The promise of a three-day weekend every week has become a popular tool Colorado school districts are using to lure teachers to their schools and try to keep them there. In the face of strapped budgets and limits on educator salaries, most of the state’s districts have switched to a four-day school week — taking on longer hours each of those four days to make up for cutting out one full day.

But one less day in school each week has taken a toll on learning and has proven lackluster in retaining teachers, according to a report released Tuesday by the Keystone Policy Center.

“There’s an irony that the reason for why you go from five to four (days), at least the reason most people say, is so you can recruit and retain better teachers, which you would think would have an impact on student achievement,” said Van Schoales, senior policy director for the Keystone Policy Center. “But it doesn’t seem to be resulting in higher student achievement, and when you look at the recruitment and retention data, it doesn’t have an impact on the retention either. I’m not sure what the compelling reason is.”

The report has some Colorado superintendents pushing back against claims that shorter weeks are bad for kids. During the 2016-17 school year, Colorado tallied 82 four-day districts, charter schools and Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (groups of school districts that share resources). Six years later, 119 of 185 districts, charter schools and BOCES had adopted four-day weeks, according to the report.

At 27J Schools in Brighton, former superintendent Chris Fiedler said a switch to a Tuesday-Friday schedule in 2018 has reduced the burden on instructors even as student graduation rates have continued to inch upward.  

“This myth that we’re going to school less time is just wrong,” said Fiedler, who retired earlier this year after 12 years as the district’s superintendent. “So it’s a longer school day. We’re attending the same number of hours we did before. Teachers actually have more planning time.”

The 21-page Keystone report, titled “Doing Less with Less,” points out ways students in districts with four-day weeks are trailing their peers in districts on traditional five-day weeks. It also acknowledges the difficult reality of staffing classrooms, which often pits the priority of educating students in the ways that help them most against what it takes to draw educators to districts that rank low in compensation.

The move toward four-day weeks has largely come from a sense of desperation as many districts have been unable to meet the competitive salaries of neighboring districts and had to find other incentives to attract teachers.

The four-day week option — which emerged in the 1980s when a new state law gave public schools more flexibility over their calendars — is most widely used among small rural districts. While the majority of Colorado districts operate on a four-day week schedule, those districts only account for about 14% of the state’s public school kids since most of them are small and in rural areas.

In recent years, the four-day week has gained more traction among larger districts in more populated parts of the state, including Pueblo and Brighton.

No district approaches the move to a four-day week lightly, said Colorado Education Commissioner Susana Córdova, who was previously superintendent of Denver Public Schools, the largest district in the state.

“Everybody really cares about their kids,” Córdova said, “and I think they’re really feeling like they’re borrowing from Peter to pay Paul in how they’re coming up with solutions.”

“We’re all in this state complicit”

Among more remote districts on four-day weeks is Mancos School District RE-6 east of Cortez in southwestern Colorado. The rural district — which last year educated 521 students in preschool through 12th grade — transitioned to a four-day week in 2016 under the weight of financial pressures. The district’s teacher compensation is about 20% below a bigger district 20 miles to the east and a New Mexico district 20 miles south, Superintendent Todd Cordrey said.

He says student performance depends on more than just the number of days class is in session per week.

“The issue of whether a school system is a four-day system or a five-day system is really not a key factor to the academic performance of the system or the culture of the system,” said Cordrey, who has been superintendent since 2021 and previously led schools that were active five days. “There are many more important factors that contribute to student success as well as the culture of a school district.”

Those include class size, economic factors, special needs of students, screen time and instructional practices, he said.

Other school districts like Eagle County School District have continued on with a five-day school week even as four nearby districts have shifted to a four-day schedule. Superintendent Philip Qualman, who is quoted in the Keystone Policy Center report, said the district has remained competitive with salaries — a starting teacher in his district earns about $50,500 a year — and his community has not pushed for a four-day school week.

He also wants kids “to reach their peak potential” — an aspiration that Qualman said is already challenged by Colorado requiring a minimum of 160 school days for districts, compared to a minimum of 180 days in other states. Colorado districts are falling behind in how much class time they can provide students, he said.

“Compound that over a 13-year public education experience, that’s a lot of disadvantage that our kids are experiencing,” Qualman told The Colorado Sun. “So districts that are doing four-day, I understand that they’re meeting the hour requirement just like five-day districts are, but I think that there’s only so much content that you can expect students to learn in a day and to try to jam it all into fewer days, I think practically it just doesn’t make sense to me.”

But he doesn’t fault any superintendents or school boards for pivoting to a four-day week. Rather, Qualman puts the onus on state education funding — which lags behind other states — and on the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR, which is a constitutional amendment that limits how much the government can collect in tax revenues.

“It is suffocating public services, and K-12 is one of the most vital of those services,” he said. “As long as we allow that strangulation to occur, we’re all in this state complicit in the state of our education to the extent that we are short-changing our kids in the amount of time that they get to learn content and to be competitive in a global economy.”

How much does time in school matter vs. how that time is spent?

Córdova said she wishes students in all districts — both those on four-day and five-day routines — could access more learning, particularly as students continue trying to overcome learning deficits from the pandemic and as rates of chronic absenteeism have remained high.

“No matter how many days the school year is,” Córdova said, “really making sure we get kids to be in school each and every day is super important.”

So is quality time learning outside school hours, she added.

Many four-day Colorado districts offer programming on the days they don’t hold classes through their own schools or with help from community partners, but student participation across those activities is mixed, the report notes.

What is clear is that districts that hold classes five days a week outperform those that stick to four-day weeks, according to state data cited in the report.

For instance, a greater percentage of districts on five-day schedules were rated highly on what is known as Colorado’s District Performance Framework — a tool used to grade how well districts are performing. Additionally, a higher percentage of students in five-day districts demonstrated proficiency in math and English language arts on state standardized tests called Colorado Measures of Academic Success.

And when analyzing growth — the amount of academic progress students make over time — the report stated that evidence shows kids in five-day districts are making greater gains toward state academic standards than kids in four-day districts, though they still have a lot of work to do to master those standards.

A national study released last year by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University found that four-day weeks “significantly decrease students’ math and reading gains,” particularly in districts in more populated areas.

But debates continue to swirl about whether other components of a child’s education — such as how instructional time is used — are more important than how much time students spend in school.

Cordrey, of Mancos School District, said the four-day week has allowed his district to introduce 21 professional development days for teachers, carving out more time for them to prepare lessons and improve instructional practices.

The four-day week, he told The Sun, “has zero negative consequences” for students, staff and his community.

“The lightbulb moment for students is something that happens in an instant,” Cordrey said. “It doesn’t happen over sustained time being in a seat. So it’s more about the practice than it is about the time. The more we can learn about brain development for children and adolescents, the more we’ll be able to increase student learning and that is really the focus for school district to improve academics, is to continue to learn more about how we can spark students’ learning through our instructional practices and through their environments.”

Schoales, of the Keystone Policy Center, wonders how students can advance in subjects like math and reading if they’re not in school.

Research and experiences from pandemic learning indicate that “kids being in school matters,” Schoales said. “Even with technology, it still matters quite a bit. All things being equal, the research tells us that the more you’re in school, the more you learn.”

The report also found that districts running four-day weeks have generally still struggled with teacher turnover. The average teacher turnover rate of four-day districts hovered above the average teacher turnover rate of five-day districts from 2018-19 through 2022-23. During the 2022-23 school year, for instance, five-day districts experienced a teacher turnover rate of about 20% while four-day districts saw a slightly higher percentage of turnover. 

Brighton’s 27J Schools, however, saw minimal teacher churn between 2018 and 2023 with a 14.6% turnover rate, even as the district held the lowest median teacher salary in the metro area.

The metro district, which last year educated more than 23,100 students in preschool through high school, made national headlines in 2018 when it became the country’s largest school district to convert to a four-day instruction week.

The district converted to a four-day week after failing six times to get a mill levy override approved by voters. The property tax increase would have given the district the ability to increase teacher salaries, the report states.

Fiedler, the former Brighton superintendent, said the district took the leap to attract top-tier teachers. The greatest impact on both student achievement and teacher success boils down to the simple idea of believing in one another, he said.

Teachers must believe in the impact they can make and believe in their students, he said, while students must also believe in their teachers.

“The teachers believe they can really make a difference in improving student outcomes, and if they believe that they move mountains and they have great results from kids,” Fiedler told The Sun.

The report recommends the state education department convene a panel of experts and people who are part of districts that have four-day instruction and ask them to inform state officials and policymakers on ways to make sure students have the support they need to stay on track.

Cordrey, of Mancos School District, counters that decisions around school calendars are best left to individual districts and don’t need input from the state.

“Let’s let local educators make local decisions about the educational process,” he said. “The closer you are to the issue, the more effective solution you’re going to come up with.”

Traducido por Rossana Longo Better, Colorado Community Media

Read this article in English

Una medida electoral propuesta impulsada por la organización política conservadora sin fines de lucro Advance Colorado Action tiene como objetivo proteger el derecho a la elección de escuela en la constitución de Colorado, consolidando la capacidad de los padres de enviar a sus hijos a cualquier escuela pública, escuela autónoma, escuela privada o programa de educación en el hogar que deseen. 

