Updated on March 20, 2025, at 7:15 p.m.
A sea of people, many wearing red in a show of support for public education, were shoulder to shoulder in front of the Capitol on Thursday, chanting and yelling for an end to cuts, as Colorado legislators, faced with a billion-dollar shortfall, grapple with how to fully fund education and balance their budget.
The protest, called No More Cuts: Statewide Day of Action and organized by the Colorado Education Association, closed districts and schools as teachers called out to attend the rally.
There were at least 2,000 people on the west steps of the Capitol building chanting “Fight, fight, fight, education is a right!” and “Fund our schools” and waving signs that read “no more cuts” and “protect public education.”
Boulder, Summit County, Adams 12 and Aurora closed their schools with Denver Public Schools closing nearly 80 percent of schools. Most of Colorado’s other large school districts are on spring break.
Mary Dolan, a special education teacher at Denver Public Schools, said it was embarrassing to be one of the lowest states in the county for funding education.
“I’m under-supported. Our whole entire school is underfunded. The entire special education department needs to be rehauled,” Dolan said. “There's so many different reasons why I'm here, but the bottom line is we cannot afford any cuts to education.”
Despite being one of the wealthiest states in the country, Colorado chronically underfunds its public schools by $4,000 to $4,500 per student per year compared to the national average, according to recent studies.
“Many people already know that Colorado students on average receive way less than the national average,” said East High School photography teacher Aimee Baker. “So we think that it's especially concerning that Polis is planning on cutting funding even more and we as teachers are already doing so much to try to educate public students for our future.”
Just a year ago, Gov. Jared Polis declared on the same west steps of the Capitol that lawmakers would no longer borrow money from schools in order to balance the budget. Over the past 14 years, state lawmakers withheld more than $10 billion from K-12 schools to balance the state budget. That money won’t be paid back.
Educators cheered and celebrated with Polis then. But now, the massive budget shortfall changes things.
“Last year we got rid of the budget stabilization factor, and so we thought we were finally putting our students first and giving them the education they deserve,” said Ashley Soldano, a Spanish teacher at Weld Central High School. “But here we are again at the Capitol trying to make sure that they are getting that funding. It is tiring every year to have to fight the fight.”
Polis’ proposal — while it will increase per-pupil funding for schools — would change the way students are counted. Kevin Vick, president of CEA, said that could cost schools $150 million.
Polis said in an interview the change needs to happen now.
“These are adjustments that districts would have to make anyways, it just says do it now instead of waiting three to four years,” he said a day before the rally. He added that the money saved from that will be funneled back into a new funding formula for schools passed by lawmakers last year. Over the next several years, it’s expected to add $500 million more to school coffers. His plan calls for starting that rollout next budget year.
Stories of crowded classrooms, little support
But the technicalities of budget proposals weren’t what was on teachers' minds. They wanted to talk about what further cuts would mean in the lives of their students. Jill Massa, a special educator in Pueblo, oversees 10 high-needs students including children with cerebral palsy, severe seizures and children with severe autism. She said they really need one-on-one support and she has two classroom aides.
“We just don't have enough help,” she said. “If one of our wheelchair kids needs to be changed, that takes two of them away and then it's one person with all of them with severe needs. If somebody had a seizure at the same time that the paras (classroom aides) or me are in the bathroom changing a kid, that could be devastating.”
She said she lacks an adequate curriculum for her students and must develop a lot of it herself. She wants her students and teachers to get the support they deserve.
“You can only get so much blood out of a person, and it's not working. We have to fight it. We need to fund education.”
Districts with declining enrollments could see the deepest impacts from any loss of funding. Rochelle Weigold worries about a possible $5 million hit to her Boulder Valley school district if the switch to a single-count funding method happens in one year.
“A general ed classroom could have anywhere up to 36 students in a classroom right now, and these are also students that may hold special individualized education plans, may be receiving intervention for other academic needs…. that are impacted currently and will continue to be more impacted with the funding cuts.”
The rally was punctuated with rousing cheers, a marching band, and lots of waving of clever signs, ranging from the scientific — “Schools need funding like plants need photosynthesis” — the artistic, a watercolor painting of a school bus captioned “Ms. Frazzled and the Unfunded School Bus” — to the sober black placard, “My students don’t deserve this dystopic future.”
