehlert became the head of the CEA in 2018 and notched numerous wins for the union, including helping expand collective bargaining rights for public employees across the state and putting pressure on lawmakers to increase school funding.

The union under her leadership also backed the state’s universal preschool program. In addition, Baca-Oehlert helped the union focus heavily on teacher burnout during the pandemic and led efforts on teacher retention and pay increases.

The union did lose several battles, including when Colorado voters rejected the union-supported Proposition CC in 2019, which would have raised money for education. The union weighed in heavily on public policy during the pandemic with varied results, including by putting pressure on the state to slow the return of in-person instruction and helping get teachers vaccinated early.

If elected, Baca-Oehlert said she will take the same willingness to fight for students and teachers to Congress. She added she understands how to build coalitions that keep powerful people in check, and she wants to be a voice that represents middle-class Americans.

“When I look at Congress, I don’t see enough teachers, Latinas, moms, union members,” she said. “But what I do see is a broken system, a very broken system, where we have a lot of politicians who are looking out for the well-connected and the wealthy and not looking out for everyday Coloradans.”

Denver Public Schools declares impasse in contract negotiations with Denver teachers union

2025-05-06T23:13:53+00:00

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Three months into bargaining, Denver Public Schools has declared an impasse in contract negotiations with the Denver teachers union.

An impasse means the district and the union will continue negotiating but with the help of a mediator. The rare step of declaring an impasse last happened in Denver in 2017, about 18 months before the Denver Classroom Teachers Association went on strike in February 2019.

That strike resulted in a new contract that got rid of a controversial pay-for-performance system and boosted wages for teachers and other union members. This year, the Denver teachers union is once again requesting pay raises, as well as smaller class sizes and sustainable caseloads for special education service providers, among other priorities.

In a statement, DPS said the district and union were making “compromises and movement” toward an agreement last month, but progress stalled at an April 28 bargaining session.

“The decision to move to mediation now is to allow us to reach an agreement with the union prior to the end of June,” the district said.

The current contract is set to expire on Aug. 31. Mediation will begin on May 28.

In a press release Tuesday, the union blasted DPS for declaring an impasse during Teacher Appreciation Week. The union accused the district of failing to offer meaningful counterproposals and instead “crossing out DCTA’s proposals without offering alternatives.”

“Rather than bargaining with educators in good faith, the district has chosen to show their love and appreciation for its educators by walking away from the table, claiming all remedies have been exhausted,” union President Rob Gould said in a statement.

“But if that were true, we wouldn’t still be met with weekly stall tactics and surface-level engagement at the table,” Gould said. “The district has refused to offer real solutions, showing they’re comfortable with overcrowded classrooms, unfilled positions, and maintaining the status quo.”

DPS noted that the district and union have previously had success in using mediation, including for the current three-year contract that expires in August. A union spokesperson said that both sides agreed on that 2022 mediation and it wasn’t the result of an impasse.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Thousands of educators rally at Colorado Capitol to protest school funding proposals

2025-03-20T23:51:26+00:00

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Jennifer Pitts stood on the sidewalk near the Colorado Capitol steps on Thursday holding a sign that read “I’d rather be teaching” as cars drove by and honked in support.

Pitts, a Thornton Elementary fifth grade teacher, said she felt it necessary to rally with thousands of other educators to call on state lawmakers to make good on their promise to fund education at levels promised last year and ensure students across the state get the education they deserve.

Several school districts cancelled classes for the day because of the number of teachers who called off work, including a partial Denver Public Schools closure and full cancellation of classes in Aurora Public Schools, Adams 12 Five Star Schools, and Boulder Valley School District

Teachers Danielle Menapace, left, and Jennifer Pitts, center, stand on the sidewalk in front of the Colorado Capitol during a school funding rally on Thurs., March 20, 2025 in Denver, Colorado. Pitts said she called out of work because students deserve more funding support from the state.

“I don’t want to be here,” said Pitts, whose school is part of Adams 12. “I really would rather be teaching. But it’s so important to be here for the kids. That’s the only reason why any of us go into this job.”

Educators from across the state gathered at the rally organized by the Colorado Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, to protest lawmakers’ proposals that would back out of a school funding deal made last year.

The state is facing a $1.2 billion budget shortfall. Last year, state lawmakers adopted a new school funding formula that calls for an additional $500 million investment in K-12 schools over the next six years. Lawmakers now want to invest less next year than originally promised.

For too long, teachers at the rally said, the state has balanced the budget on the backs of students and educators. For almost 15 years — before lawmakers did away with what’s known as the budget stabilization factor in this year’s budget — lawmakers pulled constitutionally mandated funding away from schools for other priorities.

The choices lawmakers have made over the years have led to larger class sizes, less student support, and more strain on teachers, teachers said. This year’s proposals would further hurt education, said Jamie Nied, a Leroy Drive Elementary kindergarten teacher.

She said the state has created a situation where teachers must spend thousands each year to support students. She buys students snacks, clothing, books, pencils, and more.

“We’re very underpaid and underfunded,” she said, “so why are we continuing to cut?”

Gov. Jared Polis’ proposal would increase K-12 funding by $138 million next year. But it would also change the way the state doles out per-pupil funding. Instead of funding school districts based on a four-year enrollment average, Polis wants to eliminate averaging altogether.

A one-year count of students would mean the state is not paying for students who are no longer enrolled in school. It would then use that money to pay for investments in the new formula, Polis said.

However, some school officials said the change would mean far less money for districts that have declining enrollment. That could lead districts to cut teachers or close schools, they said.

Democratic Colorado Speaker of the House Julie McCluskie also has drafted a proposal to keep the four-year average next year, but phase out averaging over several years. Her proposal would also slow the phase-in of the new school funding formula from six years to seven years and 18% of the required $500 million to 10% next year.

In an interview Wednesday, Polis said he’s open to phasing out student averaging over time, but added districts would still lose money due to declining enrollment eventually. He said a slow phase-out would only delay the inevitable and cost the state more money.

“I think from the state perspective, the moral ground is that we should fund students who are there versus students who have not been there in several years,” he said.

Colorado teachers rallied to support more funding for schools on Thurs., March 20, 2025 in Denver, Colorado.

Horizon High School German teacher Jason Herrman said it’s unacceptable that lawmakers would go back on a deal made last year.

“It’s just very frustrating when there’s continual cuts and cuts and cuts,” he said.

Colorado Education Association President Kevin Vick said during the rally that teachers are leaving the profession because of the state’s budget decisions.

He called on lawmakers to figure out a long-term funding solution for schools that doesn’t leave the state in a continual cycle of having to cut back on what’s required or what’s promised.

“We have to stop this pattern where every year the budget feels like ‘The Hunger Games,’ pitting one part of our needs against another,” Vick said to cheers from the crowd. “We are not tribute.”

Denver teachers won’t get bigger raises after board upholds arbitrator’s decision in pay dispute

2025-03-05T04:48:14+00:00

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Denver teachers will not get a 5.2% cost-of-living raise after the Denver school board voted Tuesday to accept an arbitrator’s decision in a pay dispute between Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association.

The dispute centered on a provision in the teachers union contract that said if Colorado lawmakers boosted funding to DPS by reducing the budget stabilization factor, Denver teachers could get bigger cost-of-living raises. Those raises would have been 5.2% this year, the same cost-of-living raise given to the superintendent and other district administrators.

Although state lawmakers got rid of the budget stabilization factor altogether, ensuring the state will no longer withhold money from K-12 schools, DPS said it didn’t have enough money to cover a 5.2% cost-of-living raise for teachers on top of the step-and-lane raises that most receive each year for their experience and education. Instead, the district gave teachers a 2.06% cost-of-living raise that, coupled with step-and-lane increases, equaled 5.2% total.

The teachers union disagreed with that decision, and the case ended up before an arbitrator. The arbitrator’s decision had not been made public as of Tuesday night, but both the district and the union confirmed that the arbitrator sided with DPS last month.

The Denver school board upheld the arbitrator’s decision in a 4-3 vote after meeting with the school district’s attorney in a closed-door executive session Tuesday.

Scott Esserman was one of four board members who voted in favor of the arbitrator’s decision. A former teacher, he said that he supports educators but that voters elected him to ensure the district is financially viable — a responsibility he said is even more important amid uncertainty about potential federal education funding cuts.

“I believe it is first and foremost our responsibility to ensure the district continues to operate in a fiscally responsible manner,” Esserman said.

Board Vice President Marlene De La Rosa and board members Kimberlee Sia and John Youngquist joined Esserman in voting to accept the arbitrator’s decision.

Board President Carrie Olson and board members Xóchitl “Sochi” Gaytán and Michelle Quattlebaum voted against the arbitrator’s decision. If the board had rejected the decision, it would have been up to board members to decide how much more to pay teachers.

“I know the Latino families in my district, they’re appalled — they’re appalled that teachers were shafted,” Gaytán said. She said that when teachers are disrespected, they leave the profession.

Educators, parents, and a student pleaded with the board before the vote Tuesday to reject the arbitrator’s decision and give teachers a 5.2% cost-of-living raise.

They described educators who work two jobs, live in rented basement apartments with no hope of owning a home, and struggle to afford baby formula. They pointed out that Superintendent Alex Marrero got a 5.2% cost-of-living raise and a $17,000 bonus this school year.

“DPS has ensured the rich get richer and the poor get poorer,” said Chris Christoff, a kindergarten and first grade teacher at Centennial elementary school. “The poor in this case are the people working directly in our schools and with our students.”

Per the union contract, teachers will receive a onetime $1,000 payment that the arbitrator ordered DPS to pay within 90 days of the decision. District officials said the bonus will cost $6.6 million this year. Giving teachers a 5.2% cost-of-living raise would have cost $18 million this year and “every single year moving forward,” DPS attorney Aaron Thompson said, because it would have added to teachers’ base salaries.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Arbitrator sides with Denver Public Schools in dispute with teachers union over pay raises

2025-02-14T01:14:33+00:00

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An arbitrator has sided with Denver Public Schools in a pay dispute between the school district and the teachers union over the size of teacher raises this school year, according to a letter from Superintendent Alex Marrero and a statement from the Denver Classroom Teachers Association.

The dispute centered on a provision in the teachers union contract that said if Colorado lawmakers boosted funding to DPS by reducing the so-called budget stabilization factor, Denver teachers could get bigger cost-of-living raises.

Although state lawmakers eliminated the budget stabilization factor altogether last year, ensuring the state will no longer withhold money from K-12 schools to pay for other priorities, DPS said its state funding increase wasn’t enough to cover the bigger raises this school year. The union disagreed, and the dispute eventually landed before an arbitrator.

The next step is for the Denver school board to vote on whether to accept the arbitrator’s decision. If they accept it, Denver teachers won’t get what the union argued its members should: a 5.2% cost-of-living raise in addition to the annual pay bumps many teachers received based on their years of experience and level of education.

Instead, DPS gave teachers raises totaling 5.2% this school year, which was inclusive of both a cost-of-living adjustment and step-and-lane increases based on their experience and education.

The district also promised union members a $1,000 one-time payment that it hasn’t yet paid. The arbitrator ordered DPS to do so within 90 days, according to a letter from Marrero to the school board Wednesday that Chalkbeat obtained in an open records request.

Marrero’s letter said the arbitrator’s decision was “not a surprise to us.” He lamented that “both the district and DCTA had [to] waste resources to reaffirm what we negotiated.”

A statement sent by a district spokesperson said “Denver Public Schools (DPS) has great respect and admiration for every member of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association (DCTA). We were pleased to learn that the arbitrator confirmed that we have followed the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with DCTA that was agreed to in August of 2022.”

Union President Rob Gould characterized the arbitrator’s decision differently. In a statement, he said it “was made on a technicality in contract language — not on whether DPS could afford to pay its educators, despite their many excuses.”

Gould said that DPS “has the money.” He pointed to Marrero’s recent $17,000 bonus and a 5.2% cost-of-living adjustment that DPS gave to district administrators this year as proof. Gould also referenced a 2019 teachers union strike over pay and other issues.

“Six years ago this week, educators were on the picket line because DPS refused to invest in its educators and students,” Gould said. “Once again, DPS’s priorities are leaving students and educators to bear the consequences of their poor and petty decisions.”

The current three-year contract between the teachers union and the district is set to expire on Aug. 31. The two sides will begin negotiating a new contract Feb. 24, the union said.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

The Colorado Education Association says it will fight any cuts to K-12 education budgets

2025-01-13T22:56:33+00:00

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As Colorado lawmakers figure out how to wrangle budget cuts, the state’s largest teachers union said it will fight to ensure legislators do not withhold money from schools.

In fact, the Colorado Education Association in its annual State of Education Report released on Monday underscored the need for the state to increase per-pupil funding beyond current levels. The report from CEA seeks to bring awareness to pressing issues facing educators but also lists out the union’s annual legislative priorities.

