Why Colorado teachers are considering leaving: Low pay, high stress, and safety concerns
Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily archive
Nearly half of Colorado educators are considering leaving the profession, according to a recent survey. Their reasons — insufficient funds, autonomy and safety — are precisely what the Colorado Education Association intends to ask from lawmakers in 2025.
The Colorado Education Association, the largest union in the state and an affiliate of the National Education Association, released its annual State of Education report on Jan. 13. The state’s three biggest education obstacles — funding, respect and educator safety — were challenged by the association’s legislative priorities.
Amid the conflicting needs of an ongoing budget shortfall and a need for increased per-pupil funding and educator salaries, the Colorado Education Association uses survey responses from educators to make the case for why education cannot become a casualty of the 2025 budget cycle.
Based on the perspectives and experiences of its nearly 40,000 members, here is what Colorado educators had to say about the state of education in 2024:
A funding crisis for educators
Colorado ranks 46th in the nation for starting teacher salaries at $39,044, according to data from the National Education Association. This is significantly below Colorado’s minimum living wage of $65,605.
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Roughly 48% of educators report not being able to afford to live near their work.
With teachers earning just 62 cents for every dollar earned by comparable college-educated professionals, the report claims that Colorado’s public education system “undervalues the essential work of our educators, as shown through persistently inadequate pay, housing insecurity, and overwhelming workloads.”
Consequently, 47% of educator survey respondents disclosed they are considering leaving the profession soon. Approximately 61% cited high workloads for the decision, with 38% citing increased curriculum interference and 37% citing low pay.
“Our educators are the backbone of our public schools, yet we continue to ask them to do more with less — working long hours, often with inadequate resources while facing low pay, disrespect and concerns about safety in their workplaces,” Kevin Vick, an educator of 20-plus years and president of the Colorado Education Association, said in a prepared statement. “This is unsustainable, and it’s our students who ultimately pay the price.”
A lack of adequate funding has largely contributed to statewide teacher shortages. The association’s 2024 Member Survey revealed that 52% of respondents observed teacher and licensed staff shortages are more severe than in previous years, while 69% observed a shortage of essential roles including paraprofessionals, bus drivers, office support and custodial workers.
Around 62% of education support professionals — who reported an average salary of $33,424 — reported struggling to afford housing costs over the past year.
Colorado public schools are funded through a combination of local property taxes and funding from the state. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis recently doubled down on his request to exchange public schools’ four-year enrollment average model for funding to current-year enrollment estimates, which is predicted to reduce funding for schools.
“Colorado’s unique tax code, in tandem with choices made by our state’s leadership, has resulted in a school system that is operating at a more than decade-long deficit of $10 billion dollars,” the report states.
Although these investment issues are longstanding, they bring into question the future of education if harmful funding gaps persist into 2025.
A push for educator rights
The association’s 2024 report identified the following as the top three things that would improve teachers’ day-to-day lives: protected time to do required paperwork, smaller class sizes and increased plan time.
This lines up directly with one of the top two factors that drive educators to leave the profession: unreasonable workloads. The second deterrent for educators is attacks on curriculums and educator autonomy — such as politically divisive issues like book bans, school choice and curriculum changes.
Over 75% of members surveyed in the report said these politically divisive issues “somewhat” or “significantly” impacted morale in their workplace.
The Colorado Education Association, in addition to establishing related legislative goals, stated its commitment to empowering public education workers to bargain collectively and have a voice at the negotiation table. One of the things the organization has continuously called on elected officials for is a better and more holistic accountability system.
Approximately 60% of Colorado educators said they do not trust the current accountability system to accurately measure student, school and district performance, according to the report.
“The key to solving this issue lies in listening to those on the front lines — educators who work tirelessly in classrooms every day,” Vick said in a prepared statement. “Their expertise and insights are invaluable for shaping policies that create positive change. If we fail to act, we risk losing even more qualified and dedicated professionals to other states, leaving Colorado’s children without the experienced teachers they deserve.”
More teachers feel unsafe at work
For students and educators, a safe environment is crucial for focused learning, confidence building, energy and avoiding unnecessary stress.
Unfortunately, the 2024 State of Education report found that nearly 43% of surveyed educators feel significantly or somewhat less safe than during the previous school year. Approximately 67% of educators said they were “very” or “somewhat worried” about a mass shooting at their school.
The fact that a majority of educators — around 89% — said increased mental health support would improve safety in Colorado schools is also indicative of the need for a holistic approach to safety solutions, according to the Colorado Education Association.
Part of its plans for 2025 include improvements in social-emotional support for students and educators by increasing the number of counselors, social workers and mental health professionals in public schools.
“Our organization is focusing on three components that we believe most readily affect the safety and well-being of our students and education professionals: increasing mental health support for students and educators, boosting LGBTQ+ acceptance and inclusion, and focusing gun safety regulations so that our schools remain safe places for learning,” the report states.
2025 Legislative priorities
Looking at President-elect Donald Trump’s upcoming second term, the association identified Colorado as being “uniquely poised to be the first line of defense against attacks on public education over the next four years.”
The report urged lawmakers to support state action to protect public school staff from attacks by the federal government, especially those under threat of deportation. A Colorado Education Association spokesperson said that although the organization has not seen these types of threats emerge, they view state action as a proactive measure.
In terms of protecting school funding, the Colorado Education Association said it anticipates policies diverting funding from public to private entities are likely to escalate in the current political climate, which drove the organization’s opposition to Amendment 80 during the 2024 election. Therefore, the organization is calling on state lawmakers to fend off any attempts to bring back the Budget Stabilization Factor, resist unfunded mandates on public schools and defend against “policies that siphon public dollars from the classroom to private companies.”
The Budget Stabilization Factor, created in 2010 to address a budget deficit, was a tool that reduced the amount of funding for school districts. After its elimination in 2024, keeping it away from the Colorado public school system is a top priority for several state lawmakers.
Polis said his request to switch to current-year enrollment as a way to determine funding for schools is meant to keep another Budget Stabilization Factor at bay, but not all school districts view it as a solution.
“A cut is a cut, and sweeping policy changes with financial implications for Colorado students must be deliberated carefully, not unilaterally pushed through by the governor,” a Colorado Education Association spokesperson said. “The state-funded adequacy studies applaud Colorado’s use of multi-year averaging because it minimizes bureaucratic complexities of frequent counts and because it provides ‘soft landings’ for districts experiencing enrollment decline.”