Pero algunos defensores de la educación y expertos en políticas ven un motivo oculto, diciendo Iniciativa 138 podría conducir a un programa de vales a nivel estatal que utilice dólares públicos para enviar a los niños a escuelas privadas, incluidas aquellas con afiliación religiosa.

“Creo que es un trampolín”, dijo a The Colorado Sun Kevin Welner, director del Centro Nacional de Políticas Educativas y profesor de la Escuela de Educación de Boulder de la Universidad de Colorado. “Si la iniciativa se aprueba, podría ser una parte central de una campaña más amplia, política y legal, que en última instancia podría resultar en un programa de vales en el estado. Pero creo que esa estrategia contempla una ventana de cinco a diez años o incluso más y tendrían que caer muchas fichas de dominó”.

Sus defensores dicen que la medida simplemente fortalece las protecciones de elección de escuela que ya se encuentran en la ley estatal, y niegan que la propuesta sea un juego de vales escolares disfrazado.

La medida electoral propuesta es la última salva en una larga lucha política sobre qué papel debe desempeñar la elección de escuela en el sistema educativo de Colorado y el grado de responsabilidad y transparencia que las escuelas charter en particular deben mantener. Las escuelas charter han sido un tema habitual de controversia en el Capitolio estatal, donde los legisladores han discutido repetidamente sobre qué tan estricta debe ser el estado para regularlas, y los defensores de las escuelas charter califican las regulaciones estatales como un obstáculo para la innovación en el aula.

Los críticos de las escuelas charter dicen que reciben demasiados fondos de las escuelas públicas tradicionales, sin que se les exija que alcancen el mismo nivel de calidad. 

El año pasado, un proyecto de ley presentado por un grupo de demócratas liberales de Colorado buscaba imponer reformas radicales a las escuelas charter en interés de hacerlos más transparentes y responsables. Eso legislación, que los defensores de las escuelas charter llamaron “un ataque flagrante a las escuelas charter y a las familias de las escuelas charter”. fallido.

Los intentos anteriores de lanzar un programa de vales en Colorado también han fracasado. Los pocos programas de vales escolares que lograron avanzar fueron impugnados legalmente y finalmente disueltos, incluida una ley de vales escolares rechazada por un juez de Denver en 2003 por motivos que violaba las disposiciones de control local contenidas en la Constitución del estado.

Los debates sobre la canalización de dólares públicos a escuelas religiosas (tanto privadas como charter) también han surgido en otros estados en los últimos años. La Corte Suprema de Oklahoma en junio derribado una escuela preparada para convertirse en la primera escuela autónoma religiosa financiada con fondos públicos del país. Otro esfuerzo beneficiar a escuelas religiosas privadas con financiación pública a través de un programa de asistencia de matrícula en Maine prevaleció en 2022. 

Sus defensores dicen que la Iniciativa 138 es necesaria para proteger la elección de escuela de ataques repetidos

La Iniciativa 138 en Colorado agregaría otra capa de protección más allá de la ley estatal al reforzar en la Constitución estatal el derecho de los padres a elegir si inscriben a sus hijos en una escuela pública, una escuela autónoma o una escuela privada; educarlos en casa; o enviarlos a otro distrito mediante inscripción abierta. La medida aún no ha llegado a la votación de noviembre. Los patrocinadores presentaron alrededor de 201.000 firmas en apoyo de la iniciativa a la Oficina del Secretario de Estado de Colorado la semana pasada.

Los funcionarios electorales estatales tienen hasta el 22 de agosto para revisar firmas. La medida electoral necesitaría que el 55% de los votantes la aprobara para poder ser aprobada.

Michael Fields, presidente de Advance Colorado Action, dijo que la medida propuesta en la boleta electoral es necesaria porque las leyes de elección de escuelas de Colorado son estatutarias, lo que significa que “podrían cambiar en cualquier momento”.

“Hemos tenido un amplio apoyo bipartidista a la elección de escuela durante décadas aquí, pero siento que ese podría no ser el caso en el futuro”, dijo. “Hemos visto legislación este año que persigue a las escuelas charter. Creo que esto continuará en el futuro por parte de algunos legisladores”.

Fields, quien anteriormente enseñó en una escuela autónoma y cuyos hijos asisten a escuelas del distrito en el condado de Douglas, dijo que la Iniciativa 138 no está allanando el camino para un programa de vales en Colorado, particularmente porque no hay ningún costo asociado con la medida.

“Esto es bloquear estrictamente lo que ya tenemos”, dijo Fields, quien se describe a sí mismo como un defensor de los programas de Cuentas de Ahorro para la Educación, que otorgan a las familias subsidios gubernamentales para financiar la matrícula en escuelas privadas, así como para obtener tutorías privadas, clases en línea y actividades extracurriculares.

“Simplemente creo que los padres deberían estar a cargo de la educación”, dijo. “Creo que es más fácil cuando tienen recursos para enviar a sus hijos a la escuela que quieren. Creo que hay buenas opciones para los niños en todos los diferentes tipos de educación. Simplemente creo que las opciones deberían estar disponibles para todos”.

Fields dijo que el abogado de su organización presentó múltiples medidas posibles a la Junta de Título para ver cuáles aceptaría la Junta de Título, cuáles cumplirían con el mandato de abordar un solo tema en una medida electoral y cómo sería el lenguaje formal de las diferentes versiones. .

Una medida presentada incluyó un texto que refleja un programa de vales: “Los padres y tutores tienen derecho a dirigir la financiación por alumno para su hijo a la escuela de su elección”.

Ese lenguaje no es parte de la Iniciativa 138.

La líder de la minoría de la Cámara de Representantes, Rose Pugliese, republicana de Colorado Springs, escribió en un correo electrónico que preservar el derecho a la elección de escuela en la Constitución estatal “proporcionaría una protección esencial contra los continuos ataques a este principio fundamental”.

La medida “es un paso vital para garantizar la capacidad de los padres de tomar las mejores decisiones educativas para sus hijos, independientemente de futuras presiones políticas”, escribió Pugliese. La Asociación de Educación de Colorado, el sindicato de docentes más grande del estado, se opone a la posible medida electoral. según el presidente Kevin Vick.

Vick calificó la propuesta de “extremadamente preocupante” por la preocupación de que requeriría una gran cantidad de fondos de los contribuyentes que necesitan los estudiantes de Colorado “y la pondría en manos de un pequeño número de personas de escuelas privadas que ya podían permitirse pagar la matrícula ellos mismos”.

No ve la necesidad de la medida porque Colorado ya tiene un sistema de elección de escuelas “bastante sólido”.

Luchando “una batalla a la vez”

La posible medida electoral podría abrir un “nuevo terreno político” al establecer “un derecho legal a acceder a escuelas privadas” en la Constitución del estado, dijo Van Schoales, ex maestro y líder escolar que también es director senior de políticas del Keystone Policy Center. 

Schoales no habló en nombre del Keystone Policy Center. La organización sin fines de lucro no adopta una postura sobre cuestiones políticas.

Un nuevo derecho legal para acceder a escuelas privadas podría permitir entonces una legislación o un caso judicial que persiga el inicio de un programa de vales, dijo Schoales.

Welner, del Centro Nacional de Políticas Educativas, dijo que tendrían que encajar muchas más piezas del rompecabezas político para introducir realmente un programa de vales en el estado. Si los republicanos ganan las elecciones federales, logran el control de la presidencia y el Congreso, y luego abren financiamiento federal o incentivos para que los estados adopten políticas de vales, eso podría generar más impulso para los programas de vales. Si los republicanos también ganaran más poder en Colorado y los votantes eligieran a un gobernador conservador, eso podría acercar al estado a adoptar su propio programa de vales, dijo Welner.

Esas circunstancias podrían sentar las bases para una política de vales, dijo Welner. Pero en este momento, el apetito de los padres de Colorado por las escuelas públicas presenta otro obstáculo para un programa de vales, añadió.

“A las familias de Colorado les gustan abrumadoramente sus escuelas públicas, por lo que los partidarios de los vales enfrentan una batalla cuesta arriba”, dijo Welner. “Tienen que librar una batalla a la vez, y esta es una batalla o un trampolín”.

Welner dijo que sería difícil persuadir a los votantes o políticos de que Colorado debería unirse a las filas de estados que brindan subsidios de los contribuyentes para escuelas privadas o educación en el hogar.

Otros defensores y organizaciones de la educación están esperando tomar una posición sobre la Iniciativa 138 hasta que se convierta en una medida electoral oficial, incluida la Liga de Escuelas Chárter de Colorado. El presidente Dan Schaller dijo que si se convierte en una medida electoral oficial, la organización sin fines de lucro llevará a cabo un análisis legal más profundo de sus impactos potenciales para presentarlo a su junta directiva.

Más allá de la batalla política sobre los programas de vales está la cuestión de si conducen a mejores resultados académicos para los estudiantes. Schoales dijo que no hay pruebas sólidas que sugieran que los niños en programas de cupones se desempeñen significativamente mejor o peor que otros estudiantes. 

Dar financiación pública a escuelas privadas, incluidas las religiosas, “no es una estrategia para mejorar los resultados”, dijo Schoales. “Es simplemente una forma diferente de impartir educación”.

The moment Jordan Alvillar learned about two years into their marriage that her wife no longer wanted to have kids, her life and the future she had long imagined came to a screeching halt.