Lawmakers have a tough job ahead of them to manage a nearly billion dollar shortfall due to increases in costs for programs such as Medicaid. Some have said they want to fully fund schools and not reinstate a mechanism known as the budget stabilization factor — underfunding schools to shift money to other priorities.

The CEA report also calls for more overall funding. Colorado ranks near the bottom of the nation in teacher salaries despite being one of the more expensive states to live in, the report says.

Earlier this month, two separate analyses commissioned by lawmakers said the state must invest billions more to adequately resource schools and help students learn.

The CEA report says without more funding and reforms, “the future of public education in Colorado hangs in the balance.”

“Now more than ever, we must work diligently to protect the integrity of public education, safeguard and enhance funding for our schools and seize opportunities to drive meaningful progress,” said Kevin Vick, union president, in a news release.

The report’s other priorities are similar to some CEA has championed in the past, including teacher raises and better working conditions.

Here are key issues the union identified:

The report says 87% of its members ranked compensation increases as one of their top priorities. The report also says almost 90% identified appropriate workloads and staffing conditions in their schools as an issue. The report says these challenges aren’t new, but Colorado leaders must do more to invest in public education.
CEA also says members want to feel more appreciated, and that issue relates to high workloads and “attacks on curriculum” and educator autonomy.
And 89% of educators surveyed by the union said they want increased mental health support for educators and students. The report says the survey underscores the link between mental health and safety.

And here are the union’s legislative priorities:

The union says it will advocate for lawmakers to protect public school staff, including those who live under threat of deportation, from federal attacks; fight against any policies that try to dismantle public education; and ensure educators are protected from “anti-worker and anti-public education threats.”
The union says it will fight attempts to cut school funding; push for lawmakers to create stability for schools, including by opposing any unfunded mandates; and resist policies that move public classroom dollars to private companies.
The union will prioritize lobbying for policies that support educators, strengthen workers rights, and keep students and staff safe.

Smaller class sizes will be a priority for the Denver teachers union as it negotiates a new contract

2025-01-09T01:46:57+00:00

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Smaller class sizes will be one of the Denver teachers union’s top priorities when it begins negotiating its next contract with Denver Public Schools this year.

Aside from the ever-present issue of teacher pay, class size caps are top-of-mind for many teachers as they grapple with how to catch students up from pandemic learning losses, reverse troubling absenteeism trends, and attend to students’ increasingly complex mental health needs, union leaders said.

Class size caps haven’t changed in Denver since 1994, when the union went on strike and the district agreed to a cap of 35 students, among other issues.

One of the concerned teachers is Matt Meyer, who teaches fourth grade at Denver Green School Southeast. Some classes at his school have swelled to the maximum capacity of 35 students due to an influx of migrant students from Venezuela and other countries.

Meyer’s classroom is both cheerful and bursting at the seams. Walking through it can feel like navigating a minefield of puffy coats and Minecraft backpacks hanging from the backs of chairs. His classroom door is constantly swinging open, its squeaky hinges announcing the arrival of another student coming back from the bathroom or leaving for a specialized learning group.

His 9- and 10-year-old students are still young enough to skip rather than walk back to their seats, but old enough that they take up a considerable amount of room. As the students worked at their desks on a recent Monday, one girl accidentally invaded another’s personal bubble.

“I know there’s not a lot of space in here,” Meyer said to the girl. “Are you okay to keep working here for a bit or do you want to find another spot?”

“Find another spot,” she said.

He directed her to a lone empty desk at the front of the classroom that was sandwiched between a Chromebook charging rack and a rolling cart full of lunch boxes.

“She came from another DPS school with 22 kids in a classroom,” Meyer said later of the girl. “I can have her go sit by herself, but then she’s by herself.”

That’s contrary to the way Meyer likes to teach.

“At DGS, we are all about hands-on learning,” he said. “Last week, we pulled out Base 10 blocks. Kids learn best when they are doing hands-on activities and talking to each other in collaborative groups. It’s hard to do that with as many kids in our room.”

Denver Public Schools declined an interview request for this story. But in written answers to questions from Chalkbeat, a district spokesperson said that class size is a concern, but “that lower class sizes are often correlated with an increase in staffing, so we need to be cognizant of that while balancing a shrinking budget.”

School districts’ state funding is based on student enrollment. Despite the recent enrollment boosts from migrant students, Denver is predicting a 9% decline in enrollment by 2028.

Asked if the district would be open to lowering the class size cap, the spokesperson wrote that “DPS is open to discussing any ideas that would be beneficial to improving student outcomes.”

The current three-year contract between the teachers union and the district is set to expire on Aug. 31. Union leaders said they hope to start negotiations next month. A district spokesperson said representatives from both sides will meet next week to discuss meeting details.

Denver’s average class size is far below 35 students

Documents obtained by Chalkbeat in an open records request show that the average elementary class size in Denver last school year was 23 students, far below the 35-student cap.

But about 38% of elementary classrooms had more than 25 students, according to the documents. Per the current contract, those classrooms are entitled to receive between one and three hours of support per day from a paraprofessional, depending on the class size. About 9% of elementary classrooms had 30 students or more.

The average middle school class size last school year was 23 students, the documents say. The average high school class size was lower at 19 students.

A sign on Matt Meyer's classroom door reads, "I'll be there because our students deserve reasonable class sizes." The sign is referring to a kickoff event for negotiating a new teachers union contract.

But 28% of middle school core classes and 20% of high school core classes had 30 students or more. English, math, social studies, and science are considered by DPS to be core classes.

Leaders with the Denver Classroom Teachers Association said in interviews that if the majority of DPS class sizes are indeed that low, the district shouldn’t oppose lowering the class size cap to a number the union sees as more manageable, such as between 20 and 25 students.

“If it’s true that the majority of schools have these lower class sizes, then it shouldn’t be a problem to lower those class size limits,” said union President Rob Gould.

Brian Weaver, a sixth grade teacher and co-chair of the union’s bargaining team, said that even if only 20% of classes are above 30 students, “that’s still a lot of teachers and still a lot of students that are experiencing this overloaded class size.” DPS serves about 90,000 students.

Weaver said the current solution for large elementary class sizes — paraprofessional support — can be hard to come by, especially if class sizes increase mid-year. Weaver said he has had classes that started with 26 students and ended with 34.

“Getting paras mid year is almost impossible,” Weaver said. “The admin says, ‘Hey, I’m looking for a para and nobody is applying,’ but you still have this class size that is unmanageable.”

Middle and high school teachers with larger class sizes don’t get the same type of paraprofessional support under the current contract. Instead, the contract specifies that no secondary teacher should teach more than 175 students per day.

New York City has a law governing class size that caps kindergarten to third grade classes at 20 students, fourth to eighth grade classes at 23, and high school classes at 25. Colorado has no such law. Here, policies and union contracts differ from district to district.

Some union contracts in Colorado have concrete class size caps. Others don’t. Among the ones that do, Aurora Public Schools’ caps are lower than Denver’s caps. In Aurora, kindergarten and first grade classes over 22 students, second and third grade classes over 25, fourth through eighth grade classes over 30, and high school classes over 32 warrant a review.

“We know there are only so many hours in the day, and when it comes to student needs, we want to be able to focus on our kids,” said Michelle Horwitz, a bilingual speech language pathologist and co-chair of the Denver union bargaining team. “When classes are upwards of 30 or 35 kids, the individualized instruction and one-on-one isn’t happening.”

In addition to smaller class sizes, the union’s bargaining priorities include competitive teacher pay and benefits, sustainable caseloads for special education service providers, educator rights, and making sure Denver schools are safe and welcoming, union leaders said.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Faced with possible school closures, Denver teachers seek clarity about their jobs

2024-11-21T02:04:23+00:00

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At lunchtime meetings last week at Denver schools that may close or shrink, teachers were full of questions about their fate: Would educators at the closing schools be guaranteed jobs next year? Would they be able to follow their students to new schools?

Unlike in 2023, when Denver Public Schools made a deal with the teachers union to guarantee educators at closing schools a one-year job at the schools that received their students, no such agreement exists now. With the Denver school board set to vote Thursday on whether to close or partially close 10 schools, many teachers are feeling uncertain. Students are, too.

“I don’t think it’s right to close our school,” a fifth grader named Analizeth told school board members who visited Castro Elementary, one of the schools that may be closed. “It’s not fair to the kids or the teachers. We have built so many relationships with so many great people in this school.”

Denver Classroom Teachers Association President Rob Gould said the school district has declined this year to negotiate a memorandum of understanding for teachers at closing schools. The closures would affect about 200 educators, Gould said.

“Twice we offered to negotiate an MOU to ensure shared trust and understanding in the process for our dedicated and committed educators,” Gould said Monday at a school board public comment session about the proposed closures. “The district declined.”

But Denver Public Schools spokesperson Scott Pribble said in a statement that it’s unfair to say the district declined to negotiate an MOU. He said the district had “informal conversations” with the union about a potential MOU but did not receive a formal request to negotiate until Tuesday.

“We will respond within 10 school days as required by the collective bargaining agreement,” he said.

Denver Superintendent Alex Marrero proposed a plan earlier this month to close seven schools and partially close three more due to declining enrollment.

Castro Elementary, Columbian Elementary, Denver School of Innovation and Sustainable Design, International Academy of Denver at Harrington, Palmer Elementary, Schmitt Elementary, and West Middle School would be closed under Marrero’s proposal.

Kunsmiller Creative Arts Academy, Dora Moore ECE-8 School, and Denver Center for International Studies would be partially closed, with each school losing some grades.

District human resources officials repeatedly said last week that if the schools are closed, the district will follow the regular procedure for laid-off teachers spelled out in the union contract.

Teachers who have earned Colorado’s version of tenure and are unable to find another job on their own would be guaranteed a one-year position in the district next school year.

Non-tenured teachers would be offered a yearlong position if they teach special education, middle or high school math, or are bilingual and work with Spanish-speaking students who are learning English. All other non-tenured teachers would only be offered a one-year position if they enroll in programs to become certified to work in those hard-to-fill roles.

District officials promised that teachers at the closed schools would get priority to interview for open positions and help with updating their resumes and writing cover letters. But many teachers balked at that offer, saying that type of help isn’t useful.

The MOU from 2023, when the Denver school board voted to close three schools with low enrollment, said that if two or more schools were consolidated into one, the staff would also consolidate for a single year. That happened at Cheltenham Elementary last school year, resulting in what the principal called “a dream” of having an abundance of staff members to serve a consolidated school community where many students have high needs.

This year’s school closure proposal is more complicated. Instead of straightforward consolidations, Marrero has said he is striving to give families more choices by creating new enrollment zones to serve students displaced by the closures.

Enrollment zones are big boundaries that contain several schools. Families choose from among the schools in the zone. That means students from the closed schools would likely be more scattered, making it harder for staff to follow them.

This year’s proposal also includes what Marrero calls “grade-level reconfigurations,” which are the plans to shrink three schools by cutting some grades. Marrero doesn’t need school board approval to reconfigure schools, and Gould said nothing in the union contract addresses what happens to teachers who lose their jobs as the result of a reconfiguration.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Text to Colorado voters falsely suggests teachers union chief supports school choice amendment

2024-10-18T23:41:11+00:00

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The president of Colorado’s largest teachers union has denounced a text message to Colorado voters that falsely implies he supports Amendment 80, which would enshrine school choice in the state constitution.

The message includes an audio clip featuring Kevin Vick, the president of the Colorado Education Association. It does not include a disclosure of who paid for it, a potential violation of state law.

“They are blatantly misrepresenting the position of myself and thousands of teachers across the state, who have been vocally opposing this damaging initiative that would open the door to diverting millions in funding away from the public schools that educate 95% of our kids and funnel it to private schools,” Vick said in a statement.

The text message juxtaposes an audio clip of Vick saying “school choice has worked very well for students for years” with an unattributed written message saying Amendment 80 would let families keep the school choice that’s in place now.

Amendment 80 opponents note that the ability for parents to choose where to send their children to school has existed for decades and believe that the amendment backers’ true purpose is to open the door for public education funds to go to private schools.

If Amendment 80 fails, the state’s current school choice will not change. Advocates for the measure say that passing it guarantees that legislators can’t attack school choice in the future.

Voter guide: Amendment 80 would enshrine school choice in Colorado Constitution

On Thursday, Bri Buentello, the director of government affairs for Stand Colorado, another education organization opposed to Amendment 80, filed a complaint with the Secretary of State’s office regarding the messages.

A spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s office said that because the complaint has been filed, the office will not comment on whether the text messages violated disclosure laws.

The complaint is directed at Colorado Dawn IEC, an independent expenditure committee, which reported that it spent more than $872,000 on mail and text communications in support of Amendment 80 on October 12. Colorado Dawn is also listed as paying for the website that supports Amendment 80.

The complaint notes that because the committee is not registered as an issue committee, it may be violating state law by supporting Amendment 80.

