Former state treasurer Cary Kennedy wants to give Colorado teachers a sizeable bump in pay.
One of several prominent Democrats running for governor, Kennedy, who helped write a constitutional amendment to increase school funding, released her education plan Thursday. The main goal is to get every Colorado kid into college or the work force by the age of 19. To do that, she’s putting her political capital into making the state’s teachers happier.
The proposal calls for more pay, a scholarship program to attract more teachers of color, and giving teachers a larger say in the state’s testing and accountability systems. She’s also calling for school districts to adopt a school improvement policy favored by teachers unions that calls for more welfare programs in the schools to combat the effects of poverty.
In a conversation with Chalkbeat, Kennedy discussed how she plans to reform the Taxpayer Bill of Rights to send more money to school districts, how she was influenced by attending a historically integrated high school in Denver and why access to free preschool is important.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You’re calling for teacher raises. How can a governor in a local control state such as Colorado where salaries are set by school boards do that?
Provide the funding. I’m not proposing that I dictate to school districts what they pay their teachers. I’m proposing that the state provide adequate resources to school districts so that they can adequately pay our teachers.
We read every day about the teacher shortage in Colorado: 3,000 teaching positions right now that are not being filled. And it’s in large part because teachers can’t afford to work here. They can’t afford to live here. We pay our teachers among the lowest salaries in the country. I hear from principals that they are losing their best teachers because they’ll make $20,000 or $30,000 more for the same job if they go teach in another state.
This issue is impacting rural Colorado the most. We have 90 school districts where the average teacher salary is below $40,000. We can’t compete for the talent pipeline. And we’re not giving our great teachers who are doing amazing work in classrooms every single day the support they need and deserve, the professional pay they need and deserve.
This all goes back to what do we want to accomplish in education. And I’ve laid out the goal that every single student in Colorado, by the age of 19, is ready for higher education, has an employable skill, or both. And it takes great teachers. We know from data that the most important thing for a student’s success is the quality of the teachers that they have. We want Colorado to be the best place in the country to teach.
Have you put a price tag to this?
My goal as governor is to bring Colorado teacher salaries at least up to the national average and to eliminate what we call the teacher pay penalty, which is the difference between what a teacher gets paid and what someone with a comparable level of education earns in other professions. We want to eliminate the disincentive to teaching. Bringing Colorado up to the national average, we estimate to be around $240 million a year. To eliminate that teacher pay penalty is around $500 million.
It does not make any sense that Colorado’s economy ranks No. 1 in the country right now, according to U.S. News and World Report, and our investment in education ranks at the bottom. We’re living the consequences every day by having the teachers leave the profession and by having people who want to teach say they can’t do it in Colorado.
Where are you going to find that kind of money?
We need to recover what TABOR has taken away. TABOR (the Taxpayer Bill of Rights which limits how much money the state can collect from taxpayers) has put us in a hole. As our economy has grown over the last two decades, our schools have not benefited from that economic growth. TABOR has prevented us from doing that. We’ve been cutting school budgets for 25 years. That isn’t what anyone in the state wants. They want Colorado — we want Colorado — to have the best education system in the country.
I will lead, as governor, to build the coalitions to get back what TABOR has taken out of our schools.
Conventional wisdom would say this promise is a huge political risk.
I’ve called for permanent TABOR-reform for my entire career. I have helped lead our state to have responsible fiscal policy, a balanced budget throughout the economic crisis, low to moderate debt levels. We pay our bills; we keep our taxes in Colorado low. All of that helps us remain competitive and attract capital investment in our state.
But we can not continue the prosperity we are enjoying today if our kids growing up can’t compete for the jobs we’re bringing here. We have to give our kids the educational foundation they need to be competitive for those jobs.
And it’s also how we’ll make sure our prosperity reaches everyone. Right now we have people who are being left out, who are being left behind. And a great public education system is the only way we’ll ensure our progress reaches everyone.
What does TABOR reform look like? How do you want to change it?
It would be to allow our state to keep up with growth. TABOR has said as your economy grows, you are not able to generate taxes off that growth to invest in your infrastructure or education system or your health care system.
People in Colorado know they’re sitting in traffic. Our streets are crowded, our schools are crowded, we’re underinvested in education. That’s because we have not been able to keep up with the demands of a growing economy. We can keep low taxes, we can keep the protections for taxpayers that are in TABOR. There is bipartisan support today to modify the caps in TABOR to keep up with growth. You will see me lead on that as governor.