“It was like you were driving a car full speed toward what you think is going to be your final destination,” Alvillar, 37, said. “All of a sudden someone who’s not you just slams on the brakes. I felt very devastated and it took me a long time to process those feelings.”

Over the next year, as the pair dissected their differences in weekly therapy sessions, that devastation slowly disintegrated. In its place, Alvillar — who discovered she also wanted to live childfree — found a sense of relief.

Freedom, even.

The Denver couple’s decision to pass on having children is one story feeding into a trend of declining birth rates in metro Denver — where the impacts of slowing births have already trickled into classrooms, with smaller numbers of kids showing up to elementary schools. 

Denver County experienced the second-largest decline in births among the 100 most populous counties in the country from 2021 to 2022 — the most recent year of county-by-county data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number of babies born dropped 6.3%, to 8,649 from 9,232.

Meanwhile, Colorado’s total fertility rate is down, with fewer babies born per woman over her lifetime. Data shows an average of 1.5 births among Colorado women and an average of 1.6 births among women nationally. To fully replace Colorado’s population, the average total fertility rate would have to jump to 2.1, according to Colorado State Demographer Elizabeth Garner.

The freefall in births marks a generational shift and follows birth trajectories of both the U.S. and other developed nations as more millennials choose to have fewer — or no — kids. 

Last year, the country’s total fertility rate dropped to 1,616.5 births per 1,000 women, The New York Times reported last week, calling it “a historic low” that is well below the rate needed to maintain the U.S. population. The New York Times also reported in July on the rising number of U.S. adults who say they expect to remain childfree, citing a Pew Research Center study from 2023. Among the results, 47% of adults younger than 50 without kids indicated “they were unlikely ever to have children,” up 10 percentage points since 2018.

Climate anxiety, finances, ratchet anxiety about parenting

Why are adults at a ripe reproduction age opting for childfree households or fewer children than previous generations?

Their answers differ, often driven by deeply personal reasons.

In some cases, distress outside the home alters decisions made inside it. That was especially true during the housing crisis of the Great Recession and the pandemic’s health and economic challenges. Both moments of history spawned a decline in birth rates.

“That instability, that lack of certainty made people feel that they wanted to have fewer children,” Jennifer Reich, a professor of sociology at the University of Colorado Denver, told The Colorado Sun.

The kinds of social support people have access to, including parental leave policies and health insurance, also affect whether they see kids in their future, Reich said, noting that as governments scale back social safety nets, birth rates tend to go down.

At the same time, pressure on parents has been mounting, with parents feeling greater anxiety about their children’s success and an overwhelming sense of responsibility to enroll in high-quality day care, pick the right school and sign up for traveling sports teams.

“Our cultural expectations of what it means to be a good parent keep ratcheting up,” Reich said. The expectation that parents, particularly mothers, invest more in each child “can make parenting feel like more work.”

Other adults want to focus on their education and careers or find meaning in ways besides having kids. Some feel strapped by student debt, stressed about the worsening effects of climate change or worried about what the country’s future looks like amid sharp political divides, Reich said.

“They’re personal choices,” she said, “but they’re drawing on cultural and social information that help them shape their priorities for their family.”

Much of the overall drop in births has been driven by significant declines in babies born to women under 35, particularly under the age of 25, largely thanks to better access to effective contraceptives, according to Sara Yeatman, a professor of health and behavioral sciences at CU Denver.

Young adults on average still want to have two kids, but that desire often starts to wane in their 30s, Yeatman said, in part because of the escalating price of child care and housing. 

“It’s really, really expensive,” said Yeatman, who also runs the CU Population Center. “And so even if people might have one, they then revise their desires down to not have that second child because of how expensive it is.”

“The threat of regret”

Alvillar, who changed her mind about kids after years of anticipating having a family, has found happiness in her own rhythm with her wife, which includes room for their shared love of travel along with more ease to plot out how they want to spend their time and ever-growing bonds with their nieces, nephews and friends’ kids.

Alvillar said that while growing up she never had a role model who chose to be childfree. That meant that having kids seemed “inevitable,” she said.

“It just felt like a societal expectation that was ingrained in me and it was portrayed both in real life and in movies as a crucial life milestone that I was advised not to overlook,” Alvillar said. “I like to call it ‘the threat of regret.’ People saying, ‘you’re never going to know a love like this and if you don’t (have kids), one day you’re going to be on your deathbed wishing you did.’ That can really get people, and I think that for a long time, it really convinced me that it was just an experience I shouldn’t miss out on, and therefore I was just chasing a feeling.”

Through regular therapy with her wife, Alvillar came to realize that her long-held reasons for wanting kids were the wrong ones.

Other forces have also factored into her decision to plow forward without children, including her mental health — she has struggled with anxiety and depression since childhood — along with the uncertainty of the world.

“I think that even just looking at the state of the world, whether it be world wars that are happening, whether it be climate change, there’s no guarantee of how our world is going to look in the next 20 years and that children and families are going to be thriving,” Alvillar said. “They’re not necessarily thriving now, so it feels like an ultimate gamble to just put all this faith into the powers that be in our country or in the world that the world is going to be in a pristine state to where any child we would have would just have the greatest opportunities possible when that currently doesn’t exist.”

Reich, of the University of Colorado Denver, noted that public judgment often rears up in conversations about childbearing — deeming people who don’t want to have children as selfish or condemning parents who have more children than they can afford.

The better question, she said, is “how can we set up better opportunities where people who are parenting have the resources they need to be successful?”

Susan Ahmad, who lives in Commerce City, felt a pull to have kids in her early 20s as someone who has been close with her family and grew up devoted to family traditions and expectations, even helping raise her younger siblings.

By the time she turned 30, she began branching out in her own direction.

“I started living my life for myself and not for others and the expectations of what was thought to be for me,” said Ahmad, now 38.

Ahmad climbed up in her career and leaned into traveling, aiming to visit one new destination a year.

In 2022, however, she unexpectedly stepped into the role of parent after adopting her nephew when her older sister died. He still considers her his aunt, but she has taken on all the responsibilities of a mother, sorting out issues at school and cuddling with him at night during his first year of living with her.

She said adopting her nephew only reinforced her decision to not have her own children. Her family has battled challenges with addiction and mental health. Ahmad has faced struggles with mental health and has feared passing them down to kids of her own. She knows guilt would follow.

She also has seen firsthand how many children in foster care need a home while navigating the adoption process for her nephew. If she had her own kids, she said she might not have had the finances or bandwidth to bring her nephew, now 11, under her roof.

“Where would he be?” she wonders.

With dwindling birth rates eventually comes the prospect of school closures

Colorado’s population demographics make it one of the youngest states in the country with its long history of luring 20- to 40-year-olds seeking good jobs and access to the outdoors, said Garner, the state demographer.

“If we didn’t migrate people to the state, we would age really fast,” Garner said.

Her office is forecasting the birth rate to taper and hold steady, though she anticipates that the state’s share of women of childbearing age will grow, meaning the state could see a modest increase in the number of babies born until sometime around 2040. That increase will likely result in birth numbers that are slightly higher than birth figures in 2007.

However, those births will play out differently county by county. For example, Adams County is a younger county than its neighbors and will therefore likely see a greater uptick in births. Jefferson County is on the opposite end of the spectrum, with older residents, Garner said. 

Among the most immediate consequences of declining births and birth rates: Fewer kids showing up to elementary schools in recent school years.

Metro area school districts have had to wrestle with hard decisions in recent years while seeing smaller cohorts of students. Other district leaders in the metro area know that tough decisions loom ahead.

Closing 21 schools over the past three years — largely because of dwindling enrollment — has been among the most difficult work Jeffco Public Schools has faced, Superintendent Tracy Dorland told The Sun.

The district educated 76,172 students in preschool through high school last year after steady enrollment declines since the 2015-16 school year, when 86,708 students attended the district, state data shows.

Meanwhile, Jefferson County’s birth rate has also fallen — from 61 babies born per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 in 2007 to 50 babies born per 1,000 women in that age range in 2022. The number of babies born dropped from 6,194 in 2007 to 5,521 in 2022.

The arduous process of closing schools has revised the way the district is planning for its future. Dorland said the district worked with an outside expert to complete a boundary study, which “confirmed that just changing school boundaries and shifting students around will not change the challenge of declining enrollment.”

If the expected trends from the boundary study hold, Jeffco Public Schools will likely have to consider more school consolidations in the 2028-29 school year, Dorland said.

With the study as a road map, the district is also redesigning the way it assembles plans for buildings, analyzing enrollment trends and projections as well as locations when figuring out infrastructure needs.

“It’s really important to me that given our recent history,” Dorland said, “significant financial investments are made in facilities that we are confident will serve our students far into the future.”

In Denver Public Schools, Colorado’s largest school district, leaders continue to plan for student population declines, according to Deputy Superintendent Tony Smith.

Last year, DPS educated 88,235 students in preschool through high school, state data shows. Enrollment has fluctuated throughout the past few years — partly due to migrants arriving in Denver — but overall remains down. The district saw its highest enrollment in the past decade during the 2019-20 school year, when 92,112 kids attended its schools.

Denver County’s birth rate has also continued to dip. In 2007, 75 babies were born per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, compared with 44 per 1,000 women in that age group in 2022. The number of births decreased to 8,140 in 2022 from 10,084 in 2007.