One issue committee, School Choice for Every Child, registered with the state to support Initiative 138, which is the former name for Amendment 80. But that committee has not reported receiving or spending any money this year.

Both the issue committee and Colorado Dawn IEC have the same registered agent, Katie Kennedy, who did not respond to a request for comment about the text messages.

Colorado Dawn IEC has been the subject of at least two other similar complaints in the past, including one that resulted in a fine for improper disclosures.

Many of this year’s contributions to the Colorado Dawn independent expenditure committee come from an affiliated nonprofit that according to tax filings is chaired by Steve Durham, a Republican member of the State Board of Education, and from another group called Protect our Kids, run by Luke Niforatos, a vocal opponent of drug legalization.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Kevin Vick, CEA’s new president, wants to share the purpose he found as an educator

2024-08-30T21:57:33+00:00

Kevin Vick moved to Colorado in 1993 and quickly found the ski slopes. Six years later, he was skiing 100 days a year and in the summers went mountain biking and rock climbing.

He loved being outdoors, but he felt like something was missing from his life.

“I didn’t feel like I was having a real great purpose,” he said. “Or I was really making a difference.”

He turned to teaching and found his purpose helping students as a social studies teacher and prep football coach. He also taught other educators to advocate for themselves and organized them to better their work conditions.

Now, in his 24th year as an educator, Vick, 55, who has taught at Doherty High School, has taken over as president of the Colorado Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union. He wants to use his platform to make sure Coloradans know how much hard work and dedication educators put into their jobs.

He also wants to share his belief that teaching is full of purpose and teachers make a difference every day.

“I think people need to understand just how rewarding education is and how admirable the people that are in it really are,” he said. “They’re trying to make students better, Colorado better, and, ultimately, the world better.”

Vick recently talked with Chalkbeat Colorado about his new position as president.

Vick is stepping out of the vice president role

As the former vice president of CEA, Vick worked closely with former President Amie Baca-Oehlert.

“You kind of serve at the pleasure of the president,” Vick said. “So whatever Amie needed, I was managing.”

He doesn’t plan big changes to the priorities of the union, which has 40,000 members statewide. As a former Colorado Springs Education Association president, Vick says he cares about empowering teachers to have a voice and bargain at the local level.

Vick also cares about how testing and state accountability impact teachers and students. He feels accountability has created a one-size-fits-all approach. More consideration should be given to the challenges that happen in classrooms.

“Schools are threatened by sanctioning from the state to produce results, regardless of what the students may be experiencing in that environment,” he said. “This creates a lot of disconnect for the teacher, because of their expertise, they know where a student should be. But they’re not able to because of the larger policy pressures.”

Vick will also have to tackle new issues in education that his predecessors did not, such as technology such as cellphones and artificial intelligence.

Both are tools that can help teachers, but both must be used responsibly, he said.

For instance, Vick understands the debate around cellphones and that they can be disruptive. But many teachers have innovative ways of using cellphones in the classroom, he said.

Districts should consider how teachers teach before making broad policies, he added.

Workplace conditions are especially important to Vick

School is a workplace, Vick said.

Vick believes better work environments start with pay, and many teachers have a hard time making ends meet on their salaries. Educators can barely afford to cover their health care, he said. Colorado and other states have struggled to keep teachers in the classroom because of pay, and many educators end up working multiple jobs because they don’t earn enough teaching.

“Educators do get better every year of their career,” he said. “They just get a higher skill level every year. And so we need to keep them in as long as possible.”

Vick will continue to push for more state education funding

This week, Vick appeared before lawmakers this week during a special session to help secure a deal that could avoid two ballot initiatives that many predicted would devastate schools and government services. The special session called by Gov. Jared Polis was meant to help preserve education funding while also striking a deal on property tax relief.

Vick defended the property tax deal to fend off the ballot initiatives.

And for years, CEA has been a constant in legislative committees, especially when it comes to calling for increased school funding. This year, Colorado lawmakers ended the practice of withholding money from schools to pay for other priorities.

Not much will change there with Vick. He said he supports a statewide ballot initiative to boost school funding.

“We feel that the timing is pretty good right now to make that case to voters that our schools do deserve better and our kids deserve better,” he said.

Denver Public Schools, teachers union in dispute over pay raises

2024-05-13T22:28:54+00:00

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The Denver teachers union says its contract with Denver Public Schools should mean bigger pay raises next school year. But DPS says it doesn’t have the money.

At issue is a provision in the contract between DPS and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association. The provision says that if Colorado lawmakers boost funding to DPS by reducing the so-called budget stabilization factor, a mechanism that withholds state funding from K-12 schools to pay for other priorities, Denver teachers could get bigger cost-of-living raises.

After years of advocacy from both DPS and the teachers union, Colorado lawmakers did indeed vote this year to “fully fund” K-12 schools going forward. But DPS and DCTA disagree about whether the Denver district will have enough money to pay teachers those bigger raises.

“We did our part,” said Rob Gould, president of the DCTA. “We advocated.”

DPS should raise its teacher salaries to stay competitive with surrounding districts, Gould said, many of which are set to pay starting teachers more than Denver does.

“Just like everybody, we’re trying to put gas in our car to go to work, we’re trying to keep up with costs at the grocery store, we’re trying to keep up with rent,” Gould said of Denver teachers.

But DPS officials said the expected increase in state funding is not enough to trigger the provision about cost-of-living raises in the contract, which they said has been favorable to teachers overall. The average salary for Denver teachers has increased 47% since 2018, a year before the union went on strike for higher pay, according to a district presentation.

“We love teachers,” said district spokesperson Bill Good. “We value our teachers. This is a contract dispute, for lack of a better term, and has no bearing on how much we value our teachers and appreciate our teachers.”

The contract between DPS and DCTA dictates how much teachers are paid. Signed in 2022, it promised that if state lawmakers boosted DPS’ funding by enough money to cover the cost of teachers’ guaranteed step-and-lane raises, teachers could also get “full” — meaning more generous — cost-of-living raises in the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years.

That happened for the 2023-24 school year. Teachers and other union members got an 8% cost-of-living raise on top of raises for years of experience (steps) and education (lanes). In total, union educators got an average 11.5% raise this year, according to the district.

But DPS officials said the district doesn’t have enough money to do the same in 2024-25.

Next school year, officials argue that the expected increase in state funding to DPS won’t cover the cost of teachers’ guaranteed step-and-lane raises. DPS will be about $3 million short, said Chuck Carpenter, the district’s chief financial officer. As such, the provision in the contract granting teachers’ full cost-of-living raises won’t be triggered, district officials said.

Instead, DPS is proposing to give educators a 5.2% raise plus a $1,000 stipend next year. DCTA is asking for raises that would total an average of 8.3%.

To raise awareness of what the union characterized as DPS “backtracking” on its agreement, educators staged “walk-ins” at schools across the city last week and were set to hold a rally outside a Denver school board meeting Monday afternoon.

In an email from Denver Superintendent Alex Marrero to Gould, Marrero wrote that DCTA “knew, or should have known, that it was unlikely, if not impossible” for the district’s budget to increase enough for the contract provision to be triggered two years in a row.

Gould disagreed that the union knew its members wouldn’t get more generous raises. And he questioned the district’s integrity in making the contract deal.

“Why on earth would you make a deal if you had already known you couldn’t pay it?” Gould said. “To me, that’s bad faith bargaining.”

The teachers union disputes that DPS is $3 million short and has filed a grievance with the district. Union leaders said the district should take into account the annual “turnover savings” that result when veteran teachers at the top of the pay scale retire and are replaced by early-career educators who make less money. Over the past two school years, that savings has been about $10 million a year, according to district documents cited by the union.

But DPS said the turnover savings are not part of the calculus in the most recent contract.

“There is nothing in the contract that says if the money isn’t there on the [budget stabilization] factor buy down, we can go to these other sources to get that money,” Good said. “Our position is because the trigger wasn’t met, we are holding to the contract, which is 5.2% and $1,000.”

If the trigger was met and DPS had to pay the approximately 5,700 educators covered by the union contract a full cost-of-living raise, Carpenter said it would cost DPS another $16.9 million.

“That is a lot more than what we’ve got,” he said.

Gould, on the other hand, said the turnover savings are referenced in the contract. The provision in question mentions that costs to the district should be calculated “on actual expense,” which Gould said is shorthand for the cost of step-and-lane raises minus the turnover savings.

A hearing on DCTA’s grievance is scheduled for Tuesday, Gould said. If the district hearing officer sides with DPS, Gould said the union is prepared to request arbitration or eventually file a lawsuit.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado Education Association elects current VP Kevin Vick as next president of the teachers union

2024-04-08T18:55:21+00:00

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Colorado’s largest teachers union has chosen its current vice president, Kevin Vick, to lead the organization of nearly 40,000 educators for the next three years.

Vick was elected president of the Colorado Education Association at a delegate assembly Saturday, a union spokesperson said. Vick, a high school social studies teacher, has been vice president of the union for the past six years. He is set to begin a three-year term as president in July.

Kevin Vick will be the next president of the Colorado Education Association.

Vick has been on leave from Colorado Springs Schools D 11 to serve in union leadership.

“Together, we have fought for better wages, fairer workplace conditions and a fully funded education system in Colorado,” Vick said in a statement.

“I am confident that together, we will continue to champion the rights of educators, advocate for the needs of our students, and foster a culture of collective unity and strength.”

In the past year, the Colorado Education Association pushed state lawmakers to end the budget stabilization factor, which is a process of withholding K-12 education funding to pay for other priorities. The union also backed Proposition HH, a ballot measure that could have increased school funding but that Colorado voters soundly rejected last November.

Union President Amie Baca-Oehlert could not run again due to term limits. In a statement, she praised Vick’s “unwavering commitment to bettering the educational landscape in Colorado.”

“His proven track record of leadership, coupled with his profound understanding of the nuances of our education system’s strengths and challenges, uniquely positions him to steer CEA towards even greater heights of success and impact,” she said.

Liz Waddick, a Spanish teacher at Summit High School in Breckenridge and a member of the local Summit County Education Association, was elected vice president of the statewide union.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Aurora teachers’ starting pay could be at least $59,000 next school year

2024-01-10T22:33:12+00:00

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After a rocky year of negotiations, the Aurora school district reached an agreement with the teachers union to increase salaries for the current school year, and to guarantee next year’s starting pay will be no less than $59,000.

The new agreement, which may establish one of the highest starting salaries among districts in the metro area, was ratified by the teachers union at the beginning of this month. The district’s school board is expected to approve it at a meeting Tuesday night.

Prior to this agreement, the district’s starting salary stood at $46,894.

Aurora’s union and district had failed to reach an agreement on pay raises for the current school year last spring, went into arbitration over the summer, and eventually had to use a third-party fact finder to settle their disputes. The fact finder’s report, signed Nov. 28, found more evidence to side with the district’s position that it could not afford to pay for salaries in the way the union had proposed.

The dispute was about who got raises, and how much those raises would be. The district wanted to allocate the largest pay bump to starting teachers as a way to help recruit new staff and to be more competitive with other districts.

But union leaders argued it would be unfair to pit new teachers against veteran educators, and to not reward veteran educators who had been in the district during some difficult years. The union had proposed an equal raise for all teachers, regardless of how long they had been employed.

The agreement more closely resembles the district’s proposal than the union’s. It allocates a larger raise to first year teachers, and smaller increases for teachers with more years of experience. But the difference between pay bumps has narrowed.

In addition to the raises that will become immediate and retroactive to the beginning of the current school year, the union and district also signed a memorandum of understanding that lays out a plan for next year’s salaries.

The pair will create a “joint salary schedule committee” to restructure the way teachers earn higher pay with more years of experience or education. As part of that plan, the agreement states that the starting salary for first year teachers will be “no less than $59,000” in 2024-25. Also, all teachers will get an increase of at least $3,000 from their 2023-2024 salary to their 2024-2025 salary.

Typically, districts and teachers unions negotiate salaries for the coming school year each spring, so most districts don’t yet know what their exact starting salaries will be this next fall.

But when comparing the minimum $59,000 starting salary that Aurora will start with to current starting salaries in other metro-area districts, Aurora’s would be among the highest.

With the pay hike that will kick in immediately if the plan is approved by the school board Tuesday, the starting salary for this current year will go up by $4,500 to more than $51,000.

Denver’s current starting salary is $54,141, and Cherry Creek’s is $58,710. Adams 12 also raised starting pay to $58,000 this year. Currently, one of the highest starting salaries is in Westminster, where new teachers start at $60,935.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

A Denver charter school teacher’s push to start a union could set precedent

2023-03-07T20:39:44+00:00

A teacher at a KIPP charter school in Denver is leading a unionization push that could determine whether charter schools in Colorado are public or private employers, a key factor in whether their teachers can unionize under state law.

