Recently, Colorado has been experiencing a $1 billion shortfall. The solution? Cutting millions of dollars from schools. This will affect all students, teachers, staff and parents.
Less funding means less teachers, which means less classes and larger class sizes. Larger class sizes are a huge problem. More students in each class means that teachers wouldn’t be able to help each individual student to learn and grow.
This also means that students will have less extracurricular activities, less school sports and less classes to choose from. School is the place in which most students found their ‘thing’ and are really able to explore it, whether it be art or sports or music or something else entirely.
“I think the budget cuts will cause schools to have to fire a lot of teachers, making the classes even larger, and I do not like crowded classrooms as it is. Schools also may have to cut activities like dances, 8th grade/ 5th grade/ 12th grade graduation celebrations or limit what things students can do, like the amount or kind of field trips students can go on. And they might also have to cut programs like band,” said Century 8th grader Addison Palte
Concerning this issue, both sides are exercising their first amendment rights. On Thursday, March 20th, those opposed to the budget cuts rallied around the capital. Thousands of teachers and students turned up for the occasion to show the government that they do not want this budget cut.
At the rally, many people gave speeches including the president of the CEA, Kevin Vick, and the president of the NEA, Becky Pringle. After the speeches, ralliers marched around certain state buildings chanting. Some of those chants were, “Fight, Fight, Fight, Education is a Right!” and “Who’s got the power? We’ve got the power! What kind of power? Union Power!”
“I’m excited to see how many teachers, students and families from across the state come together to show how much we love our jobs and students. Kids deserve the BEST and in order to give them opportunities and experiences in addition to the best in the classroom it takes funding,” explained Century’s principal, Kristin Devlin
However, there are some opposed to this rally as it will prevent students from being able to go to school on Thursday. Members of this side protested. at the March 19th school board meeting.
The problem is that schools might not be able to survive these budget cuts. Already, schools are experiencing large class sizes and teachers have a fairly low salary considering the importance of their job. Plus, these budget cuts might cause schools to shut down from lack of funding.
“That’s the big question right now. Programs we have right now, will we have to give them up? Will we lose leadership class? Will we lose flex lab? Will we lose newcomer stuff? Will we lose positions, teachers in order to help the other things? As a former administrator, I also know that you need a number of administrators, not only to do administrator stuff but to also support the teachers,” said 7th grade Social Studies teacher Mr. Bohannon
A possible solution to these budget cuts would be to remove TABOR, the taxpayer bill of rights. TABOR states that any extra money the state collects has to go back to the taxpayers. This hurts education, because though Colorado does have enough money to fully fund education, the state government has to give it back to the people according to TABOR.