District and board leaders have hemmed and hawed over school consolidations in recent years because of enrollment being down. The board, however, did approve closure of two elementary schools and one middle school in 2023.

More are likely on the way after the board in June adopted a policy that directs Superintendent Alex Marrero on how to go about proposing school closures.

Smith told The Sun that the district is contemplating new consolidation conversations and said leaders must develop a possible timeline and better understand how potential closures would affect communities.

“No one wants to shut down a school,” Smith said. “We are faced with the reality of declining enrollment that may present us with the choices that will include consolidation and closure of schools.”

Douglas County School District is also eyeing potential school consolidations, likely beginning in 2026 in Highlands Ranch. Like some of its peer districts, Douglas County School District is hammered by both declining births and an aging population, Superintendent Erin Kane said.

District enrollment has wobbled up and down in the past few years but was significantly down last year to 61,964 students in preschool through high school from its decade high of 67,597 students during the 2017-18 school year, according to state data.

Douglas County’s birth rate has also plunged from 72 babies born per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 in 2007 to 54 babies born per 1,000 women in that age bracket in 2022. The number of births fell to 3,849 in 2022 from 4,205 in 2007.

And yet pockets of the district are experiencing growth, including Sterling Ranch west of Highlands Ranch. The community doesn’t have its own elementary school, even as it will encompass about 18,000 homes, Kane said.

Douglas County School District’s board later this month plans to vote on running a bond election in November, in part to fund a few new community schools where they’re needed.

“We want to make sure we’re investing in all of our schools, including in our schools where we do need to do consolidations,” Kane said. “Investing in those schools and opportunities for kids is important everywhere.”

A proposed ballot measure pushed by conservative political nonprofit Advance Colorado Action aims to protect the right to school choice in Colorado’s constitution, cementing parents’ ability to send their children to any public school, charter school, private school or homeschooling program they want. 

But some education advocates and policy experts see a hidden motive, saying Initiative 138 could lead to a statewide voucher program that uses public dollars to send children to private schools, including those with a religious affiliation.

“I think it’s a steppingstone,” Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center and a professor in the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, told The Colorado Sun. “If the initiative passed, it could be a central part of a larger campaign, political and legal, that could ultimately result in a voucher program in the state. But I think that strategy looks to a five- to 10-year window or even longer and would have to have a lot of dominoes fall.”

Proponents say the measure simply strengthens school choice protections already found in state law — and they deny that the proposal is a school voucher play in disguise.

The proposed ballot measure is the latest salvo in a long political fight over what role school choice should play in Colorado’s education system and the degree of accountability and transparency charter schools in particular must uphold. Charter schools have been a regular subject of contention at the state Capitol, where lawmakers have repeatedly jousted over how tightly the state should regulate them, with charter school advocates calling state regulations an obstacle to innovation in the classroom.

Critics of charter schools say they take too much funding from traditional public schools, without being required to meet the same level of quality. 

Last year, a bill introduced by a group of liberal Colorado Democrats sought to impose sweeping reforms on charter schools in the interest of making them more transparent and accountable. That legislation, which charter school advocates called “a blatant attack on charter schools and charter school families,” failed.

Previous attempts to launch a voucher program in Colorado have likewise failed. The few school voucher programs that did manage to move forward were legally challenged and ultimately dissolved, including a school voucher law rejected by a Denver judge in 2003 on the grounds that it violated local control provisions in the state Constitution.

Debates over funneling public dollars to religious schools — both private and charter schools — have also swirled in other states in recent years. The Oklahoma Supreme Court in June struck down a school poised to become the country’s first publicly funded religious charter school. Another effort to benefit private religious schools with public funding through a tuition assistance program in Maine prevailed in 2022. 

Proponents say Initiative 138 is needed to protect school choice from repeated attacks

Initiative 138 in Colorado would add another layer of protection beyond state law by reinforcing in the state Constitution the right for parents to choose whether to enroll their child in a public school, charter school, private school; homeschool them; or send them to another district through open enrollment. The measure has not made it onto the November ballot yet. Sponsors submitted about 201,000 signatures in support of the initiative to the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office last week.

State elections officials have until Aug. 22 to review signatures. The ballot measure would need 55% of voters to approve it in order to pass.

Michael Fields, president of Advance Colorado Action, said the proposed ballot measure is necessary because Colorado school choice laws are statutory, meaning “they could change at any point.”

“We’ve had broad bipartisan support of school choice for decades here, but I feel like that might not be the case in the future,” he said. “We’ve seen legislation this year going after charter schools. I think that will continue in the future from some legislators.”

Fields, who previously taught at a charter school and whose children attend district neighborhood schools in Douglas County, said Initiative 138 is not paving the way for a voucher program in Colorado, particularly since there is no cost associated with the measure.

“This is strictly locking in what we already have in place,” said Fields, who describes himself as a proponent of Education Savings Account programs, which give families government subsidies to fund tuition at private schools as well as pursue private tutoring, online classes and extracurricular activities.

“I just think that parents should be in charge of education,” he said. “I think it’s easier when they have resources to send their kid to the school that they want to. I believe that there’s good fits for kids in all different types of education. I just think that the options should be available for everybody.”

Fields said his organization’s lawyer submitted multiple possible measures to the Title Board to see which ones the Title Board would accept, which ones would abide by the mandate to address a single subject in a ballot measure and what the formal language of different versions would look like.

One submitted measure included text reflecting a voucher program: “Parents and guardians have the right to direct per-pupil funding for their child to the schooling of their choice.”

That language is not part of Initiative 138.

House Minority Leader Rose Pugliese, a Colorado Springs Republican, wrote in an email that preserving the right to school choice in the state Constitution “would provide essential protection against ongoing attacks on this fundamental principle.”

The measure “is a vital step in securing the ability of parents to make the best educational decisions for their children, regardless of future political pressures,” Pugliese wrote.The Colorado Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, opposes the potential ballot measure, according to President Kevin Vick.

Vick labeled the proposal “extremely troubling” with concerns that it would take a lot of taxpayer funding needed by Colorado students “and put it in the hands of a small number of private school people who could already afford to pay tuition themselves.”

He doesn’t see a need for the measure because Colorado already has “a pretty robust” school choice system.

Fighting “one battle at a time”

The possible ballot measure could open up “new policy ground” in establishing “a legal right to access private schools” in the state Constitution, said Van Schoales, a former teacher and school leader who is also senior policy director of the Keystone Policy Center. 

Schoales did not speak on behalf of the Keystone Policy Center. The nonprofit does not take a stance on political issues.

A new legal right to access private schools could then enable legislation or a court case pursuing the start of a voucher program, Schoales said.

Welner, of the National Education Policy Center, said many more political puzzle pieces would have to fall into place to actually introduce a voucher program in the state. If Republicans win federal elections, gaining control of the presidency and Congress, and then open up federal funding or incentives for states to adopt voucher policies, that could create more momentum for voucher programs. If Republicans also gained more power in Colorado and voters elected a conservative governor, that could usher the state close to adopting its own voucher program, Welner said.

Those circumstances could set the stage for a voucher policy, Welner said. But right now, Colorado parents’ appetite for public schools presents another hurdle to a voucher program, he added.

“Colorado families overwhelmingly like their public schools so voucher supporters face a steep uphill battle,” Welner said. “They have to fight one battle at a time, and this is one battle or one steppingstone.”

Welner said it would be hard to persuade voters or politicians that Colorado should join the ranks of states that provide taxpayer subsidies for private schools or homeschooling.

Other education advocates and organizations are waiting to take a position on Initiative 138 until it becomes an official ballot measure, including the Colorado League of Charter Schools. President Dan Schaller said if it becomes an official ballot measure, the nonprofit organization will conduct a deeper legal analysis of its potential impacts to present to its board.

Beyond the political battle over voucher programs is the question of whether they lead to better academic outcomes for students. Schoales said there is no strong evidence to suggest that kids in voucher programs perform significantly better or worse than other students. 

Giving public funding to private schools, including religious schools, “is not a strategy to improve outcomes,” Schoales said. “It’s just a different way of delivering education.”

The Colorado Department of Early Childhood has redesigned the way it places preschoolers with disabilities into classrooms that can meet their needs in response to increased scrutiny and a lawsuit filed last year by school districts and education advocacy organizations.

The change to the state’s expanded preschool program — known as universal preschool — follows school districts’ struggles to ensure students with special needs landed in preschool settings that could accommodate the kinds of extra support owed to them under state and federal law. 

School districts say they experienced major hiccups in the program’s inaugural year, when the state’s student enrollment system, called BridgeCare, failed to match all students with disabilities with programs that could give them the targeted instruction and additional help they required.

That made districts vulnerable to violating state and federal rules that guarantee special education services to children with disabilities, district administrators said, and was one of the major reasons they brought state education officials and Gov. Jared Polis to court. Their lawsuit, however, was dismissed earlier this month after a Denver district court judge ruled the plaintiffs did not have legal grounds to sue, Chalkbeat Colorado first reported.

But their concerns have stayed with the Department of Early Childhood, which revised the way it pairs kids with disabilities and preschool programs so that the enrollment process is “as seamless as possible for both families and districts,” Universal Preschool Director Dawn Odean told The Colorado Sun.