Cody Taffet is in his second year of teaching at KIPP Northeast Denver Leadership Academy, a charter high school in far northeast Denver. In January, after administrators abruptly changed the school’s schedule without input from teachers, Taffet filed paperwork with the National Labor Relations Board to form a union called the Colorado Charter Teachers Association.

“I was talking with some teachers and we wanted more democracy in the workplace,” said Taffet, who left a corporate job to become a teacher because he wanted to give back. “We wanted our input to be not only valued and appreciated but also considered and reckoned with.”

But the union organization effort was rejected by the regional director of the National Labor Relations Board in Denver, who found that charter schools are essentially public employers. While federal law protects the rights of private sector employees to organize unions and engage in collective bargaining, public sector education workers don’t have those rights under state law.

Now Taffet is appealing that decision to the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C., which has upheld the right of charter school workers to unionize in other cases.

The outcome could open the door for charter school unions in Colorado or close off that option in a sector where educators are sometimes asked to work longer hours and often paid less than teachers at traditional public schools. The average charter school teacher salary in Denver in the 2021-22 school year was $44,475, while the average traditional public school teacher salary was $70,910, according to the Colorado Department of Education.

Charter schools have what University of Colorado Boulder law Professor Ahmed White describes as “features of both public and private entities.” All Colorado charter schools are publicly funded but privately run by nonprofit organizations. None are unionized.

An attempt last year by teachers at another Colorado charter network, New America School, failed after the charter network’s board rejected the teachers’ bid to unionize.

State labor department officials have speculated that charter schools could be seen as nonprofits that contract with the government rather than government employers. That would mean they are private sector employers.

But when the KIPP case came before Regional Director Paula S. Sawyer, she disagreed. In a dismissal decision last month, she found that charter schools in Colorado are a “political subdivision” and answer to government officials.

For example, Colorado law gives the State Board of Education the power to revoke the charter of an underperforming charter school, Sawyer wrote. She also noted that the state education commissioner can appoint and remove members of the unelected boards that govern individual charter schools and make changes to the schools’ governing documents.

Because of that, Sawyer found that charter schools are in the same category as public schools. State law says Colorado school districts don’t have to recognize teachers unions, though several dozen districts do so. A public sector collective bargaining law passed by state lawmakers last year specifically left out K-12 employees.

Private employers, on the other hand, are required to recognize unions if a majority of employees indicate they want to form one.

Taffet says KIPP feels like a private employer to him, and employees need a way to have a voice. Having to weather unilateral changes without the chance to give input is “destabilizing and demoralizing as a teacher in the building,” he said. Turnover is high, he added.

KIPP Colorado officials did not return emails and a phone call seeking comment.

Many charter leaders say collective bargaining agreements would limit their flexibility and take away from their ability to serve students.

In his request to review the dismissal, Taffet noted that charter teachers are paid by their networks. His paychecks, he said, are signed by KIPP, a nationwide network started in Texas that has 280 schools across the country, not by Denver Public Schools.

The district doesn’t control the day-to-day operations of his school, either, he said. And charter teachers like him can’t join the Denver Classroom Teachers Association.

The lack of clarity about the status of charter school employees in Colorado “creates an exploitable loophole” for employers, Taffet wrote in his request for review.

“While these entities are ultimately required to respond to the demands of the state and its authority, they are granted a unique privilege in that they are functionally inoculated from the concerns of their employees,” he wrote.

If the National Labor Relations Board under President Joe Biden agrees with him, the case could set a sort of precedent for Colorado. But White, the law professor, cautioned that the precedent would be a temporary one that future administrations could change.

“To the extent that other schools are funded and managed in an identical and very similar fashion, then it would establish an administrative precedent,” White said.

“But I say that with a caveat that the precedent established by an administrative agency at this level in particular is not really set in stone in the way precedent established by the U.S. Supreme Court would be.”

Still, Taffet has hope. He named the union the Colorado Charter Teachers Association with the thought that if his bid is successful, teachers from other charter schools could join.

“For me, personally, I’m in a place where I’m trying to be more authentic every day and use my existence to do something meaningful,” he said.

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado K-12, higher education workers would get state workplace protections in bill

2023-03-01T23:47:18+00:00

A year after Colorado lawmakers denied employees of school districts and public universities the right to unionize and negotiate contracts, legislators are considering a bill that would provide some protections for them and other public sector employees.

Senate Bill 111 would extend rights for public employees who openly express views about the workplace, start the process of forming a union, or participate in organizing. Public workers would also be protected from retaliation, discrimination, and intimidation from employers. Private sector employees already have these rights under federal law.

The bill doesn’t require public employers to recognize unions or grant workers the ability to strike. But the legislation, which a Senate committee advanced Tuesday, could represent a notable step forward for K-12 and higher education workers who want stronger labor protections for what they say are crucial workplace rights.

Critics who united to exclude education staff from a law expanding collective bargaining rights last year say this year’s legislation is unnecessary, unfair to employers, and would hurt schools.

Jade Kelly, CWA Local 7799 president, said the bill extends some rights granted to private employees through the National Labor Relations Act, a 1935 law to ensure workers can advocate for better conditions and form labor unions without retaliation. Her union represents higher education workers, library workers, and public defenders, among others.

She said public employees do have certain rights under federal statutes. But Kelly said that employers often violate those laws because a federal complaint must be filed by workers when there are issues. It’s a difficult process that creates hostile work environments where public employees feel they can’t speak out, she said.

Kelly said filing a complaint is expensive and takes up a lot of time and “employers know that.”

By extending the federal rights for private workers to public workers statewide, the bill would ensure the Colorado Department of Labor & Employment enforces these rights and step in when violations happen, mediate any issues, and take action.

Democrats in the state legislature have been pushing for more rights for public sector workers. The legislation lawmakers passed last year grants county employees the right to organize and bargain collectively over pay and working conditions. That law also prohibits strikes, work stoppages, and work slowdowns.

But facing stiff opposition from school district administrators, school boards, higher education officials, and Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, education workers were excluded from last year’s bill.

Senate Bill 111 is sponsored by state Sen. Robert Rodriguez and state Rep. Steven Woodrow, both Denver Democrats. The bill passed the Senate Local Government and Housing Committee on Tuesday with a partisan 4-3 vote.

Many large Colorado school districts voluntarily recognize employee unions and have contracts that include collective bargaining rights, but there is no requirement that they do so. Union members say that leaves many teachers vulnerable.

Mountain Valley School District teacher Kevin Walek, a San Luis Valley teacher union vice president, said teachers worry if they speak out that school district leadership will punish them. Many teachers like him are within their first few years of teaching and on a probationary period.

The bill would help teachers feel like they can use their voice.

“A lot of teachers just keep their head down,” Walek said. “It’s a tough environment.”

In addition to K-12 and higher education workers, the bill would cover a large group of workers, such as county, city, fire, library and public health workers.

The Colorado Education Association and other advocacy groups say the bill grants rights and protections that were skipped over in last year’s collective bargaining bill for many public employees.

Multiple groups want to amend the bill, including the Colorado League of Charter Schools, the Colorado Association of School Executives, and the Colorado Charter School Institute. The committee approved amendments related to unintended consequences the groups identified, such as those related to State Board of Education powers and to ensure management positions wouldn’t be included.

Michelle Murphy, Colorado Rural Schools Alliance executive director, said the bill would substantially disrupt schools. The organization also wants to amend the bill.

“This bill expands employee rights while dialing back and restricting employer rights,” she said.

Opponents include many county and city organizations and governments. Kevin Bommer, Colorado Municipal League executive director, said employers are already required to give employees substantial protections under federal law.

Others also argued there aren’t widespread complaints about improper employer practices. And any such issues can be handled by federal law, they said.

But Kelly said the public ultimately gets hurt when unhappy workers can’t resolve issues quickly with their employers.

“Workers end up leaving or they get to the point where they hate their jobs,” Kelly said. “That creates an adverse effect on anyone who uses public services.”

Denver teachers union, district reach agreement on 8.7% pay increase

2022-09-01T21:45:56+00:00

The Denver teachers union and Denver Public Schools have reached a tentative agreement that raises wages an average of 8.7% and sets a new starting salary a little above $50,000.

The announcement of a deal comes after a marathon bargaining session between the Denver Classroom Teachers Association and district leaders that started Wednesday morning and concluded Thursday morning.

The previous contract, approved after the 2019 teachers strike, expired Wednesday. Students returned to the classroom Aug. 22.

Districts around the region have announced substantial pay raises as they battle staffing shortages, stiff competition for employees, and inflation.

Major sticking points in the negotiations included pay and caseloads for special service providers. The teachers union had proposed a 12% cost-of-living increase on top of planned raises teachers get for years of experience and education levels, known as steps and lanes. The district had proposed a 3.5% cost-of-living raise, with the average increase closer to 6.2% accounting for steps and lanes.

According to a district press release, returning teachers will see an average 8.7% wage increase this year. The deal will cost the district $40.5 million in teacher compensation in the first year. Raises in the second and third years of the deal will be linked to state funding increases, a district spokesperson said.

Starting salary will be set at $50,130 this year, up from $47,291 last year.

The district is also putting an additional $2.5 million into covering rising health insurance costs for all employees, including teachers. The $2.5 million comes from $9 million the district saved by cutting jobs in its central office, the spokesperson said.

“This new deal represents teaching and learning continuity for our teachers and our students, something desperately needed as we all work to help our students get back on track after the pandemic,” Superintendent Alex Marrero said in the press release.

The Denver Classroom Teachers Association said the deal takes “the necessary steps to attract, recruit, and retain the highest quality educators.”

“The past two years have been the most challenging years for both students and educators,” union President Rob Gould said in a statement. “Educators have worked tirelessly to ensure that our students’ needs are met, despite unprecedented challenges. They have stepped up and have gone above and beyond.”

Though the district touted the “protected, non-classroom time” in the new contract as the best in the metro area, the amount of time has not changed: a 45-minute duty-free lunch every day and at least five hours a week of independent planning time for elementary teachers, with secondary teachers getting an additional 45 minutes on top of that.

Widespread staffing shortages last year meant many teachers lost out on planning time and lunch periods as they covered for missing colleagues. The district did not provide details on how it would protect teachers’ time this school year.

The agreement also calls for the creation of a committee to look at class size concerns and teacher evaluation systems, as well as a new platform to discuss racial equity, including efforts to recruit and retain more educators of color. The majority of Denver teachers are white, while the majority of Denver students are not.

Union members and the Denver school board still need to ratify the agreement.

Senior reporter Melanie Asmar contributed to this report.

Bureau Chief Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Pay, caseloads among sticking points in Denver teacher contract negotiations

2022-08-26T18:25:14+00:00

The Denver school district and teachers union are renegotiating the teacher contract for the first time since the union went on strike in 2019 for higher wages.

The deal that ended the strike resulted in big pay boosts. Over the past three years, the median union member has seen their pay grow 31%, according to district calculations. But the three-year, post-strike deal expires Wednesday, and with the cost of living soaring in Denver, the two sides have yet to reach a new agreement.

As usual, salary and benefits are the biggest sticking points. The Denver Classroom Teachers Association has proposed a three-year contract with a 12% cost-of-living raise for 2022-23, on top of educators’ “step and lane” increases, which are the raises they get based on experience and education.

Union President Rob Gould said teachers “want to have a significant cost-of-living increase so we can continue to attract and retain the best educators for our students.”

The district has countered with a 3.5% cost-of-living raise for this school year. When added to step and lane increases, the district calculates that would result in a 6.2% raise.

Teachers in other metro-area districts have gotten sizable raises this year. Aurora Public Schools teachers got an average 8.5% raise, and teachers in Jeffco Public Schools got an average 9% raise. The starting salary for a teacher in Jeffco is now $50,000, which was higher than Denver’s starting salary of $47,291 last year.

Superintendent Alex Marrero said he wants Denver Public Schools to offer the highest teacher pay in the area but the district doesn’t have enough state funding this year. He said recent agreements with other employee unions, including one that raises the pay for paraprofessionals to $20 an hour this year, show his commitment to providing competitive wages.

He also cut employees from what he has called a “bloated” central office and used some of the $9 million in savings to offset rising health care costs for employees.

“I’ve been dealt an unfair hand with me wanting to do what’s right and not having the resources to do it,” said Marrero, who has been superintendent for a little more than a year.

Pay isn’t the only issue on the table. The union is also advocating for lower class sizes for teachers and caseload caps for specialized service providers, such as occupational therapists and speech language pathologists. Many providers say their caseloads are unsustainable.

“We don’t feel heard,” speech therapist Shana Cook told the school board during public comment this week. “I do think there’s a money-first mentality in DPS.”

The union wants class size caps of 24 students for kindergarten through third grade and 25 students for fourth through 12th grade. The current class size cap is 35 students. The contract requires paraprofessionals to help in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms with more than 25 students, and in fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms with more than 27 students.