Zander Kaschub, a JeffCo cafeteria employee and head of a local union, is worried about fewer funds for Colorado’s new free meal program. The voter-approved measure doesn’t generate enough funds and schools have to cover the difference.
“I’ve seen kids come through my lunch line hungry, stressed and struggling,” he said. “I've seen the relief on a child's face when they get a warm meal. Sometimes it's the only meal they get that day…. But now cuts to education funding threaten the life of that program and the success of my students.”
Federal education department ordered to close
The rally took place on the same day President Donald Trump signed an executive order to close the federal Department of Education. The president said education needs to be returned to the states.
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association who spoke at the Colorado rally, told the crowd the move presents a threat to all students but especially low-income and special education students who rely on federal money and protections.
“These are real students in real schools suffering under the hands of the Trump administration's actions that harm our children and our educators and our communities,” she said. The federal education department is currently half the size as it was a few weeks ago after a departmental slashing, following millions in cuts to teacher training programs. Colorado is bracing for what’s to come and is already feeling the impacts from cuts.
Closed schools and disrupted routines
Some, including Gov. Polis, were troubled that the rally was held on a school day. While supporting teachers' right to protest, he worried about disruptions for families who had to scramble to find child care. Brenda Dickhoner, president of the education reform group Ready Colorado, said every missed day of school exacerbates the post-pandemic learning loss.
“It is both reckless and unfair to compound these challenges by sacrificing classroom instruction for the sake of a political demonstration.”
Parent Jennifer Reulille said some of her friends had to scramble to find child care. But she said her boss was understanding. Reulille brought her daughter, a first-grader, to the rally as a civics lesson. They talked about people’s right to protest and doing something to show support for others.
“We could have spent the day at the playground, but we chose to be here and show our support because she loves all of her teachers… not just the teachers, but the admin, everyone in her school. They're awesome and I would hate to see any of those roles get cut because of budget cuts, because everyone matters in school.”
The Downtown Denver Expeditionary School brought two full classrooms, also turning the day into a civics lesson. Nine-year-old Owen has already written to the mayor about an issue and he said Colorado’s teacher shortage was important too.
“My teachers are really nice, but a lot of them have left my school and I want my teachers at school.”
Smaller rallies pop up
While the crowd in Denver was full of teachers from across the state, not all teachers could make it to the Capitol but still wanted to participate in their own communities. On a chilly morning before 8, a group of teachers from Carbondale Middle School waved signs outside school as parents were dropping off kids at the middle and elementary schools.
The signs urged Polis not to make budget cuts to schools. Most drivers either honked or waved enthusiastically at the teachers.
“There is a lot on teachers' minds,” said Lisa Dameron, an instructional coach at Carbondale Middle School. “We are all very stressed for a multitude of reasons. We want to focus on the kids and educating them and having to do the same job with fewer dollars makes everything harder.”
She said some teachers from the Roaring Fork School district, which includes Basalt, Carbondale and Glenwood Springs, were making the trip to Denver on Thursday. Those that stayed behind were wearing red and also making phone calls and writing letters to Polis and state lawmakers.
What’s next?
This week, Polis, lawmakers and education groups are negotiating over how and whether cuts will take place. House Speaker Julie McCluskie has an alternative to the governor’s plan that wouldn’t be quite as much of a jolt to funding. On paper, her plan keeps funding at this year’s level but health care and utilities costs have risen so much, some schools would still have to make cuts.
There are other lawmakers who believe that the state doesn’t have enough funds to pay for the new school funding formula. They say it should be paused until a new funding source can be found. One economic analysis shows the new formula would lead to a $700 million deficit by 2027.
Education advocates, meanwhile, would like to place a measure on the 2026 ballot that could be a long-term sustainable funding source for schools. Ralliers regularly “booed” whenever the word “TABOR” was uttered — that’s Colorado’s constitutional restriction on revenue and spending.
“Our tax system is so out of balance that we could keep taxes the same or lower on 99 percent of our population and raise them on one percent of our population, and we would have a billion dollars more,” said Kevin Vick, president of the Colorado Education Association.
CPR’s Bente Birkeland and Stephanie Wolf contributed to this report.