The new preschool program offers up to 15 hours of free preschool per week for kids in the year before they enter kindergarten and additional subsidized hours for students with disabilities who come from low-income households. 

In the first year of the program, all families enrolled in universal preschool the same way, through BridgeCare. A family with a student with a disability would apply in the system and note that their child had an individualized education program plan, or IEP, which outlines the services, resources and specialized instruction their student needs. 

Oftentimes, families and school districts had already decided which preschool program was best for their student. But the application process prompted them to select a preschool location, which “created some unknowns and was disruptive,” Odean said.

The department’s inability to directly match preschoolers with IEPs to appropriate programs was a symptom of a new enrollment system that was created within “a very compressed timeline,” Odean said.

That enrollment program also wasn’t accessible to school districts and providers to jump in and manually change where a student was placed for preschool, which became a point of frustration for districts and providers.

Odean said the Department of Early Childhood limited how much control it granted districts and providers in BridgeCare because of uncertainty about “what could occur if they had access to different parts of the system and what the ripple effects might be.”

“It’s part of, I think, the growing pains of a new program and our unknown enrollment processes starting from scratch and then also building a new system at the same time and being thoughtful about what is actually doable,” she said.

Now, the Department of Early Childhood has developed a separate enrollment process for preschoolers with disabilities in BridgeCare so that a student is directly assigned to a program that aligns with their IEP. When a family of a student with special needs fills out the application, they indicate that their child has an IEP. The application is then transferred to the district that advised the family on the IEP so the district can verify the placement.

So far, 3,188 students with an IEP are set to participate in universal preschool this school year, according to figures provided by the Department of Early Childhood.

The new process is “a step in the right direction,” but has not solved every problem, said Mat Aubuchon, executive director of learning services at Westminster Public Schools.

His district has received a spreadsheet from the state department outlining kids with IEPs who need to be placed at specific preschool sites, according to information from BridgeCare. District staff are now working to verify each student on that list with their own class rosters. 

Questions have emerged throughout that process, particularly around families who have left the district and are enrolling their student in a different preschool program. That leaves Aubuchon’s team wondering where students of those families are.

Districts encountered that kind of challenge even before the state introduced universal preschool, Aubuchon said, but now they have another state agency they must communicate with, which adds to their work.

Will the new enrollment process put all kids with IEPs in the right classrooms? It’s a waiting game.

In 27J Schools in Brighton, preschool staff have found more ease in connecting students with IEPs with the proper programs.

“This new process has given districts the ability to edit a student’s profile and put them in the correct school on the backend rather than having to go through the state to try to get that done,” said Bethany Ager, the district’s early childhood education director.

There’s one caveat: Districts can only make changes to students’ applications while they’re still in the process of enrolling in universal preschool. Once a family accepts a match for a spot at a specific preschool and is officially enrolled, a district can no longer adjust their application.

Still, Ager is optimistic that the new approach to enrolling preschoolers with disabilities will “cut the errors down drastically.”

“We have some power in a limited capacity with a small group of kids,” she said. “There’s been great strides in the right direction.”

Aubuchon said he sees the state department actively trying to improve the enrollment system. But he also sees the need for a more efficient system — one that does not require so much back-and-forth communication among parents, districts and providers, and the state to secure the right placement for students.

“We’ve been enrolling kids in preschool for 30 years,” he said. “We know how to do it. I know (the Department of Early Childhood) is an added wrinkle, but we still should be able to do the majority of enrollment at the local level.”

The new enrollment process will create an extra workload for districts and providers, Odean acknowledged, but she anticipates the process will ease the administrative burden in the long run.

“It’s still change, and so with any change we certainly recognize that that equals work,” Odean said. “I definitely don’t want to diminish that there is work with any new change, and this is a big one. This is a big change for the whole state. And so I want to be very respectful that people are putting more thinking and more effort into it, but I think we’re all aligned (with) the end in mind for it being easier over time.”

Whether the new enrollment system will prevent all preschoolers with disabilities from stepping into classrooms that can’t accommodate them remains to be seen until the first week of school.

“On paper, it’s looking like we’re going to get most of them,” Aubuchon said, “but I want to see them when they actually land in the door.”

A group of five Colorado school districts has turned to the courts to fight a new policy that would allow substitute teachers they hire through outside staffing agencies to benefit from the state’s retirement system.

The policy, school districts say, could cost them millions of dollars worth of retirement contributions for substitutes and make the already difficult task of finding enough subs to cover classrooms even harder.

The school districts joined two staffing agencies, Kelly Services and ESS West, LLC, in filing a lawsuit against the Colorado Public Employees’ Retirement Association on June 27 in Denver District Court.

The lawsuit raises questions about the way that subs should be classified as employees and the kind of retirement benefits they are eligible to receive. Some Colorado school districts, including plaintiff Aurora Public Schools, have started working with outside staffing agencies in recent years to create a reliable pool of subs at a time it has become increasingly difficult for many districts to hire and retain a stable group of subs. The state has recognized those subs as employees of the staffing agencies that contract with districts, meaning the subs and agencies pay into social security. 

PERA, however, wants all school employees who are critical to schools to be PERA members, including subs who come from outside staffing agencies. The retirement system is pushing to classify those subs as employees of school districts rather than as employees of outside staffing agencies. The new policy would force school districts to make retirement contributions to PERA for those subs.

“The Districts have not budgeted for such contributions, nor do they have the resources to effectively fill substitute positions without staffing agencies,” the lawsuit states.

Other district plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Adams County School District 14, Englewood Schools, Harrison School District 2 and Littleton Public Schools.

PERA spokesperson Patrick von Keyserling declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing pending litigation.

PERA on June 30, 2023, made all school districts aware that it would begin regarding subs as PERA members and that districts would have to begin making retirement contributions to PERA for subs starting July 1, 2024, according to the lawsuit.

Last fall, a number of school district officials complained about the policy change to the state legislature’s Pension Review Subcommittee. Committee members, however, declined to authorize a bill draft reversing the policy, saying they were worried it would lead to school districts turning to contract labor to avoid paying the benefits owed to public employees.

The lawsuit noted that the retirement association originally agreed to respect Aurora Public Schools’ decision to name subs as employees of Kelly Services after the district shifted from hiring its own subs to contracting with the staffing agency for the 2016-17 school year.

“However, PERA reserves the right to challenge APS’ classification of the substitute employees in the future,” the lawsuit states, citing a 2016 letter written to the district from Gregory Smith, PERA’s executive director at the time.

With help from Kelly Services, Aurora Public Schools now relies on about 700 subs per year to step into classrooms temporarily or to fill long-term vacancies, according to the lawsuit.

Working with an outside company has helped the district dramatically boost its success placing subs in classrooms, which can be particularly tough given how much school districts compete with each other and with other industries for hourly workers, Brett Johnson, chief financial officer for Aurora Public Schools, told The Colorado Sun.

The temporary and “transient” nature of subs further complicates districts’ ability to staff classrooms, Johnson said, as some subs want to work only a couple days a week or every other week while others fill in every day.

Should the new policy be adopted, Aurora Public Schools would likely have to return to directly hiring subs and appoint a full-time staff member for that job, which would set in motion a series of financial and operational hardships, he said.

“A concern on our end is that in the likely event that our fill rates plummet again, that puts a lot of strain on school operations and ultimately kids,” said Johnson, who previously served on PERA’s board. “We may have to just decide to scrap third-party providers altogether and be upfront with our community and our teachers and our kids that teachers are going to have to do more and kids are going to have to expect disruptions in their learning.”

That might mean schools must combine classrooms for a day or ask teachers to skip their planning periods in order to cover a class, adding more demands to their already full workloads, Johnson said.

He estimates that making retirement contributions to PERA for subs could cost Aurora Public Schools between $3 million and $5 million in a single school year.

“We prefer to have a balanced budget obviously, so if there’s all of a sudden kind of a new price tag of several million dollars, we would have to find a reduction of several million dollars somewhere else,” Johnson said. 

The district of about 5,500 full-time employees has tried to insulate classrooms from feeling the effects of cuts, he said. Last year, for instance, Aurora Public Schools slashed administration by $6.5 million.

“But at some point, cuts are deep enough they will eventually affect school operations,” Johnson said.

Questions around PERA’s authority and lack of transparency

Districts suing PERA are also raising concerns over what they see as a lack of transparency from the state retirement system in rolling out its new policy that categorizes subs as district employees and PERA members. 

PERA notified school districts of its new policy in a June 30, 2023, letter.

According to the lawsuit, a letter sent to Aurora Public Schools stated that, “It is PERA’s position that regardless of whether APS pays its substitute employees directly, or utilizes a third party to place and/or pay substitute employees, these substitute employees are required to be PERA members.”

The retirement system emailed school districts in early October to double down on its stance that by the 2024-25 school year, all subs would be considered PERA members even if they were hired by a third-party company, the lawsuit states.

School districts wonder why PERA suddenly announced the change in a letter without giving notice or allowing public comment on the new rule.

The plaintiffs say PERA’s policy is “an egregious overreach” of the power the state gives the retirement system to designate members. They argue PERA has the authority to decide whether certain public employees are PERA members, but cannot decide that private employees are members.

“PERA is overstepping,” Harrison School District 2 Superintendent Wendy Birhanzel wrote in an email to The Colorado Sun. “These substitutes are not employees of the school district. They are privately employed by a staffing agency and should not be paying into PERA.”