The district doesn’t currently have a caseload cap for specialized service providers or special education teachers, which educators say leads to burnout and high turnover.

“One of the few new employees who chose to join our team shared that colleagues in our field that previously worked in DPS have warned them not to work in the district, stating that they were underpaid, undervalued, and overworked,” speech therapist Jenni Scobey said.

But Marrero disagrees that caseload or class size caps are the solution. Instead, he said the union and district should form a committee to review class size data and figure out how to respond. He pointed to statistics from the Colorado Department of Education that show Denver has a student-to-teacher ratio of 14.5-to-1. Union leaders are skeptical.

To provide relief to overworked specialized service providers, Marrero would like to hire a central team of speech therapists and others to deploy to schools in need.

The district and the union met three times this week and have another bargaining session scheduled for Wednesday, the day the contract expires. In past years, the two sides have extended the expired contract so they can keep negotiating.

Marrero said he’s confident they can reach a deal by Wednesday.

“I am not only hopeful, I am committed to reaching an agreement by the 31st,” he said.

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado K-12, higher ed workers left out of collective bargaining bill

2022-04-26T03:40:26+00:00

A much-anticipated bill that would extend collective bargaining rights to Colorado public sector workers leaves out employees of K-12 school districts and workers at public colleges and universities.

With school districts strongly opposed, K-12 employees were cut out from drafts of the bill that circulated in early April. Gov. Jared Polis, whose support is key, was said to be more open to including higher ed workers, but some of them did not want to support a bill that didn’t include the right to strike.

University of Colorado Boulder adjunct professor Alex Wolf-Root, a United Campus Workers Colorado member, said the higher education union made it clear early in the drafting of the bill that members wanted the ability to strike.

“A bill to expand collective bargaining rights that took away the right to strike would be far worse than no bill,” Wolf-Root said earlier this month. “It would have basically codified the ability for collective groveling and would take away our biggest source of power.”

The bill as introduced Monday extends collective bargaining rights to roughly 40,000 county employees while prohibiting strikes, work stoppages, and work slowdowns. The initial proposal would have covered some 250,000 public sector employees. State employees were granted collective bargaining rights last year.

Colorado Education Association President Amie Baca-Oehlert expressed her disappointment in the bill. She pointed to a recent vote by the board of the New America School charter network to reject a teacher unionization push as a reason why teachers need rights in state law.

While most private-sector workers have the right to unionize under federal law, Colorado public sector workers must rely on voluntary recognition.

“Collective bargaining rights for all shouldn’t be a debate,” Baca-Oehlert said in a statement. “While providing rights to some public workers, such as county workers, is a step forward, we still have a long way to go to ensure that all public workers have basic fundamental rights to form a union and collectively bargain.”

Even in this narrow form, the bill represents a significant expansion of labor rights in a state where they’ve been limited. In a press release announcing the bill’s introduction Monday, sponsors called it “landmark” legislation and an “historic step.”

“County workers who fix our roads, staff our public health departments and protect our communities deserve the right to negotiate for a better future for themselves and their families,” House Majority Leader Daneya Esgar, a Pueblo Democrat, said.

Esgar is sponsoring the bill with Senate President Stephen Fenberg of Boulder and Senate Majority Leader Dominick Moreno of Commerce City. The Democratic leaders have said the bill is a top priority.

Republicans are expected to oppose the bill. As the minority party in both chambers, Republicans can’t just vote it down, but they can slow down this bill’s progress and the progress of dozens of other pieces of legislation still working their way through the process.

The legislature adjourns May 11.

Higher Education Reporter Jason Gonzales contributed.

Bureau Chief Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

New America School charter board rejects teachers union push

2022-04-21T20:46:54+00:00

The board of the New America School network rejected a petition from teachers seeking to form Colorado’s first charter school union, a move that angered some teachers who pledged to keep fighting for recognition.

Teachers at the network, which consists of three schools in Lakewood, Thornton, and Aurora, first sought recognition for their union in November. New America School was founded in 2004 by now-Gov. Jared Polis to serve the needs of recent immigrants.

On Wednesday, the network’s governing board voted unanimously not to recognize the union but to instead develop a collaborative policy that allows teachers, other staff, parents, and students a formalized way to provide feedback.

“The board wishes to be more purposeful in how it receives feedback from stakeholders to improve the working and learning environment at NAS but does not believe a union contract is necessary to better those conditions,” the adopted resolution states.

The board plans to take up a formal proposal for a collaborative committee at its May meeting. In a press release, union members said they were furious at the decision and would keep working for recognition.

“Our union would ensure that we have a strong voice in critical school and classroom decision-making to more effectively teach and empower our hardworking immigrant students,” teacher Audrey Immonen said. “This is a slap in the face to all of us who are dedicated to our students and community.”

New America School has struggled with high teacher turnover and low student enrollment in recent years. Union supporters say a recognized teacher union could play a constructive role in solving those problems. Ten Democratic state legislators signed a letter urging the board to recognize the union.

But board members expressed concerns about the consequences of recognizing a union when the school faces significant financial challenges related to declining enrollment. They also noted that each of the network’s three schools has its own charter with different authorizers and different requirements.

Under Colorado law, public schools can choose to recognize employee unions but they don’t have to. Several dozen Colorado school districts have collective bargaining agreements with teachers and other employee unions. Charter unions are increasingly common in other states, in particular California and Illinois, but so far no Colorado charter school has unionized.

Democrats had pledged to introduce legislation this session that would guarantee collective bargaining rights to public sector employees, but with stiff opposition from school districts and Polis, K-12 employees almost certainly won’t be included even if the bill is introduced.

Federal labor regulators have ruled charter schools to be private sector employers — who do have to recognize employee unions that meet certain conditions — in some circumstances, but teachers at New America Schools haven’t explored that option.

Bureau Chief Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

New America School teachers want to form Colorado’s first charter union

2022-03-29T18:37:33+00:00

Teachers at the New America School charter network are attempting to form Colorado’s first charter school union.

Educators at the three New America campuses in the metro Denver area say teacher turnover threatens the qualities that made them want to work there in the first place. They want a legally recognized voice at the table to guide improvements at the school.

“Our students come to us because we’re small and focus on relationships and restorative practices first. Students tell us they haven’t had that before. That’s probably the reason I come to school every day,” said Collette Simkins, an art and drama teacher at New America’s Thornton campus and a leader in NAS Educators United. “When there is such a high level of turnover, they’re filtering through teachers just as frequently as they did in a traditional school, and we lose what makes us different.”

That teacher working conditions are student learning conditions is a common refrain from teachers unions. What’s unusual is that the conversation is happening at a charter network.

These publicly funded but independently run schools are based on the idea that flexibility and autonomy better serve students. Decades ago, unions supported the idea of charter schools as teacher-led centers of innovation, but later turned against them. Charter schools often employ practices unions oppose, such as hiring unlicensed teachers, basing pay on performance, and providing fewer job protections.

But teachers unions increasingly have expanded into the charter sector, especially in states like Illinois and California. Amie Baca-Oehlert, president of the Colorado Education Association, said the state teachers union isn’t actively organizing charter teachers, but it’s open to talking to anyone who feels they would benefit from representation.

Erin Anderson, an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Denver’s Morgridge College of Education, said the phenomenon hasn’t been well studied “because nobody thought it was going to be a thing.”

“It was, unions do one thing and charters do another. Yet the issues that teachers bring forward are exactly the issues that led to teacher unionization in the first place,” she said.

Those include low pay, pay disparities, and workload. Often, teaching in a charter school can be demanding.

“It’s a young person’s game to be a teacher in a charter,” she said.

New America School teachers presented a petition signed by three-quarters of the teaching staff to the network’s board of directors in October. Since then, the board has met repeatedly in closed session and in public in March to discuss the legal and financial implications of recognizing the union. The board plans to vote in April.

“I believe the board is doing their due diligence in researching, asking questions, and exploring possible options to address this complex and unprecedented ask,” Superintendent Dan McMinimee said in an email.

Founded in 2004 by now-Gov. Jared Polis, the New America School aimed to serve recent immigrants and their families. Today, the schools serve students ages 14 to 21 from a range of backgrounds. The majority of students are students of color from low-income families, and 71% are English learners.

They’re spread across three campuses in Lakewood, Thornton, and Aurora. The Lakewood and Thornton schools are authorized by their respective school districts, Jeffco Public Schools and Adams 12 Five Star Schools, while the Aurora campus is authorized by the state Charter School Institute. Board members raised questions about the challenges of creating uniform policies for all three campuses, when each has different funding and different conditions in its authorizing agreement.

Adding to the schools’ financial challenges, enrollment has dropped by half over the last five years to around 500 students this school year. McMinimee said gentrification has pushed out families, and more students feel the need to work. In turn, the schools are leaving more positions vacant as teachers leave.

At the March meeting, McMinimee said he reached out to teachers to see if they would be open to creating an advisory group or other input system that stops short of a collective bargaining agreement, an idea that board members seemed more open to than union recognition. McMinimee said he shares teacher concerns about turnover, though he noted that nearly every school is struggling with resignations right now.

Teachers say they want their union recognized.

“We are unionizing because we love this school as much as they do, not because we want to see the buildings close,” Simkins said. “I don’t think unions inherently eliminate flexibility. Regardless of where I work, I still deserve rights. Unions for me, ultimately, are about the people doing the work having a voice.”

Under Colorado law, school districts don’t have to recognize their teachers unions, though several dozen districts have done so. Legislation to guarantee collective bargaining rights for all public sector employees still hasn’t been introduced this year, and if it is, it’s likely to exclude K-12 teachers.

Private sector employers, though, can be required to recognize a labor union if members hold an election that meets certain conditions, and the National Labor Relations Board has determined some charter schools to be private employers.

Under the advice of the Colorado Education Association, Simkins said New America School teachers believe they are public sector employees, and they’re seeking voluntary recognition. But Scott Moss, Colorado Department of Labor and Employment division director for labor standards and statistics, said he’s not sure charter schools should be considered public sector employers.

“The Colorado Department of Education considers charter schools public schools for purposes of public education, but that’s not the same thing as them being public employers for purposes of labor law,” Moss said.

Many non-profit organizations contract with the government to provide services and receive all or most of their funding from tax dollars, Moss said, but that doesn’t make them government entities.

Anderson said charter school leaders should take teachers’ interest in unionization seriously.

“The unions are reaching out, and they are finding teachers on the other end who think there is a structure that they need,” she said. “I think we need to have some real conversations around how we treat teachers and what is missing from how we support them.”

Bureau Chief Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado’s fight over collective bargaining rights could hinge on education

2022-02-25T12:00:00+00:00

Education has become a critical fault line in the fight to secure collective bargaining rights for Colorado’s 250,000 public sector workers.

The debate has divided groups that are often allies at the Capitol and could leave employees of K-12 school districts and those who work for public colleges and universities with different rights — or no new rights at all.

Building off legislation last year that gave state employees union rights, Senate President Stephen Fenberg of Boulder and House Majority Leader Daneya Esgar of Pueblo want to expand those collective bargaining rights to people who work for other government entities, including K-12 schools, charter schools, and higher education institutions. State law allows government entities to enter into collective bargaining agreements with employee groups, and many large school districts already do. But the law doesn’t require it.

The goal “is to make sure collective bargaining is an essential right for all workers, whether you work for a private entity, which is the case now, or a public entity,” Esgar said.

The proposal faces an uncertain path. Gov. Jared Polis has made clear the bill will need to be narrowed significantly if it is to win his support, with K-12 schools a sticking point. School district representatives say it’s not just bad policy to require school boards to negotiate with employees — it’s unconstitutional and they’ll sue if it becomes law.

And university leaders have their own concerns about costs in a state that already funds higher education at very low rates.

Opponents ask if the bill would be constitutional

More than half of states already require school districts to engage in collective bargaining if a majority of employees vote to unionize, while six more make it illegal. After a decade of setbacks, including the U.S. Supreme Court’s Janus decision, public sector unions won a limited victory in Virginia last year.

Unions representing education workers — the Colorado Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers Colorado, United Campus Workers — have set securing collective bargaining rights as one of their top priorities this session.

“I’m hopeful that the legislature, as well as the public, sees and understands the value that our public service workers provide to our communities and understands that we need to have a voice in our working conditions,” CEA President Amie Baca-Oehlert said.

Opponents, who include the Colorado Association of School Executives, the Colorado Association of School Boards, and the Colorado Rural Schools Alliance, say consent between both parties is key to successful collective bargaining. They say the proposed bill gives too much power to employees and could be devastatingly expensive.

“The reason collective bargaining works in most cases is that they were invited to be part of the process,” said CASE Executive Director Bret Miles.

More critically, they say requiring school boards to recognize unions and engage in bargaining tramples on local control provisions enshrined in the state constitution, a legal interpretation that CEA attorneys dispute.

