The school bosses were speaking on a range of topics at the Public Education and Business Coalition’s annual Superintendent Forum.
Superintendents said right now, teachers are grappling with new standards, new tests, new curriculum, and new teacher evaluations, among other changes.
This is at the same time budgets have been slashed by millions of dollars.
For example, the Jefferson County school district’s budget is $63 million less than it was in 2009.
“If you walk into elementary schools today I’m confident that you could walk up to our teachers, the people who are really, really working hard, and if you poke em’, they’ll pop,” Cherry Creek Schools Superintendent Harry Bull said. “That’s the level of tension that exists in our buildings right now.”
Bull continued to say that teachers need more time to properly implement the changes.
Other superintendents called for more freedom for districts to chart their own paths while several lamented the time lost learning because of the volume of testing now required.