The Colorado Springs school district contracts with ESS West, LLC, to put between 120 and 150 subs in front of students in a school year, Birhanzel said.

Like Aurora Public Schools, Harrison School District 2 has seen significant improvement in deploying subs to classes using a third-party company. The new policy would also force Harrison School District 2 to once again handle the hiring process of subs, which Birhanzel worries would leave the district scrambling to cover all classrooms. 

Johnson, of Aurora Public Schools, also questions why PERA is fixated on converting subs hired through outside companies to PERA members when other government agencies work with employees hired by private vendors, such as trash collectors and construction workers.

“The idea that PERA would suggest that we need to think first about PERA membership, second about our kids and our operations of our schools just felt a little odd,” he said. “It felt like we were being oddly singled out.”

During a hearing this month, the court ruled districts have 45 days from July 1 until they must begin making PERA contributions for subs employed through third-party companies. Within that time, they can also explore potential solutions without involving the legal system.

Johnson anticipates that this legal battle could be the start of a broader fight over how other school district employees hired through vendors are classified, such as staff helping students with special needs who have an individualized education program to accommodate their learning needs. He said that PERA has been trying to understand the breadth of positions school districts fill using outside staffing agencies, including through a survey issued last fall.

“If we can’t have the ability to place positions that no one applies for through a third-party basis, we are breaking federal law or not honoring IEP contracts with kids,” Johnson said, “and so we’re highly concerned about the direction that this might go.”

Colorado Sun staff writer Brian Eason contributed to this report. 

When Laura Wally learned that her paycheck would not be landing in her bank account in mid-June as scheduled, she considered selling plasma and applying for government assistance for food. Since then, she has depleted her emergency fund, borrowed money from family members and picked up a side gig delivering groceries through Instacart.

All while teaching chemistry at Front Range Community College’s Larimer Campus in Fort Collins this summer.

Wally is one of 105 instructors at the community college whose paychecks have shown up late this summer, stretching their already tight budgets. She has since received the amount she was owed, plus a $500 stipend, and Wally’s colleagues had all received their missing checks by Friday, college administrators say. Some instructors experienced similar paycheck delays during the fall and spring semesters.

“It really makes me honestly wonder if I want to keep working for Front Range,” said Wally, who has taught at the college since 2015. “I love my students and chemistry is a hard subject and I want to be able to help them with that, but how long do you struggle as a professional teacher with a graduate degree?”

The payroll lag falls as many adjunct instructors across Colorado campuses have in recent years called more attention to their wages — citing chronic struggles of barely scraping by — and urged lawmakers to grant them the right to unionize and negotiate for wages, benefits and working conditions. During the 2022 legislative session, a highly controversial bill that became law, Senate Bill 230, cleared the way for collective bargaining among county employees but did not extend the same organizing powers to higher education employees.

John Kinsey, faculty senate president at Front Range Community College’s Westminster campus, describes the pattern of payroll delays as a string of crises that have frustrated instructors, who he said have “the least stability and the least support.”

“It seems like we’ve picked up speed every time we’ve hit this roadblock, but then the question is, why do we keep hitting this roadblock?” said Kinsey, who has taught philosophy at the Westminster campus but is not currently teaching. “I’d say that the college is in a state of instability, and the fact that we keep hitting this roadblock is the strongest evidence of that instability.”

Front Range Community College administrators say the pay delay stems from a combination of factors, including staff turnover, human error and the race to train new employees on processes such as payroll.

The college — which has campuses in Longmont, Westminster and Fort Collins along with an online program — typically begins the process for paying instructors several weeks before the beginning of each semester, according to Rebecca Woulfe, provost and vice president of academic affairs of the community college.

The electronic system that is the hub for faculty and instructor contracts had a default date set up marking when instructors would be paid. The default pay date for the summer semester, which started May 28, was June 28. The college aimed to pay its instructors sooner, however, and the only way to do that was to manually change the pay date, Woulfe said.

The institution did not update the default pay date for every instructor, which is what led to later paychecks.

Staff turnover — which Woulfe said has recently been at about 15% — has contributed to the challenge to get checks ready for staff, particularly as new employees have had to undergo training.

“It’s difficult to take time to get in depth as much as you’d like to (with training) and practice as much as you’d like to before folks go live,” said Matthew Jamison, the college’s associate vice president for academic success.

The school previously stumbled with paying two instructors on time during the spring semester and 12 in the fall. Part of the spring hiccup stemmed from a major restructuring to consolidate the three campuses instead of each continuing to operate independently, according to Woulfe.

The college doled out $500 stipends to all instructors waiting for their paychecks this summer in hopes of restoring faith in the institution and offered financial assistance through its nonprofit foundation, Woulfe said. The college is also updating its training materials, holding meetings with staff and re-evaluating its processes for contracts to prevent another payment slowdown for instructors.

“We recognize that we couldn’t run this institution without them,” she said. “They are critical to the success of this institution, to our student success, to the work that we do.”

The Front Range Community College Chapter of American Association of University Professors released a statement last week criticizing the college for continuing to fail to pay instructors on time.

“Delaying instructors’ paychecks places an undue burden on employees who are already struggling to make ends meet,” the statement noted, calling the institution’s errors “unacceptable when employees live on an economic razor’s edge.”

Weighing whether to stay for the students or leave for more money

Kinsey, the faculty senate president, said he is confident that the delay is not malicious but is caused by “overlapping bureaucratic miscommunication.” No matter the cause, he added, the delays are further straining instructors and threatening their financial security.

“From an instructor’s perspective, I would feel that my value wasn’t highly prioritized if I had to constantly struggle to even get the poverty wages that I was getting offered,” Kinsey said.

Wally, the chemistry professor, said she has missed payments to creditors and made late payments this summer because of the additional time it took to be fully compensated. Her pay has fluctuated throughout her time at Front Range Community College due to extra jobs she has picked up tutoring and working in the college’s writing center. This summer, she has been earning just over $600 a week while teaching fewer hours than she anticipated.

Wally decided to apply for unemployment benefits at the start of the summer because she was receiving less compensation since she was teaching fewer hours, but she has not received any unemployment funds. Meanwhile, she and her partner took on a roommate in their Longmont home in September after her partner lost his job. 

“If you aren’t making a living wage in northern Colorado, there’s no way you can save any money,” Wally said. “And so you’re living paycheck to paycheck. And if your paychecks, any amount is late, then you’re not buying groceries, you’re not paying rent or making a mortgage payment. You’re in trouble.”

Her students have kept her teaching at the community college year after year and, as she contemplates making a career change, she worries about whether they’ll receive the support they need if they have a revolving door of teachers. Throughout her time in the classroom, she has written letters of recommendation for students — including one for a recent student who secured $25,000 per year to attend a four-year university.

“If we’re truly a transient population of instructors,” Wally said, “that (support) doesn’t exist for those students and then (Front Range) students are disadvantaged.”

NEDERLAND — The stillness that draws many people out into the tree-lined hideaways of nature is also what repels others from stepping foot into the forested unknown.

Where some find calm, others confront fear.

A Nederland nature center that’s nearly 20 years old is creating a new space — part gateway to the outdoors, part refuge from Denver’s dizzying pace — in the hope of giving people a place to forge a relationship with nature.

And “rewild” themselves.

“When you tune into the sound of insects and the wind rushing through the leaves of the trees, it’s much more calming than honking horns and vibrating phones,” said Justin Gold, founder of Boulder-based company Justin’s Nut Butter and a major donor behind the new Wild Bear Nature Center. “And so I just think that just coming up here is almost just a portal that transports your body and mind into a more peaceful realm.”

The new center, which broke ground in May 2023 and will likely open by fall next year, will sit on 5 acres of Wild Bear-owned land on the edge of almost 3,000 acres of land encompassing both Mud Lake open space and Caribou Ranch open space. The peaks of the Continental Divide trace the horizon to the west, stretches of the mountains visible beyond a thicket of ponderosas, lodgepoles and aspens. The building under construction will offer more than a landing spot for visitors acquainting themselves with nature; it will also remind them of the importance of protecting the environment while exploring it, its developers hope. That’s why they have designed the building to produce more energy than it consumes, with 50 kilowatts of solar panels on the roof as well as south facing windows that will also create passive solar energy.

“Mostly, we’re giving back to nature,” said Jill Dreves, founder and chief vision officer of Wild Bear Nature Center. “We’re not taking from nature.”

The new center will also give back to the community, growing the nonprofit’s nature programming for students and adults and becoming home to a forest preschool, where kids will learn by trekking through the outdoors.

Dreves, a former elementary school teacher, has been the steady hand nudging the new nature center along since 2000, when voters approved construction of the center at its new site. Five years before that, she formed the nonprofit as a way to help kids and community members branch out of their day-to-day surroundings and ease their way into nature.

Frustrated by the rules and regulations of teaching in a public school — “restricted to a spelling test” rather than free to roam outside — Dreves wanted to give students a fragment of her own childhood. She grew up in the mountains of northern Colorado, where she remembers her days unfolding outside, riding her Appaloosa-Welsh pony, Blue Bonnet, for nine hours and sleeping in the barn with her at night. Her parents rarely knew where she and her sister were. Oftentimes, they snuck deep into the forest where they learned about insects and plants from an entomologist they met there.