“In our mind, the constitutional issues far outweigh anything else,” said Michelle Murphy of the Rural Schools Alliance. “You can’t make an unconstitutional bill better by reducing the burden.”

Educators and college leaders concerned about what the bill won’t include

A recent draft of the bill guarantees the rights of public sector workers, including those who work for K-12 school districts, charter schools, and public colleges and universities, to form unions and engage in collective bargaining over pay and working conditions, with recourse to binding arbitration — a major concern for opponents — if they can’t reach an agreement with management.

But the bill hasn’t been introduced yet, as the sponsors continue behind-the-scenes negotiations in search of something that might pass and secure the governor’s signature.

“We hope to get there soon,” Esgar said this week, while a spokesman for the governor would say only that conversations with the sponsors are ongoing.

But it’s not clear what a compromise would look like — or if the bill will come forward at all.

The Denver Post reported that Polis may be more open to extending rights to higher education workers than to their K-12 counterparts. Public colleges and universities aren’t separate government entities like school districts and home-rule cities, and university leaders haven’t raised the same legal objections.

That doesn’t mean they aren’t concerned.

College and university leaders have sent a letter warning the cost of implementing collective bargaining agreements could be prohibitive and tuition could rise.

University of Colorado System Interim President Todd Saliman said in a statement the bill would need to include funding or he would request higher education be excluded.

“We are all working hard to keep tuition in check and if this bill passes it would make it even harder,” Saliman said. “We have also indicated that institutions would welcome an increase in state funding to increase employee compensation this year, which can be done without a bill.”

United Campus Workers Colorado founding member Alex Wolf-Root, a CU Boulder adjunct professor, said collective bargaining benefits college and university staff, especially adjunct professors, who work on short-term contracts and lower pay.

Organizing workers would also create a unified voice to lobby the state for more funding. Wolf-Root said despite higher education potentially seeing a clearer path to getting collective bargaining rights, his organization will continue to fight for K-12 workers.

Teachers say bargaining rights are subject to political whims

The push to expand union power comes amid rising labor activism and pandemic-induced staffing shortages in nearly every sector that has empowered workers. At the same time, two years of disrupted schooling have heightened tensions between educators and the general public.

A recent Cygnal Poll commissioned by the conservative education advocacy group Ready Colorado found support for teachers unions among likely voters had declined considerably since 2019, though national polls have found support to be more steady.

Several dozen Colorado school districts already have collective bargaining agreements with employee unions, but those rights aren’t guaranteed. Securing statewide rights would help protect against political shifts, union leaders said.

“Shouldn’t we be the canary in the coal mine?” asked Kallie Leyba, former president of the Douglas County teachers union and current head of AFT Colorado.

A previous conservative Douglas County school board stopped recognizing the teachers union, and a more progressive board didn’t restore collective bargaining. Now conservatives control the board again, as they do in a host of school districts after last fall’s contentious elections. Some Douglas County teachers feared retaliation after they called off work and forced schools to close for a day to protest the impending firing of the superintendent without cause.

Leyba said teachers in other districts are scared they’ll lose rights due to “political winds, which are blowing really strong.”

Kendra Gish, a Douglas County teacher for 24 years, said the district was once a great place to work, but the loss of union representation has changed that.

“From where we were to where we are today, we are definitely not better off,” Gish said.

Collette Simkins, a teacher at The New America School, a charter whose board has refused to recognize the union, said employees have ideas that could reduce teacher turnover and improve conditions for students.

“We’re not listened to,” Simkins said. “And they don’t have to engage with us in those conversations.”

Miles said most school boards and district administrators want employees at the table, but may disagree on solutions. He bristled at the suggestion that school boards might be withholding pay increases when schools are not fully funded.

“This will not put more money into teachers’ hands,” he said. “It is not the lack of collective bargaining that is contributing to low teacher salaries. It is the size of the pot.”

Brad Marianno, a professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said there’s a large body of research that shows unions improve teacher pay. Their effect on student learning is less clear.

But regardless of their impact, unions need collective bargaining rights to really operate like unions.

“Collective bargaining rights are the principal act of local unions,” he said. “Without them, they are membership organizations that can advocate, but that’s all they are.”

Jason Gonzales is a reporter covering higher education and the Colorado legislature. Chalkbeat Colorado partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage. Contact Jason at jgonzales@chalkbeat.org.

Bureau Chief Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Funding, school ratings, workforce: Education issues we’re watching in 2022

2022-01-08T02:17:43+00:00

Colorado lawmakers return Wednesday for the start of the 2022 legislative session with hopes to tackle long-standing education challenges as well as new problems driven by the pandemic.

Money for both K-12 and higher education will be major topics, as usual, with advocates saying it’s past time for the state to make up for years of low funding. There’s also the potential for big investments in job training and changes to how the state shares money with districts.

The state’s polarizing accountability system and how to move forward with school ratings during the pandemic will also be up for debate, as will a push to expand rights for public sector workers.

Overshadowing all of this are the ongoing challenges facing schools: teacher and bus driver shortages, mental health crises, and lasting impacts of COVID on student learning. Lawmakers think they have ideas to help, while education advocates are wary of new programs and unfunded mandates.

Here’s a look at the top education issues lawmakers may address this year.

Accountability

Last year, Colorado lawmakers significantly scaled back standardized tests and suspended the accountability system that rates schools based on test scores.

This year, Colorado students can expect to take the full suite of standardized tests, but school districts don’t want to see the accountability system resume immediately. They say that last year’s test data isn’t a reliable basis for drawing conclusions.

School districts and teachers unions prefer a transition period before schools get their normal ratings again — though what exactly that would look like isn’t clear — and they have support from key Democratic lawmakers.

Advocates for this “bridge” back to accountability say they’re working with reform supporters on an acceptable compromise, but supporters of the accountability system worry that changes will make it harder to get a full picture of how the pandemic affected student learning.

Funding

Education advocates are generally optimistic about increasing school funding this year. But expect debates about how much money the state should sock away for future years and how much it should spend now.

Schools are flush with federal aid money, much of it still unspent, but advocates say the state needs to increase its support so that schools don’t fall off a fiscal cliff.

Meanwhile, lawmakers are also considering changes to how Colorado shares money with school districts. A special committee on school finance could recommend increasing funding for special education students and changing how it defines at-risk students, a designation that brings extra money for school districts. Conservatives will push for funding changes to be tied to better student outcomes

There’s also a proposal for the state to provide matching funds for local property tax increases in districts with low assessed value, an effort to reduce some of the disparities between rich and poor districts, though it’s controversial even among committee members.

But don’t expect a major rewrite of the funding formula. It’s proved too politically touchy in the past, and the special committee has deferred some of the thornier questions until after the session.

Collective bargaining

A coalition of labor groups are expected to push to expand collective bargaining rights for public employees, including teachers and higher education workers unions.

Colorado Education Association President Amie Baca-Oehlert said shoring up educator rights is a top priority, and teachers have higher salaries and are happier in their jobs in districts with unions.

But the Colorado Association of School Executives, which represents superintendents, has major concerns and wants the bill to exclude educator unions. They see the legislation as violating local control and don’t think the state has the authority to dictate whether school districts recognize employee unions.

Preschool

Colorado is moving ahead with plans for universal preschool, a key plank in Gov. Jared Polis’ education platform. Lawmakers last year established a new state department of early childhood education to oversee the rollout of a program funded by voter-approved taxes on nicotine products. This year, lawmakers need to act on a series of recommendations about how the program will actually work. Those include making sure preschool reaches children who need it most, that families have lots of options, and that the application process is easy.

“We want to ensure the new department is ready to administer early childhood in the fall of 2023,” said state Sen. Janet Buckner, the Aurora Democrat leading the effort.

Workforce training

Even before the pandemic, Colorado leaders wanted more of the state’s population to earn a college degree or credential, given the increase in jobs requiring college training, but college enrollment has declined during the pandemic.

Thanks to the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, Colorado has about $3.8 billion to help recover from the coronavirus pandemic. Now lawmakers need to figure out how to spend that money, including on helping residents connect to job training. That effort will be guided by recommendations from the 1330 Commission, created by last year’s Higher Education Student Success legislation.

How lawmakers earmark the money could lift Colorado residents most in need of jobs and open up college to many more people.

It would also represent a big investment in postsecondary education, especially given that Polis’ proposed 1% increase in higher education funding doesn’t keep pace with inflation.

Pandemic recovery

The omicron surge straining K-12 schools and colleges defies an easy legislative fix, particularly to remedy teachers absences and lack of substitutes.

More money would help address student mental health needs and alleviate stressful classroom environments, but won’t find more counselors.

House Education Committee Chair Barbara McLachlan, a Durango Democrat and former teacher, is working on legislation to bring more school workers back from retirement and to expand a program that pairs new principals with experienced mentors. Long term, improving school leadership will improve teacher retention, she said.

State Rep. Colin Larson, a Littleton Republican, hopes a bill to offer grants for innovative transportation plans could alleviate the growing bus driver shortage.

With student performance on standardized math tests falling during the pandemic, Larson wants to promote better math instruction.

Republicans will seek ways to get money to parents to address educational needs, an effort that Democrats will almost certainly oppose as opening a back door to vouchers.

“The parents know,” said state Sen. Paul Lundeen, a Monument Republican. “They know what their child’s experience has been and what their child’s needs are.”

Senate Education Committee Chair Rachel Zenzinger, meanwhile, wants schools with chronic low test scores to have the option of converting to community schools, with wraparound services that help students and families with needs outside the classroom.

Bret Miles, who heads up the Colorado Association of School Executives, is begging the legislature not to place more burdens on school right now.

“Can we not do 80 bills to try to fix education this year?” he asked. “Educators are tired. I want legislators to hear that every time they turn around.”

Colorado Education Association report warns of increased teacher burnout, shortages

2021-12-14T23:48:20+00:00

Facing pandemic burnout, two out of three Colorado educators have said they are considering leaving the profession, according to a new Colorado Education Association report.

That’s up by two-thirds since a survey released last December showed 40% of the union’s members considered changing careers. The updated educator burnout numbers released Tuesday are included in a new CEA report focused on the state of Colorado’s education system.

The report depicts an even more dire situation for educators since the beginning of the pandemic and focuses on three problem areas for the state. They include poor K-12 investment that has kept the state among the worst when it comes to wages, student funding, educator burnout, and a shortage of teachers, CEA President Amie Baca-Oehlert said during a news conference Tuesday about the report.

“While the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has taken a toll on educators, students, and families for nearly two years, the problems facing public education in Colorado predate the pandemic,” she said.

Educator burnout, however, continues to grow as the pandemic wears on. The report says that only 1% of CEA’s members feel valued by state leaders and 10% said they feel valued by their school districts.

While many have predicted a massive wave of teachers leaving the profession, that hasn’t been the case quite yet. Nonetheless, the union said they’re seeing more positions go unfilled than in previous years. The spike in educators who expressed they’re considering leaving the job creates warning signs that teacher shortages could worsen.

During the news conference, district union presidents and educators said schools have faced substitute shortages, larger classroom sizes, less planning time, and fewer classroom support staff.

Jefferson County Education Association President Brooke Williams said more and more educators have reported they can’t handle the classroom stress.

“When teachers were asked what they do to deal with stress, some said, ‘I cry. I stress eat. I don’t have time to exercise.’“ Williams said.

Baca-Oehlert said systemic changes need to occur if the state and districts are to keep teachers in the profession, especially when teachers can find better pay in other professions.

Pay has remained a central issue among teachers, with almost 60% saying adequate pay and benefits will help make them feel valued and respected. Autonomy and working conditions also ranked high in what would help educators feel valued.

Gov. Jared Polis wants Colorado to increase education funding to record amounts this fiscal year, but union leaders have said even that would not be enough to make up for years of underfunding. Baca-Oehlert said the state progress in education funding has only patched “a gushing wound.”

Baca-Oehlert said the union will continue to push for increased funding for teacher compensation, classroom resources, and more staff.

As for local solutions, Jefferson County Education Association President Brooke Williams said schools can work on providing teachers time to juggle tasks like lesson planning. Williams said school district leaders also can do more to help address student needs and behaviors.

John Robinson, Poudre Education Association president, said districts could prioritize more paid teacher work days to alleviate teacher schedules.

At both the state and local level, more needs to be done, said Denver Public Schools English teacher Amber Wilson, who is also CEA secretary-treasurer. She said the pandemic has made stress levels and work conditions unbearable at times for teachers.

“We give and we give and we give until we can’t give any more,” Wilson said. “Then ultimately we realize we’ve given so much that we’re broke — we’re broken.”

Tay Anderson, teachers union reveal more about allegations from Denver school board race

2021-06-11T03:05:17+00:00

More details were revealed Thursday about the Denver teachers union’s 2019 endorsement of Tay Anderson for school board and whether union leaders knew at the time about allegations of inappropriate behavior.