There are folks out there who say public schools receive the largest chunk of the state’s budget and don’t need more money. It’s a question of them spending the money in a more efficient way. What do you say to those folks?
We’ve been cutting school budgets in Colorado for three decades. Half of our school districts in Colorado today have had to cut back to a four-day school week. We pay our teachers among the lowest salaries in the country. We’ve got 90 school districts with an average salary below $40,000. We have to make the investment to compete as a state for the kind of economic progress that we all want in Colorado. People in Colorado know that education needs to be our priority and we’re not where we need to be as a state.
You want to expand the role teachers play in assessments, teacher evaluations and school quality ratings. What does would that look like in practice?
We know from (the state’s teacher) survey that teachers don’t believe the current assessment data is helpful to them in their efforts to improve student learning or improve their instructional strategies. We want this assessment data to help support our teachers in really knowing and understanding how their kids learn and what their students need. Teachers need to be much more involved in developing that process.
To do that would cause a lot of upheaval in the current system. One of the things we’ve heard is that teachers and principals are tired of change. How do you balance rethinking those systems while making sure there isn’t another upheaval and more ‘unfunded mandates?’
I think teachers and principals right now feel they’re spending a lot of time on an assessment system that isn’t giving them meaningful information and they’d welcome the opportunity to spend the time to bring their voice to the table on how we can do a better job in this state.
Your proposal is heavily focused on teachers. I can imagine there is someone out there thinking you’re just angling for the endorsement of the teachers union.
I’ve spent my career trying to improve our public schools. I graduated from Manual High School. I’ve seen the challenges in our public schools firsthand. I had great teachers. I’ve always done the work I’ve done because I really believe that public schools are where kids get opportunities to go on and lead productive lives. I grew up with three brothers and sisters who joined my family through the foster care program. I also have a sister who joined my family through her church. So, I’ve grown up with brothers and sisters who didn’t have the opportunities that I had been given. And I saw firsthand how important the opportunities are that kids received through their public schools to determine their future success.
You’re the product of an integrated school. Integration has become a hot topic in education circles again. How have you been thinking about integration?
The achievement gap in Colorado today, the difference between how white kids are performing compared to students of color, is unacceptable. We have the second-largest achievement gap in the country. There are too many students of color in Colorado who are being left behind, who aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve. That’s why this proposal is so important. We want all of our kids regardless of where they grow up, regardless of their family income, regardless of their background, to be successful in school.
We want our schools to reflect the diversity and the richness of our communities. That will happen if all schools have and provide meaningful learning opportunities with high-quality teachers.
You see in my proposal a real focus on attracting and retaining teachers who also reflect their student makeup: Latino teachers, black teachers, teachers of all socioeconomic and racial backgrounds so kids going to school have role models they can look to.
We want integrated, inclusive community schools that reflect the diversity of the state’s population.
You’re calling for universal access to preschool. So is your opponent Rep. Jared Polis. In fact, it’s his central education campaign promise. How are your proposals different?
I worked for Educare Colorado and developed the school readiness legislation that is current law that expands opportunities for low-income kids to attend high-quality preschools. I was also involved in the Colorado Preschool Program, the Denver Preschool Program. Even with these successful efforts, only half the kids in our state attend preschool and full-day kindergarten. Half the kids in our state start behind. And teachers will tell you that it’s really hard to catch them up. They stay behind and they finish behind. As a state it’s imperative that we make sure all kids have access to high-quality early education.
It’s going to be more money.
It’s an investment that’s critically important. We can look to private and public partners. But it is not acceptable that we prevent 4-year-olds from attending a high-quality early learning opportunity.
Is this another ballot question or is this something you can do with existing revenue?
You have to prioritize it. It’s building a statewide vision for what our public education system in Colorado can and should be.
You call for expanding so-called community schools. That’s an amorphous term that means something different depending on who you talk to. What does a community school mean to you?
Community schools are focused on engaging the community in supporting the school. It’s bringing in two-generational learning so that parents and students can learn together and parents can support their student’s learning. But it’s also bringing in wrap-around services. A lot of kids arrive at school with challenges. It’s social-emotional, growing up in stressful home environments, suffering from toxic stress. We have kids who are coming to school who are homeless and who need additional support in their learning. If we want all kids to be successful, we have to address the challenges kids show up every day with.