“I really wanted to create a wild experience for kids where we would just go out in the wild and not be afraid and play in the river and pick up rocks,” said Dreves, who began her nature-based programming with eight students.

The Wild Bear students studied beedles they found under rocks. They painted with mud. They observed birds. All the while “noticing the patterns and the mystery in nature,” she said.

Those moments of slowing down while surrounded by nature have become all the more necessary now, Dreves said, as electronics confine people’s worlds to screens and as widespread fears of nature collide with a groundswell of isolation coming out of the pandemic.

Wild Bear Nature Center, she said, offers “an entry-level experience for people that just haven’t been in nature much.”

The organization, which has operated out of a downtown Nederland shopping center for the past 14 years, brings about 50 kids to the outdoors each day in the summer. The nonprofit also has school-year programs geared toward students in homeschooling and runs “a snow school” through which classes can learn about snow pack and winter ecology.

Additionally, Wild Bear regularly hosts nature events for families. Last year, about 25,000 visitors stopped by the current nature center to both check out exhibits and wander down area trails, Dreves said.

Jessica and David McElvain have “rewilded” their entire family through Wild Bear, including by sending their two young sons to summer camp and enrichment programs which have acclimated them to the wilderness and helped them better understand animal behavior.

The parents, who recently moved their family to Granby after living in Nederland for seven years, both turn to nature to exhale and clear their “mental clutter” — something they hope to pass onto their boys.

They’ve also noticed how quickly their sons absorb lessons out under the trees.

“It’s hard for kids to sit in a classroom and learn,” Jessica said. “There’s so many different neurological patterns and learning types, and it really seems like it helps the kids who need to sort of be a little bit busy in the background.”

Once the site of a dump, the nature center is now a lesson in preservation

The land that will house Wild Bear’s new nature center is stripped down to the basics, with an expanse of gravel leading to the first signs of the building, including towering concrete walls.

While it’s still mostly a blank canvas with the bulk of construction still ahead, the area is a significant improvement from four years ago, when mining trash, kitchen trash, shoes and even cars, washers, dryers, tires and refrigerators littered the landscape.

Dreves remembers 260 acres of land being “scarred” by people coming out to regularly dump their garbage in dispersed mining pits that eventually overflowed with trash.

Wild Bear Nature Center partnered with the town of Nederland and Boulder County to clean and restore the area, deploying volunteers across the land four weekends in July 2020 to pick up trash and retrieve abandoned vehicles and appliances. They filled almost eight roll off dumpsters with more than 30 tons of garbage, not including those vehicles and appliances, according to Dreves.

The final pieces of the nature center are beginning to fall into place. It’s taken more than two decades of fundraising, planning the building and its eco-friendly elements and holding onto a vision to nurture people back into nature.

The nonprofit has raised close to $8 million for the $13 million project and plotted out every inch of the building to help people better connect with nature or preserve it. The building will generate extra energy, which will be sent back to the grid for general consumption. During colder months, it will be warmed mostly  by solar-heated water traveling through hydronic tubes all through the insulated floor along with passive solar energy generated by south facing windows.

“This nature center is a model for how humans can build ecologically sound buildings in mountain communities into the future,” said Gold, the major donor to the project and its capital campaign chair.

The center will face east to greet the sunrise each morning and will house classrooms, a workspace and kitchen, an observation deck where visitors can view wildlife and a large community gathering space. An outdoor amphitheater will flank the building while a half-mile trail will cut through a few acres behind the center with small exhibits dotting the path for people to stop and learn about how humans can peacefully coexist with nature.

As people rekindle their relationship with the outdoors while exploring Colorado’s natural alcoves, Dreves hopes they also tame their trepidation of stepping deep into the unknown.

“The more you know,” she said, “the less you fear and the more you love and protect the Earth.”

The Colorado State Board of Education will swing to a majority with a more critical eye toward charter schools after former Boulder Valley School District board president Kathy Gebhardt beat education consultant Marisol Rodriguez in the Democratic primary for the 2nd Congressional District seat Tuesday night.

As of 10:20 p.m., Gebhardt led with 56% of votes. The AP called the race in Gebhardt’s favor.

Rodriguez, whom Gov. Jared Polis had endorsed, sent out an email shortly after 9 p.m. Tuesday conceding the race to Gebhardt.

“While there are more votes to be counted, we don’t see a path to victory tonight,” she wrote.

Gebhardt’s victory came as a blow to charter school advocates, who spent nearly $1 million to help Rodriguez in the hopes of ensuring charter schools continue to receive full consideration from the state board when local districts reject their applications.

Under state law, the state Board of Education can reconsider charter school applications rejected by a local school board.

Charter schools — public schools managed by outside nonprofit operators that establish a performance contract often with a school district — are a divisive schooling option among many communities and parents and they compete against traditional public schools for students and tax dollars. Some have also drawn scrutiny over curriculum decisions, often turning on sharp disagreements over how to address issues of sexuality, gender and race in the classroom.

Gebhardt still has to win the general election in November, but the 2nd District is a Democratic stronghold and she should cruise to victory. She has no Republican general election opponent.

Gebhardt will replace Democrat Angelika Schroeder, who is part of the board’s pro-charter school majority and is term-limited.

The 2nd Congressional District race had been widely perceived as a battleground for the future of charter schools, with a pro-charter school state-level super PAC called Progressives Supporting Teachers and Students committing hundreds of thousands of dollars in support of Rodriguez. 

By late Tuesday afternoon, the group had spent about $871,000, compared with about $97,000 aimed at electing Gebhardt onto the state board.

“We’ve showed that money can’t buy an election and that our public still supports public education,” Gebhardt told The Colorado Sun over the phone while celebrating with a group of supporters at Velvet Elk Lounge in Boulder.

“I think people were upset by the dark money, and they wanted to show that democracy is still alive and well in the second congressional district and that people’s voices matter more than money,” said Gebhardt, noting that Polis called her to congratulate her.

Gebhardt previously told The Sun that she believes charter schools are “an essential part of our choice system.” She echoed that stance Tuesday night, saying she has never been anti-charter schools.

“I’m still not anti-charter,” she said. “I encourage (charter school advocates) if they have concerns to reach out to me so that we can partner to make sure we have the best education possible for our students.”

Among Gebhardt’s supporters is the Colorado Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union.

“Voters want candidates who are running for the people” over candidates backed by dark money and corporate interests, CEA President Amie Baca-Oehlert said.

CEA recommended Gebhardt for the seat, Baca-Oehlert added, “because she truly is somebody who has a lifetime of experience supporting public education.”

Despite Rodriguez’s loss, she said she remains proud of the election results.

“Before pretty much March, nobody knew who I was or knew my name, and I’m really proud of the fact that at least as of tonight, 42% voted for me having never known who I was,” Rodriguez told The Sun.

She said that when she congratulated Gebhardt on securing the seat, she offered to have conversations in the future so that Gebhardt can hear from a parent of students enrolled in public schools. Rodriguez has two children in Boulder Valley School District.

Public school parents’ voices matter, Rodriguez told The Sun.

“I think it’s really important that the state board hears from parents who have kids in the public school system currently,” she said.

Charter school proponents like Kyle DeBeer met Rodriguez’s defeat with disappointment.

“Regardless, it was heartening to see both candidates express support for public charter schools as a high quality option for Colorado families in the closing days of this campaign,” said DeBeer, executive director of CLCS Action — an affiliate nonprofit of the Colorado League of Charter Schools — and an organizer of Progressives Supporting Teachers and Students. “I take Kathy at face value for what she’s said in a number of interviews over the last couple of weeks that she’s going to be a supporter of charter schools on the State Board of Education as a high-quality option for Colorado families.”

Meanwhile, former Colorado GOP Chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown won her primary for the 4th Congressional District seat on the Board of Education with 53% of the vote Tuesday night over Saundra Larson. The AP called the race for Burton Brown.

Elliott Hood wins Democratic primary for at-large seat on CU Board of Regents

University of Colorado Boulder alumni Elliott Hood beat fellow alumni Charles “CJ” Johnson, who served as quarterback on the 1990 National Championship team, in the Democratic primary for an at-large seat on the CU Board of Regents.

The AP called the race for Hood at 11:29 p.m.

Hood is an attorney at Boulder-based law firm Caplan & Earnest LLC. On his campaign website, he describes himself as a school attorney who advocates for school districts and teachers across Colorado. 

He aims to ban concealed carry on campus. Hood also supports collective bargaining for CU employees and wants to make the university more affordable for students, including by expanding the university’s endowment to lower the cost of tuition, developing housing that is within students’ financial reach and curbing the cost of books.

Johnson is vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion at Ball Corporation and also serves as a trustee of the CU Foundation.

On his campaign website, he writes that he prioritizes making CU more affordable and offering students mental health services, resources and support systems. Johnson also wants to make CU a welcoming campus for students and staff of all backgrounds and push the university to continue research and education efforts around climate change and sustainability.

Hood now advances to the statewide contest for the seat in November.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars are being spent to affect the primary for a seat on the state Board of Education, a race that could determine the future of Colorado charter schools for years to come. 

What’s at stake is the panel’s willingness to overturn local districts when they reject a charter school’s application. 