Denver Classroom Teachers Association President Rob Gould said in a statement Thursday that the union’s political arm “received an anonymous letter containing unsubstantiated, nebulous allegations that Mr. Anderson had misused board funds and acted inappropriately toward a woman on the board of directors of a local advocacy group.”

A union spokesperson confirmed that the local advocacy group was Never Again Colorado, a youth-led anti-gun violence group of which Anderson, 22, was president in 2018. Gould said the allegations were “not verifiable.” The union endorsed Anderson in 2019, and he won.

In a separate statement, Anderson confirmed Thursday that the union asked him during the 2019 campaign about his time with Never Again Colorado. He has since said some of his behavior as the group’s president was inappropriate. But Anderson has maintained that his behavior back then, or at any other time, did not include perpetrating sexual assault.

Anderson is currently the subject of a third-party investigation initiated by his fellow Denver school board members into allegations of sexual misconduct that surfaced this spring. The board said Thursday it expects findings from the investigation by the end of the summer. The district has spent more than $50,000 on the investigation so far, the board said.

The most serious allegations have been anonymous and secondhand.

In March, the local civil rights group Black Lives Matter 5280 said a woman who wished to remain anonymous told them Anderson sexually assaulted her.

In April, anonymous former members of Never Again Colorado wrote a letter alleging Anderson had made lewd comments and dared them to perform “sexualized actions,” among other things.

In May, a Denver activist said dozens of young women had come to her seeking protection from a specific man. The school board later said that those allegations were about Anderson.

And this week, Radhika Nath, who also ran for school board in 2019, said the teachers union asked her to switch from her race into Anderson’s at-large race because they were worried an allegation of sexual assault would be made public and knock him out of contention.

Gould said the union did ask Nath to move races in May 2019 but not because of an allegation against Anderson. However, Nath also issued a statement Thursday saying that on June 10 of that year, the union’s hired political consultant, Rachel Caine, told Nath and her campaign that sexual assault allegations against Anderson “would be a liability” to the union.

“I was uncomfortable with the position the union put me in and decided to share the information with Mr. Anderson’s campaign so that he could address the allegations head-on,” Nath said.

Anderson’s attorney, Christopher Decker, said in a statement Thursday that the assertion that Anderson “was approached by anyone in DCTA, or other candidates, specifically about any sexual assault allegations is categorically false.”

Chalkbeat was unable to reach Caine on Thursday.

Thursday’s statements follow reporting by Chalkbeat that the union’s political arm in charge of endorsements, called the DCTA Fund, knew of a letter in 2019 written by a young woman expressing that she was afraid of Anderson.

Earlier this week, Anderson denied that he knew about any letter in 2019. He said he was “deeply disappointed” that the union “hid this communication, if in fact it exists.”

But after the union provided more detail Thursday about the allegations it received in 2019, Anderson said the union had asked him about his time at Never Again Colorado. In a public apology he issued in April, Anderson described his misbehavior at Never Again Colorado as “various explicit comments I made as a teenager.” He acknowledged they were inappropriate and said he later resigned as the group’s president.

Gould said that after talking to Anderson in 2019, the union was satisfied that the allegations in the anonymous letter were unfounded.

“The letter provided no specificity about the allegations, and there was nothing to support that a minor could be involved so there was no duty to report,” Gould said. He added that “the Fund does not have the capacity to conduct background investigations for each and every candidate.”

New Denver principals union wins recognition, allowing for contract negotiations

2020-09-25T18:07:27+00:00

Denver school principals and assistant principals will now be able to negotiate their salaries, how they are evaluated, and whether they can strike.

In a 6-1 vote some Denver school board members called “historic,” the board on Thursday recognized a new principals union called the Denver School Leaders Association. The aim of the union, according to its organizers, is to serve as a collective voice for school leaders in Denver Public Schools and work with the district to dismantle institutional racism.

“Thank you for believing in your leaders and listening to our voices,” said Pam Kirk, a 19-year Denver Public Schools educator who serves as principal of Southmoor Elementary School.

Before voting to recognize the union, board members debated an amendment introduced by Angela Cobián that would have prohibited the principals from going on strike.

Cobián said that although she supports unions, and her father is a member of a union for construction equipment operators, she believes managers who hold “positional power,” such as principals, shouldn’t be allowed to strike.

“A strike is a tool for people who don’t have positional power,” she said.

The Denver teachers union went on strike for three days in February 2019 for higher wages and a new compensation system that largely eliminated pay-for-performance bonuses.

Board member Barbara O’Brien joined Cobián in supporting the amendment. It ultimately failed.

Cobián voted to recognize the union even without the no-strike clause, but O’Brien did not. She said she wanted to see the final negotiated contract first. “I don’t think a governing body should commit to a path before we see what it really looks like on paper,” O’Brien said.

Union Co-President Cesar Rivera, principal at Samuels Elementary School, said the union has 204 members. The resolution lists several topics to be negotiated between the principals and the district. They include salary and benefits, principal evaluation procedures, and the waivers that exempt schools with “innovation status” from certain state and district rules.

Board member Scott Baldermann, who helped craft the resolution, called the vote to approve it one of the most important the board has taken. If principals feel more supported and heard, more will stay in their jobs, which will benefit students for generations, he said.

A critic of school choice policies he says create competition, Baldermann also hailed the move as “another step toward the ending of the reforms from the past 15 years that encouraged competition between school leaders and often discouraged cross-school collaboration.”

Colorado teachers unions launch merger talks

2020-09-16T00:52:20+00:00

Colorado’s two main teachers unions are exploring a merger that both groups hope will increase their influence on state and local education policy.

The Colorado Education Association, an affiliate of the National Education Association, and AFT Colorado, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, announced this week that they are forming an “exploratory unity committee” to look at consolidation.

“We have an incredible opportunity to unify and strengthen our collective voice to proactively fight for public education, the schools our students and educators deserve, the labor movement, and to push back against those who seek to undermine public education and the collective voice of educators,” the two unions said in a statement announcing the decision.

The merger would require the approval of both unions’ membership through multiple votes, first on the intent to merge and then on final approval of a new governance structure. There is no specific timeline for the process.

Leaders from both organizations said there isn’t one specific issue that prompted the merger talks. This step comes after years of growing alignment and cooperation on successful school board campaigns and teacher rallies, as well as unsuccessful efforts to pass statewide tax increases for education.

“We see eye-to-eye on 99.9% of things,” said Kallie Leyba, president of AFT Colorado. “It’s pretty rare that we approach things differently, so it’s almost silly to be two different organizations. We have a formidable enemy in [U.S. Education Secretary] Betsy DeVos, and we’re stronger together.”

“Our issues are the same,” said Amie Baca-Oehlert, president of the Colorado Education Association. “We’ve been talking about this for a while, and as we’ve been really experiencing these big systemic issues that have come to a bright light during COVID, we decided it was time to formally look at joining together.”

Those issues, they said, include improving school funding, addressing racial disparities, ensuring workers are protected during the return to school, elevating educator voices, and electing candidates aligned with their positions.

The two organizations worked together to overturn conservative school boards in Jefferson and Douglas counties and to stage 2018’s #RedforEd teacher demonstrations that shut down school districts around the state. The pandemic has presented new challenges, as unions have raised questions about the safety of returning to school and the economic fallout has hit school budgets hard.

The two unions haven’t always been on the same side of education policy. Most contentiously, the AFT supported Colorado’s educator effectiveness law, while the Colorado Education Association vigorously opposed it. Ten years later, though, the two groups largely agree on wanting to reduce the role that test scores play in teacher evaluations. An effort to change the law foundered during the 2019 legislative session.

Nationally, the two unions represent similar groups of workers and often take similar stances on issues, but historically they’ve had different cultures and philosophies. The American Federation of Teachers is a member of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor organization. The National Education Association is not. In the past, some teachers preferred to think of the NEA as a professional association, rather than a labor union.

The AFT is known for its assertive locals, including the Chicago and New York City teachers unions, while the NEA is known for fostering strong state chapters. AFT represents more big-city teachers, while NEA has a greater presence in suburban districts.

A 1998 effort to merge the national organizations failed to garner enough support among members, as did a 2013 attempt to reopen discussions. But AFT and NEA affiliates have merged in a number of states, including New York, North Dakota, Minnesota, Florida, and Montana. More recent merger efforts in Wisconsin and Texas didn’t succeed.

The AFT has a higher education division at the national level. The Colorado unions said a merger would allow them to represent the interests of workers from preschools to colleges and universities in a more cohesive way.

In Colorado, in contrast to the national situation, the Colorado Education Association represents teachers and other workers in the largest urban districts, as well as in many suburban and rural districts. CEA is the larger organization, with more than 30,000 members.

AFT Colorado does not disclose its membership numbers but is much smaller. In addition to teachers in Douglas County and some smaller school districts, the AFT affiliate represents instructors at Metropolitan State University of Denver, and school support staff and other hourly workers in a number of districts.

Denver school principals unionize, request recognition to negotiate a contract

2020-08-21T01:42:27+00:00

Denver school principals have formed a union and are asking the school district for recognition. Their goals include fighting for fair compensation and against institutional racism.

The newly formed Denver School Leaders Association consists of 196 principals and assistant principals, representing 59% of school leaders in the district, said Co-president Cesar Rivera, who is principal of Samuels Elementary in southeast Denver.

The union has asked the district to recognize it as a collective bargaining unit, which would allow the principals to negotiate a contract as the teachers union does. But current school board policy doesn’t list principals among the employees allowed to unionize.

Board President Carrie Olson and Vice President Jennifer Bacon publicly acknowledged the principals’ request Thursday. Olson, a former teacher and vocal supporter of the teachers union, said the board has begun reviewing the request.

Superintendent Susana Cordova, a former principal, also showed a degree of support.

“I hear you and I understand why you brought forth this request,” she said Thursday. “I deeply believe in the power of collective voice to advance our profession.”

But Cordova also cited board policy, while noting that state law is silent on whether public school administrators can unionize. Cordova said she was a dues-paying member of a previous district principals association that no longer exists. She said she welcomes the opportunity to meet with the leaders of the principals union and is open to memorializing a compensation structure in writing even if the union is not formally recognized.

“I realize that’s different than what you’ve requested,” Cordova said.

Cordova and union leaders are scheduled to meet next week. The union co-presidents said being recognized as a collective bargaining unit, not simply an association, is important.

“If we’re just an association, principals don’t have any shot at a contract, which is needed to ensure that our leaders’ voice is heard,” Rivera said.

The Denver School Leaders Association is organizing with the American Federation of School Administrators, which represents principals in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco and has been pushing to increase its membership in recent years.

The Denver union’s platform includes advocating for equitable pay for principals. The co-presidents said they’ve heard stories of female principals with the same experience as male principals working at similar schools getting paid thousands of dollars less. Or principals who used to be teachers who would make more money if they went back into the classroom.

The principals also want a way to share their collective opinions about big district decisions, such as whether to reopen schools during the COVID-19 pandemic, how to reform the district’s controversial school ratings system, and whether to close struggling schools.

“DPS is rife with institutional racism,” said Eric Rowe, principal of PREP Academy high school and union co-president. “We’d like to use our collective voice to dismantle it.”

Denver school custodians, bus drivers, other hourly wage workers win roughly 3% pay raise

2020-07-14T23:12:54+00:00

Denver school custodians, bus drivers, teachers’ aides and other hourly wage workers will receive a roughly 3% pay raise next school year, after the unions that represent them came to an agreement with the school district Monday.

Hourly wage workers will get an additional 0.5% raise if Denver voters approve a school tax measure in November. The deal grants hourly wage workers raises closer in percentage to those won by Denver teachers — which was the unions’ goal.

“What we’re doing here is important work, and we want to thank you for treating the [education support professionals] equally as you would a teacher,” said John Adams, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents bus drivers and mechanics. “It’s not quite the definition of equity, but we got a little bit more equality here.”

Union leaders argued that most hourly wage workers are people of color who live paycheck to paycheck — a reality that contradicts Denver Public Schools’ stated value of equity.

The unions had been asking for larger raises, while the district was offering less. The deal reached on Monday represents a meeting in the middle. It will cost the district from $3 million to $4 million, a Denver Public Schools spokesperson said.

The negotiations occurred as the district is cutting $65 million from its budget because of a decrease in state funding. In making the cuts, district officials prioritized avoiding layoffs and providing pay raises for workers who make $25 an hour or less.

“We must ensure employees at the lower end of the pay scale can earn a livable wage for all they do for our students and our community,” Superintendent Susana Cordova said.

‘On the front lines’: Denver schools hourly workers fight for raises during budget crunch

2020-07-10T22:48:05+00:00

Bus drivers, custodians, teacher’s aides, and other hourly wage workers in Denver schools say the district isn’t treating them fairly in negotiating pay raises for next school year.

“We have been offered less than teachers, even though we will also be on the front lines of this COVID crisis,” said Lisa Archuleta, an elementary school facility manager.

