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At least three large Colorado school districts have canceled classes at all or some of their schools Thursday because teachers will be attending a daytime rally at the state Capitol to protest cuts to education funding.
The 34,000-student Adams 12 Five Star Schools and the 27,000-student Boulder Valley School District announced last week they would cancel school Thursday because hundreds of teachers would be absent. Colorado’s largest district, 90,000-student Denver Public Schools, announced Tuesday that more than half of its schools will be closed, as well.
A letter to families from Denver Superintendent Alex Marrero lists schools that will remain open, including 29 district-run schools, 55 charter schools, and the school inside the Gilliam Youth Services Center, a youth detention center.
Several other large districts, including Jeffco Public Schools, Douglas County, and Cherry Creek, are on spring break this week.
The rally, organized by the Colorado Education Association, will call on state lawmakers to preserve education funding amidst a $1.2 billion state budget deficit next year. Lawmakers plan to increase education funding within the 2025-26 budget, but the amount will likely fall short of what they promised after last year’s revamp of a 30-year-old school funding formula that calls for a $500 million investment phased in over six years.
CEA President Kevin Vick said the rally is meant to remind lawmakers that they have underfunded K-12 schools for almost 15 years, amounting to over $10 billion in constitutionally mandated funding being pulled away from schools. While Vick said he understands the tough budget situation, schools have needed to operate with far less funding than they should have.
“We feel like we’ve done our time,” Vick said in an interview. “We simply are at our limit and we can’t absorb any more losses. Districts are operating at such a thin margin that if there is significant losses in revenue at this point, it’s going to mean a lot of teachers lost. It’s going to mean a lot of schools closing.”
Educators will also call on lawmakers o figure out how to boost school funding in the future. Lawmakers commissioned two studies that say if schools are to adequately teach students they should increase K-12 funding by $3.5 billion to $4.1 billion annually.
Lawmakers would need to place a ballot measure before voters to increase funding by those levels, Vick said. That would take a large campaign to educate voters about the need for more school funding, he said.
“We’re trying to find a way where we can change the conversation about taxes so that we can have an honest conversation about what we want in terms of quality of life here in Colorado,” Vick said.
The state legislature’s Joint Budget Committee, which makes the bulk of the decisions in crafting a state spending proposal, is in the process this week of finalizing proposed budget cuts that it will present to the full General Assembly in April.
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.
