Educators, students, and community members gathered at the Capitol to protest potential funding cuts for public education.

Photos and Story by Juli Yanai

A large crowd of teachers, students, and community members gathered at the Capitol steps in Denver on Thursday to protest proposed education budget cuts.

Educators, students, and community members protest potential funding cuts for public education.

Dressed in red as part of the “Red for Ed” movement to advocate for better funding and conditions for educators, protesters held up signs and shouted chants during the “No More Cuts: Statewide Day of Action” protest.

The rally was organized by the Colorado Education Association (CEA) to push back against defunding public education. Despite previous promises from Gov. Polis and other legislators not to borrow funds from education, legislators are now looking to pool money out of the budget again. This move came after restrictions on revenue collection imposed by TABOR left legislators with the need to cut state expenditures by $1.2 billion.

However, according to the CEA’s website, statistics show that Colorado schools are already underfunded. According to the U.S. Education Data Initiative, which routinely updates nationwide education funding data, Colorado ranks 28th in funding for K-12 public education nationally. On the CEA webpage they also state that per student, Colorado falls short on funding by about $4,000 to $4,500 per year compared to the national average.

The state’s consistent underfunding has put a strain on the schools' ability to provide for students, namely through teacher retention rates, the ability to hire support staff, and resources available to students, among other issues.

Demonstrator and kindergarten paraeducator, Andrew Banks stated, “In kindergarten, there has to be a para in every classroom. So in that regard, changes to funding aren’t going to change that. But what it does change is the number of support staff for other grades. And you know, when I look around the school and I see the fourth-grade teachers with, you know, between 30 and 40 students that they have to teach by themselves all day every day… I’m just like, you know, tragic is probably too strong of a word, but [I] just [think of how] kind of disappointing it is for those teachers to not be able to give their students the level of attention they want that would really deepen their educational experience.”

Discussing the future of education funding, Banks also pointed out, “My main thing which I tried to capture in the sign that I made to hold up at the rally was that yes, we should be concerned about cuts, but more importantly I think we should be looking at how we can increase education funding. Even without the cuts, we are struggling. The public education sector is struggling in our state and Colorado does not fund education as much as a lot of other states. And so like, why aren’t we talking about increasing education funding rather than just trying to stop the cut of education funding?”

Jenna Scadden, who also works as a special education paraprofessional urged, “Working with children, helping them grow as humans, watching their successes and not-so-successful attempts, having conversations and connection is a labor of love. Educators as a whole do not deserve to have the rug, aka budget, ripped out from beneath us when we’re already tipsy.”

Many other educators protesting shared similar sentiments. However, educators taking the day to rally at the Capitol drew criticism from some, including Gov. Polis himself.

A statement made by Polis’ office, which was released at 6 p.m. on Tuesday read, “Canceling school at the last minute in several districts on 3/20/25 will put strains and hardships on parents and will leave kids without instruction and many without a safe place to go. Let’s remember that nearly 70% of third graders can’t read or do math on grade level, and this leaves parents scrambling to find care.”

Despite the criticism, some schools used the protest as a field learning day.

The Downtown Denver Expeditionary School (DDES), a Denver public school for kindergarten through fifth-grade students, brought two classrooms of students as experiential learning for civic engagement.

The school’s executive director, Aubrey Wilk, explained, “Our third graders participated in a learning expedition last semester on overcoming learning challenges, so this felt super relevant to our fifth graders also, to do a vote expedition. Looking at, how do you advocate for things you care about in your community and why do people vote or speak up or not? This felt really relevant to their learning so we came out. We had a lot of parents that came out too.”

Throughout the rally, DDES students actively engaged in the protest holding up signs that read, “The kids are Colorado’s future” and “I can’t go to the space station if I don’t have education”, among many other things.

Several parents also brought their children to the protest, actively involving them in the conversation regarding the future of their education.

As educators and community members continue to rally for better funding, resources, and working conditions, it remains unclear what the future of education budgets will look like in Colorado. Currently, Polis and other lawmakers are still negotiating if and how budget cuts could take effect.