Denver Public Schools has been bargaining for several weeks with eight unions representing hourly wage workers. For the first time, the unions are negotiating as a single bloc instead of separately. Their aim was to increase their bargaining power at a time when the district had to cut $65 million from next year’s budget due to a drop in state funding.

In making the cuts, the district pledged to protect the wages of workers making $25 an hour or less. Whereas top district administrators will see their salaries reduced, the district offered to increase the pay of hourly wage workers by 0.5% to 1.9%.

But in separate negotiations, the district agreed to give bigger raises to teachers. Last month, the district and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association agreed to raises estimated to be from 3.5% to 4%, less than what teachers were originally slated to get.

Now, the eight unions representing hourly wage workers want a similar increase.

“It makes me so angry to see DPS’s bargaining team continue to offer us poverty wages and to treat us like we are disposable,” said Tonya Cordova, a special education paraprofessional.

Archuleta noted most hourly wage workers are people of color who must live paycheck to paycheck — a reality that contradicts Denver Public Schools’ stated value of equity.

“We are the silent heroes of the school,” said Janelle Martinez, an elementary school custodian. “What we’re asking is that DPS show us you care and that we actually matter.”

District officials say they’re committed to making sure everyone earns a livable wage.

“We deeply value the work of our [education support professionals] and their roles in ensuring our schools run smoothly,” district spokesperson Winna MacLaren said.

The district and the eight unions last met June 30 but did not come to an agreement.

The district’s last proposal would equate to a 2% raise next year for all hourly wage workers, plus another 0.6% if the district decides to ask Denver voters for a tax increase in November — and if voters approve it. A 2.6% raise for hourly wage workers would cost about $3.3 million, according to Mark Ferrandino, the district’s deputy superintendent of operations.

The last proposal from the unions would equate to a 3.6% raise, plus another 0.6% if Denver voters approve a tax increase, Ferrandino said. A 4.2% raise for hourly wage workers would cost about $5.4 million, he said — putting the two proposals about $2.1 million apart.

Lynne Valencia-Hernandez, a Denver teacher who supports the hourly wage workers, said Denver Public Schools should take that $2.1 million difference from its $100 million budget reserve, sometimes referred to as the district’s “rainy day fund.”

“If a pandemic isn’t a rainy day, I don’t know what else is,” Valencia-Hernandez said.

But the district’s budget for the 2020-21 school year already draws on $28 million in reserves. District officials are wary of dipping any deeper into that fund.

MacLaren also pointed out that the district has increased pay and benefits for low-wage workers in recent years, committing to raising the minimum wage to $15 even before a city mandate to do so. Unlike other districts around the country, Denver Public Schools has avoided layoffs during the coronavirus pandemic, she said, and kept all of its nearly 3,800 hourly wage workers on the payroll while schools were closed to in-person learning at a cost of $29 million.

The next bargaining session is scheduled for Monday.

This story has been updated to reflect the raises hourly wage workers would get if Denver voters approve a tax increase in November.

Denver district, union to start negotiations Thursday on freezing some teacher raises

2020-06-17T22:28:08+00:00

The Denver school district and teachers union are set to begin negotiating Thursday on whether teachers will forgo some pay raises to help fill a $65 million budget gap.

In the hopes of avoiding layoffs and insulating individual schools from cuts, Superintendent Susana Cordova sent a letter Tuesday to the Denver Classroom Teachers Association requesting to reopen a three-year contract that resulted in substantial raises for teachers. The contract was signed last February after a three-day teacher strike.

While many teachers expressed frustration about the move on social media, union President Tiffany Choi said union negotiators are willing to hear the district out.

“DCTA recognizes that in the wake of a pandemic and economic crisis, everyone will need to make sacrifices, and we are willing to go to the bargaining table to have this discussion about what is best for our students,” Choi said in a statement Wednesday.

State law requires teacher contract negotiations be conducted in public. Thursday’s session will take place over video conference because of the coronavirus pandemic. The atmosphere will be different than that of the bargaining sessions held during the strike, when hundreds of teachers filled the room wearing union T-shirts, waving signs, and chanting.

A coronavirus-induced economic downturn has led to declining state tax revenue, which caused Colorado lawmakers to make steep cuts to education funding. As a result, Denver Public Schools must cut $65 million from its $1.1 billion budget next school year.

The district doesn’t have much time. By law, the Denver school board must approve a budget for the 2020-21 school year by June 30. School board members on Wednesday declined to comment on reopening the teachers contract.

Eliminating teachers’ annual cost-of-living raises would save the district $7 million, according to a proposal by district officials. Freezing teachers’ “step” increases — or the pay raises they earn for notching another year of service — would save another $9 million.

The proposal also calls for cutting $18 million in expenses from the district’s central office. Another $5 million in cuts would come from “progressive pay adjustments” for employees who are not teachers. Low-wage workers, such as custodians and bus drivers, would get raises, while higher-wage employees would see their salaries reduced.

In addition, district officials have proposed using $10 million from the coronavirus relief bill passed by Congress. But restrictions on the federal money make it difficult to use more, officials said.

“It is unfortunate that DPS so far has only proposed using $10 million of the CARES Act money and no reserves money to cover the budget shortfall for next year,” Choi said in her statement.

The district has about $100 million in budget reserves. While officials said the district will likely use some of it, they have not specified an amount.

Negotiations are set to begin at 10 a.m. Thursday. The public can watch here.

‘No one predicted a pandemic’: Denver district to ask teachers to give up some raises

2020-06-17T02:21:23+00:00

Faced with a $65 million budget shortfall, the Denver school district plans to ask teachers to forgo some of the pay raises guaranteed by a hard-won union contract.

On Tuesday, Denver Public Schools sent a letter to the Denver Classroom Teachers Association requesting to reopen their three-year agreement, which the union and district signed after a three-day teacher strike last February.

“We are seeking to work collaboratively with the DCTA to find a solution that addresses the unprecedented revenue shortfall,” Superintendent Susana Cordova wrote in the letter.

Both sides must agree to any changes to the contract, which resulted in substantial raises for teachers this year. And there isn’t much time. By law, the Denver school board must approve a budget for the 2020-21 school year by June 30.

On Monday, district officials presented a proposal that showed eliminating teachers’ annual cost-of-living raises would save the district $7 million, while freezing step increases — or the pay raises teachers earn for notching another year of service — would save $9 million.

“We signed the contract with the intention of fully living up to it,” said Mark Ferrandino, the district’s deputy superintendent of operations, “and unfortunately, no one predicted a pandemic.”

Union President Tiffany Choi did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday evening.

Colorado schools get money from a variety of sources, including state income and sales taxes, oil and gas revenue, and local property taxes. A coronavirus-induced economic downturn prompted state lawmakers to cut state education funding 5% per pupil next school year.

Denver Public Schools, the state’s largest district with 92,000 students, must cut its $1.1 billion budget as a result. The district plans to ask the public to weigh in on the cuts next week.

The proposal details ways to fill $40 million of the $65 million budget hole, and provides options for how to fill the rest. It aims to protect individual school budgets and the paychecks of low-wage workers, such as food service workers and custodians, while avoiding layoffs. Those goals align with priorities identified by a new budget advisory committee.

The biggest cuts would come from the district’s central office, which has long been criticized for being top-heavy and already underwent a round of cuts after the teacher strike last year. The proposal calls for making an additional $18 million in nonsalary cuts.

Those cuts would include canceling some third-party contracts, such as those related to the district’s school ratings, which another committee has suggested scrapping. It would also include adjusting school bell times so buses could run more efficiently, delaying the purchase of some curriculum, and transitioning from Microsoft software to a less costly Google platform.

Another $12 million in cuts would come from what district officials call “progressive pay adjustments.” Low-wage workers would get pay raises while higher-wage workers would see their salaries reduced through a combination of pay cuts and unpaid furlough days.

The proposal calls for the superintendent to take the biggest pay cut, at 10%. She currently makes $260,000 and has already pledged to take the cut.

Deputy superintendents would take a 5% pay cut, while other district administrators who make more than $100,000 would take cuts of anywhere from .75% to 2.5%.

School principals, who make an average of $64 an hour or $120,000 annually, would not see their pay cut. But they would forego cost-of-living raises.

District employees who make between $20 and $25 an hour would get a .5% pay increase in 2020-21. Those employees would include bus drivers and facilities managers.

Employees who make between $15 and $20 an hour, such as custodians and teachers’ aides, would get a 1% pay increase. And employees who make less than $15 an hour, such as food service workers, would get a 1.9% increase. Denver’s minimum wage will go up to $15.87 an hour in 2022, and officials said this proposal keeps the district on track to meet that.

Asking teachers, who make an average of $43 an hour or $65,000 annually, to forgo their guaranteed 1.9% cost-of-living pay increases would save $7 million, which is more than all of the other adjustments combined. If the union rejects that proposal, the salary savings would shrink from $12 million to $5 million, pushing the district to make cuts elsewhere.

In addition to the $30 million in cuts, the district proposes using $10 million in one-time federal relief funding to help plug the budget hole. The money comes from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act passed by Congress.

Although the district expects to receive as much as $65 million total in CARES Act money, the federal funding cannot simply be used to help balance the district budget. For example, some of the money must be used by Dec. 31 and can only be spent on expenses directly related to COVID-19, such as cleaning classrooms or buying face masks.

The central office cuts, progressive pay adjustments, and CARES Act money add up to $40 million at most, which still leaves the district $25 million short. On Monday, officials presented the school board with a list of other options, all of which are more uncertain and less popular.

They include:

Asking voters to increase taxes, which could net $10 million for school programs and $3.7 million for school construction needs. Although Denver voters have approved past tax increases, the poor economy makes it less certain they would do so this year.
Freezing the step increases guaranteed in the teachers’ contract. This would save $9 million. The union would have to agree to this change, as well.
Instituting steeper pay cuts for district employees, which could save up to another $6 million.
Adding furlough days for employees on the higher end of the wage scale, which would save an additional $3.5 million per furlough day.
Spending down some of the district’s $100 million budget reserve. While this will likely end up being part of the solution for next year, district officials dislike it because they say it’s a one-time fix that could put the district in a bad spot in future years.

The school board is set to hear public comment on the proposed budget on June 25. District officials hope that feedback will help shape a final budget proposal that includes ways to make up for the full $65 million shortfall. A vote is scheduled for June 29.

What about grocery store workers? Advocates push Colorado to extend emergency child care

2020-03-26T02:00:33+00:00

Advocates are calling for grocery store and food processing workers to be eligible for the same emergency child care available to front-line medical workers.

As schools and child care centers closed in response to the coronavirus pandemic, state officials and early childhood groups launched an emergency child care system for essential workers. They included medical workers, staff at long-term care facilities, and police officers, among others. State officials estimated that 80,000 such workers have a child under 8 who needs care so that they can continue to work.

When Colorado Gov. Jared Polis issued a stay-at-home order Wednesday, he explicitly exempted grocery stores as “critical retail” that can remain open and allowed those employees to keep going to work. But the order didn’t automatically give grocery workers the same benefits that are available to health care workers and first responders. Those benefits include emergency child care and paid leave.

Designating grocery and food supply workers as essential would bring more than 20,000 employees statewide under that umbrella, among them cashiers, shelf-stockers and other hourly workers considered important in the fight against the coronavirus.

Representatives from the state grocery workers union, the United Food and Commercial Workers, and Coloradans for the Common Good, a coalition of unions, faith organizations, and civic groups, said they talked with Polis Tuesday about recognizing grocery workers as part of the “essential” category and that he was encouraging.

“The governor was very supportive of these workers,” said Jorge Montiel, lead organizer of Coloradans for the Common Good. “He said, ‘Well, of course, they should be included in all this.’”

Minnesota and Vermont have already made free child care available to grocery store workers.

What’s still unclear is whether Polis will release an executive order or statement officially deeming grocery store workers “essential” and eligible for benefits like emergency child care. His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday afternoon.

The state’s emergency child care program, which started Monday, served about 900 children the first day with more expected going forward. It is free to essential workers this week and next week, with sliding scale fees possible in future weeks.

Advocates for grocery store workers said they look forward to seeing a policy change soon.

“We commend Governor Polis for taking steps to protect workers who are making additional sacrifices for us,” said Rev. Reagan Humber, pastor of House for All Sinners & Saints, in a press release. “But we’ve learned that unless these protections are clearly stated in policy, vulnerable workers will continue to suffer.”

Currently, the state’s emergency child care program lists eligible participants as health care workers, including janitorial staff, police officers, firefighters, EMTs, and staff at long-term care, mental health, and other residential facilities.

Montiel said grocery store workers may be more likely even than health care workers to mix with a wide swath of the general public these days.

“It just highlights the reality that they are really on the front lines,” he said. “We’re talking about removing all the obstacles that they may have to keep working and stay healthy.”