march<\/a>, campaigners are asking for livable wages, the end of the budget stabilization factor by 2022, and a ballot initiative in 2020 to raise education revenue.<\/p>\nOne way they hope to achieve these goals is through Senate Bill 20-089, or the Educator Pay Raise Fund. SB89 was introduced in the Legislature in January and would create a funding source for increasing the minimum pay for teachers and nonlicensed employees.<\/p>\n
At Saturday\u2019s forum, educators and community members shared personal stories about the need for more educational funding. They spoke about their struggles to make ends meet in an economy with a rapidly increasing cost of living, of the difficulties of working in short-staffed schools with high-needs students, and of \u201ctapped out\u201d communities unwilling or unable to vote for property tax increases to make up for funding shortcomings.<\/p>\n
Multiple regional school districts were represented, including Mancos, Cortez, Durango, Telluride, Ridgway and Bayfield.<\/p>\n
Tigo Cruz, a preschool paraprofessional with Mancos School District Re-6, recounted his experiences working multiple jobs and sleeping in his car because he couldn\u2019t afford housing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need help now,\u201d he told McLachlan and Coram at the forum\u2019s conclusion.<\/p>\n
Celeste Dunlop, a special education teacher in Durango, spoke about the wraparound services that schools provide their students, and of an overwhelming caseload. Right now, schools are not able to adequately meet the needs of their \u201cstudents in crisis,\u201d she said, many of whom need additional interventions and mental health supports that schools can\u2019t provide right now.<\/p>\n
Several speakers also felt that districts were forced to rely on grants to operate.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s just fund education,\u201d said Mike Gass, the soon-retiring superintendent of the Telluride School District R-1.<\/p>\n
The legislators offered their own perspectives before answering a series of questions from the audience.<\/p>\n
McLachlan, a retired teacher who serves as chair of the House Education Committee, agreed with the crowd. She recalled her firsthand classroom experience seeing school funding decrease over the years, and emphasized her commitment to advocating for more educational funding and voting in line with that commitment.<\/p>\n
She did have some perception-related concerns with SB89, though. She felt if a pot of money for education was created too soon, it could be difficult to gain support for higher teacher pay later.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are going to say \u2013 not true \u2013 but their perception is going to say, \u2018Teachers are fine, nobody else has their own bank account,\u2019\u201d McLachlan said.<\/p>\n
Instead, she said, they should focus first on eliminating the budget stabilization factor.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think let\u2019s do this when we can get rid of the negative factor,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
According to Mancos Superintendent Brian Hanson, if the budget stabilization factor was eliminated, his district could have a beginning salary of $48,000 annually for teachers and $16.50 per hour for classified staff.<\/p>\n
Coram, who used to serve on the board for Montrose County School District Re-1J, said he was at the forum to listen.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur problem is not Republican-Democrat,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s urban and rural.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coram added too that as state legislators, he and Mclachlan could only do so much, since most of the budget is already accounted for or earmarked.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe school board and county commissioner affect your lives far more than Barbara and I can,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
ealvero@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Teachers, community urge legislators to prioritize education<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75049,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1086,155,28,83,392,216,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-75048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-durango-school-district-9-r","tag-education","tag-headlines","tag-mancos","tag-mancos-school-district-re-6","tag-montezuma-cortez-school-district-re-1","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75048"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90282,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75048\/revisions\/90282"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75048"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=75048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}