Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-day series exploring how a $621 million cut in state spending is increasing the educational gap in Southwest Colorado. The series continues today on Page 6A. Part 2 will publish next Wednesday.Tigo Cruz wears a dusty green baseball cap with Mancos scrawled across the front and a button-down blue shirt untucked from khaki pants.
He’s driving his big, black SUV down a gravelly dirt road near the Mancos Early Learning Center. It’s the car he lived out of for 1½ years before upgrading to a camper parked on his friend’s property in nearby Hesperus.
Cruz is a paraprofessional preschool teacher. But even with an additional part-time job at Fenceline Cider & Wine, he can’t afford a place to live in one of the least-developed areas of Colorado.
Sitting at an outdoor table at a coffee shop run out of a garage, Cruz talks about his students and the holistic approach the Mancos School District takes to educate the whole child: academically, socially and emotionally.
When education was practically halted around the world by the COVID-19 pandemic, perhaps no other students were affected more than those in rural areas. In the most southwestern corner of the state, when the wind blows too hard, the internet can go out.
Those challenges didn’t hinder Cruz and his colleagues from connecting with students through printed materials or YouTube videos they put together on the fly.
But a $621 million reduction in spending on education might.
Preschool teachers like Cruz, including those with a master’s degree, make only 60% of what a kindergarten teacher makes in the school district. But many K-12 teachers receive a salary that doesn’t meet the cost of living.
A survey from 2017 found that 94% of the school districts in Colorado paid an average teacher salary below the cost of living in those districts, even before the pandemic hit.
But with significantly lower tax revenue from the COVID-19 shutdown, the state Legislature made unprecedented cuts to the next fiscal year budget for education. Teachers like Cruz are getting creative in working around or solving the education gap between children in remote, rural areas and children in Denver, but their efforts could be dismantled if already underfunded schools lose state funding.
East of Mancos, the city of Durango is known for being a wealthier school district compared with the rest of Southwest Colorado. Still, the school district lost $6 million in state funding for 2020-21.
“We have been underfunded in this state for a very long time,” said Celeste Dunlop, a special education teacher at Florida Mesa Elementary School.
Durango is not immune to rising levels of depression and anxiety among rural Colorado students, heightened by the isolation of at-home learning during the pandemic.
Over Dunlop’s 20-year career with the Durango School District, the number of students she works with who struggle with severe emotional disabilities has increased. In neighboring Bayfield, 18 miles to the east, guidance counselors Amy Miglinas and Jennifer Leithauser said they’ve noticed a similar increase.
When the school buildings closed and districts pivoted to online learning, Dunlop knew she would have to be creative in providing mental health support for students. She decided to record herself, as if talking to students, to calm them down on an app called Marco Polo, which parents could play if the student was feeling panicked or had too much energy.
But some students don’t have internet at home to access the help Dunlop provided through the app.
One parent had internet access at work, so she downloaded the video there to play for her child at home, Dunlop said.
“Overall, our staff did an amazing job communicating with families, but the larger school district didn’t have the same opportunities,” Dunlop said. This is a result, in part, of the smaller budgets other local schools must work with.
Bayfield High School was able to provide Google Chromebook laptops to students. For some of those students, it was the only computer in their house, Miglinas said. But if students don’t have access to reliable internet connectivity, the Chromebooks are useless.
Even schools in Southwest Colorado lucky enough to provide those resources to students are feeling the ripple effects of budget cuts at the state level. School boards are scrambling to determine the best way to absorb the shock to their budgets while maintaining staff and the necessary internet and mental health support for students.
And it remains unknown whether schools can offer in-person classes in the fall as the shadow of a possible resurgence of COVID-19 cases lingers over the United States.
The economic blow to Southwest Colorado, which relies heavily on tourism, has left many parents without work. Some are moving where jobs are available, meaning fewer students in the rural schools. With fewer students, schools receive less funding.
At least 80 families have alerted Durango School District 9-R their children won’t return in the fall, not including the parents who didn’t respond to the survey at all, said district spokeswoman Julie Popp.
Even with about 5,500 students in the district, that makes a difference. The state gives the district $12,000 in funding per student, Popp said. The district has some discretion in how it allocates the state funding it receives. The loss of 80 students adds up to $960,000 less in funding.
Unreliable internet access, as well as feelings of isolation, often fall along socioeconomic lines, Dunlop said.
“If parents are working two to three jobs, internet isn’t a priority,” Dunlop said.
Between the video lectures and online test-taking students needed to complete during the COVID-19 shutdown, along with the online research students normally need to do for homework assignments, broadband is becoming a necessity, Miglinas said. Without it, rural students have a disadvantage in access to higher education and meeting university and high school standards.
COVID-19 has only highlighted the digital divide for students in the region. But state cuts in spending on education leave school districts with fewer resources to provide students with the physical tools they need to thrive academically, compared with children who grow up in cities or more developed areas, Miglinas said.
Jessica Dunbar, a resident in Ignacio, has a son who is in eighth grade at Ignacio Middle School. Her son and his friends have been honor roll students throughout their middle school experience, but they felt the online workload was heavier and harder during COVID-19 than normal, in-person classes.
“We were able to access the internet. However, I am a single mom and cannot afford to pay for internet, so we had to ask neighbors to use theirs,” Dunbar said. She worries budget cuts will mean less pay for teachers, and the quality of the school will drop.
“The bigger the class, the less attention each child will receive, and that will more than likely affect their success in that class,” Dunbar said.
ehayes@durangoherald.com
The project
The Unprecedented project was created to spotlight the educators, counselors and local leaders who are providing mental health support, building internet access and developing a new curriculum and learning environment during a pandemic that nearly halted the education system.
The people included in the article have turned challenges into opportunities, for themselves and their students.
Despite the budget shortfall in the state of Colorado, this project showcases why school districts in rural areas deserve continued funding from the state or other interested entities.
I would like to thank Sherrell Lang, fellow with NACA Inspired School Network, for instilling the value and importance of this perspective.
Emily Hayes
