As Colorado Teachers Consider Leaving Their Jobs, UNC Fights To Keep The Ranks Full – Colorado Public Radio

The CEA also calls on state lawmakers to confront the shortage using three strategies. Colorado has struggled for more than a decade to fund public schools at the level of the national average. The union is asking state lawmakers to pay down some of the billion-dollar school budget shortfalls, called the budget stabilization factor. It is a legislative maneuver that allowed lawmakers to dip into school funding in order to balance the state budget. All told, schools have missed out on more than $10 billion dollars since 2008.

The union also wants health safety equipment and vaccines for teachers and students, as well as to postpone high-stakes exams.

The growing dissatisfaction among existing educators, however, isnt deterring hundreds of students across the nation from considering a career in education in the Centennial State.

The University of Northern Colorado, the states largest producer of teachers, hopes to inspire hundreds of students to enter the profession. High school and community college students from as far away as Arkansas, Pakistan and the Philippines attended the colleges most recent annual Future Teacher Conference.

Keynote speaker Gov. Jared Polis told attendees one silver lining of the pandemic is that it has forced leaders to take a critical look at how education systems operate. He said districts are thinking creatively about how to develop new and more effective learning environments.

You will be on the vanguard of making sure that opportunity reaches every child in the state no matter where they live, their race, their gender, their geography, their income, he said. I am so thrilled that you are interested in becoming teachers. You're needed now more than ever."

Founded as a teachers college in 1889, UNC produces about 40 percent of Colorados teachers. The state as a whole only produces half of the 4,000 teachers it needs annually.

Were an importer of teachers, said Charles Warren, an administrator in the universitys Office of Professional Licensure who meets monthly with school human resource directors from across the state. These HR directors are going to job fairs to find teachers all over the country, to beat the bushes and find these new teachers.

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As Colorado Teachers Consider Leaving Their Jobs, UNC Fights To Keep The Ranks Full - Colorado Public Radio