Nearly $685,000 from Progressives Supporting Teachers and Students, a pro-charter school state-level super PAC, has poured into the contest in the 2nd Congressional District to support education consultant Marisol Lynda Rodriguez in her bid against former Boulder Valley School Board President Kathy Gebhardt.

Board members are elected to six-year terms in each of the state’s eight congressional districts, with a ninth member elected statewide. The 2nd District — which is highly favorable to Democrats — is centered in Boulder, but also includes Fort Collins and Summit, Routt, Eagle and Grand counties. 

Whoever wins the primary will almost surely win in November, too, replacing Democrat Angelika Schroeder, who is term-limited. There is no Republican on the ballot in the district.

Schroeder is part of the 5-4 majority on the Colorado Board of Education that is willing to overturn local school districts when they deny charter school applications. She has endorsed Rodriguez.

Should the board majority swing, new charter schools could face serious hurdles in getting approval, according to Van Schoales, a senior policy director at the Keystone Policy Center, which analyzes how well charter schools are performing.

“It’s likely that any appeal to the state board, a charter versus a school district, the school districts will win,” said Schoales, who is personally supporting Rodriguez. “So I think that that will force the charters to either not exist in those school districts or for them to make whatever deal that school districts offer.”

The Colorado League of Charter Schools independent spending committee, which gets its money from an affiliated nonprofit that doesn’t disclose its donors, gave $450,000 to Progressives Supporting Teachers and Students in late May, the group’s largest donor.

Are District 2 candidates clashing over charter schools? They say no.

While Rodriguez has drawn massive financial support from charter school proponents, she said she is “not charter for charter’s sake.”

“I don’t believe in just every school should be charter,” she told The Colorado Sun. “We need different things for different students. There is not a one-size-fits-all approach.”

Communities should be driving the decisions about what kinds of schools they need, Rodriguez added.

“I really believe in community voice, that communities know what they need and communities know what they want,” she said, “and if you have community members that are coming and saying, ‘we want a charter’ … I think that they should be given a fair shake if they have sound financial practices and a strong academic program and they have community behind them.”

Rodriguez’s career has included traveling the country to help state charter school associations with their strategic plans while working for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools during nine months from 2007 to 2008. She said she has also helped permanently close one Missouri charter school, Carondelet Leadership Academy, through the education consulting company she owns, Insignia Partners, which she co-founded in 2012. 

Through her company, Rodriguez said she helps “organizations and teams basically come to consensus on a shared path forward.” She said her largest client, in Missouri, is “an authorizer that closes bad schools.” Her own visits to schools help inform that process.

The nonprofit CLCS Action has thrown its support behind Rodriguez in hopes of preserving fair consideration for charter schools at the board level, said Dan Schaller, president of the Colorado League of Charter Schools.

“We want to make sure, much like has been the case for the last 20 years, that the state board of education gives a fair shake and a fair hearing to charter schools,” Schaller said. “It has just as often ruled in support of the charter school as it has the local school district, so it’s generally been a 50-50 proposition, and I think we are just very interested in ensuring the state board remains a fair and objective arbiter of these decisions impacting charter schools and making sure that there aren’t folks coming in who are predisposed to right out of the gate not uphold that fairness and that objectivity.”

Meanwhile, Gebhardt told The Sun that she believes charter schools are “an essential part of our choice system” and said they will not be in peril should she be elected in the way that some of her opponents are suggesting through advertisements and mailers.

“I support charter schools,” she said, “and I think that is a fear tactic that is being used that misrepresents my position on choice, misrepresents my position on charters and is used in a way that’s inappropriate.”

Gebhardt noted that she has advocated for charter schools in her 30 years of being involved in Colorado schools, including when she served on Boulder Valley School District’s Board of Education after being first elected in 2016.  

She cited an effort in the past few years she helped lead to fund improvements to the facility housing Justice High School, a Lafayette high school that educates many students who have struggled in other schools, including those who have been truant or close to dropping out. 

But Gebhardt has also voiced concerns about charter schools that she said have been discriminatory in their enrollment processes for particular groups of students, including students with disabilities, those living in poverty and kids learning English.

“There were some charter schools who have admissions policies that I believe discriminate against populations that they want to serve, such as free and reduced lunch or second language learners,” Gebhardt said. “And by their admissions policies, they exclude families from being able to even apply. So there are places where I think we should take a hard look just to make sure that these schools are open and accessible to all students. And I think because I’ve raised those concerns in the past, somehow that’s been conflated to say that I’m against charter schools, and I can tell you I am not.”

She still has some concerns about charter schools, including that many charter schools still don’t serve the same percentages of students with special needs as district-run schools.

During the 2023-24 school year, about 89% of Colorado students with disabilities were enrolled in a district-run public school while about 10% of kids with disabilities were in a charter school, according to data from the Colorado Department of Education.

Despite those concerns, Gebhardt said she wants most decisions about charter schools to remain at the local level, saying “it would be really dangerous on either side” to have a state board member weigh in on a charter school outside reviewing appeals from school districts.

“Can I say 100% of (charter schools) don’t cause me concern? No,” she said. “But do 100% of traditional public schools not cause me concern? No. It would be so awesome if I could say 100% of all of our schools, charter or non-charter, are doing exactly what I hope they would be doing, but we aren’t there yet.”

The money and the messaging

Progressives Supporting Teachers and Students spent nearly $685,000 on the race through Saturday, including $150,000 on TV ads that will run through the June 25 primary election. The other money has been spent on digital and newspaper ads, as well as mailers.

The group is backing Rodriguez because of her ability to “serve as a really excellent advocate for our kids,” said Noah Stout, registered agent of the group, who previously taught at a charter school and was senior counsel for public policy and external affairs for DSST Public Schools, a charter school network in Denver and Aurora.

“I don’t come to this from a charter schools perspective,” said Stout, now managing attorney at Stout Law Colorado in Denver.

Kyle Debeer, another group organizer and vice president of civic affairs for CLCS Action — an affiliate nonprofit of the Colorado League of Charter Schools — did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

One mailer sent by the group says Rodriguez “will never stop fighting MAGA Republicans to protect our kids’ education and safety.” Another says “Extreme MAGA Republicans want to ban books and weaken our schools. … Marisol Rodriguez will stop them.”  They also note that Rodriguez opposes vouchers.

The messaging appears to be aimed at shifting the framing of the race away from charter schools. 

All but one of the mailers sent by Progressives Supporting Teachers and Students and seen by The Colorado Sun emphasize Rodriguez’s endorsement by Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, who lives in the 2nd District and founded two charter schools. 

Gebhardt, on the other hand, boasts endorsements from U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, who represents the 2nd District in Congress, as well as state Treasurer Dave Young, Senate President Steve Fenberg and the Colorado Education Association.

Progressives Supporting Teachers and Students has spent $108,000 on two mailers opposing Gebhardt, a former Boulder Valley School Board member. The first claims she “supported putting a school 500 feet from a gas well.” While the school was approved near a potential drilling site, no wells are located near the school.

“It’s really sad the misrepresentations and the use of dark money to try to smear me,” Gebhardt told The Sun. “I’ve worked really hard to always put kids and families at the forefront and I did in this situation as well. If people would take the time to find the facts, they would understand the misrepresentations and falsehoods in this mailer.”

She has criticized the super PAC spending.

“If it wasn’t even my race, I am always troubled by outside money trying to influence what should be a local election,” Gebhardt told The Sun.

The level of outside spending in support of Rodriguez alarms Lisa Sweeney-Miran, who previously served on the Boulder Valley School District Board of Education alongside Gebhardt.

“When you’re spending $600,000 on a candidate in a race, you’re not doing it hoping they’ll vote your way,” said Sweeney-Miran, who is supporting Gebhardt in the District 2 race. “You’re doing it because you’re very confident that they’re a candidate who has your best interest at heart.”

State school board members serve six-year, unpaid terms.

The 2024 race will have yearslong impacts on charter schools

The last time such money poured into a State Board of Education contest was in 2000, when Polis spent more than $1.2 million of his own money and won an at-large seat by 90 votes.

CEA, the state’s largest teachers union and one of the loudest voices challenging the spread of charter schools, wants to keep the election’s focus on students and teachers rather than agendas, President Amie Baca-Oehlert said.

“There may be people who believe that there are certain ideological views that may be at stake on the state board,” Baca-Oehlert said. “We want to ensure a candidate who will represent students, parents, educators and public education and not a certain ideology or view.”

On Monday, Colorado Labor Action reported spending $42,000 on mailers opposing Rodriguez in the contest. The CEA is among the funders of that super PAC. No state-level super PAC spending is happening in the three other Colorado Board of Education races on the November ballot.

Of the three other state education board races on the ballot, only the one in the 8th Congressional District could also sway the charter-sympathetic majority on the board if Democrat Rhonda Solis — who is in the charter-skeptical minority — doesn’t win reelection. 

Because the state education board seats that will be on the ballot in 2026 aren’t expected to shift the charter-view dynamic on the panel, the outcome of the races this year will have a yearslong effect on how the board operates as it pertains to charter schools.

That concerns the teachers union.

“For us, it’s curious why outside money and big corporate money would come into play in a State Board of Education race,” Baca-Oehlert said.

The association is supporting Gebhardt, Baca-Oehlert said, because members believe she will be “a voice for students, educators and public education on the state board.”

Colorado Sun staff writer Jesse Paul contributed to this report.