Educators in Colorado Springs’ largest school district are gearing up for a one-day teacher’s strike Wednesday to protest their loss of a collective bargaining agreement and what has become what they describe as a retaliatory teaching environment.
District officials are strongly opposed to the strike, calling it counterproductive, and have threatened to discipline teachers and other district support staff who participate in the strike.
There are about 1,800 teachers in Colorado Springs School District 11. Roughly 60 percent are members of the union, but contracts cover all certified educators.
“Every child in our district deserves a safe classroom, educators who can give them one-on-one attention, and the resources they need to thrive,” said Kevin Coughlin, president of the Colorado Springs Education Association. “But instead of working with educators to make this a reality, district leaders have chosen to prioritize politics and division over real solutions. They’ve stripped away protections for educators and dragged our schools into culture wars that distract from what matters most: educating kids.”
Wednesday will see a picket line in front of D11 schools from 7:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. That will be followed by a community canvass, with teachers knocking on doors and discussing local school board elections. At 2:30 p.m., there will be a rally at Acacia Park in downtown Colorado Springs.
Teachers participating in the strike won’t be paid. The district is also paying teachers more than $20 extra an hour to cover classes on the strike day. It has also increased the rate from $31.16 to $55 for “emergency class coverage.”
District officials weren’t available for comment Monday. Officials and board members will host a Tuesday morning media availability at the district’s school boardroom.
Historic strike
This strike will be the first strike under the 2023 state legislation, Protections for Public Workers Act that gives public employees — including those at schools — with rights to organize and express their views about workplace issues outside the classroom. The landmark law gives public employees’ rights similar to those of private sector workers under the National Labor Relations Act.
It is the first teacher’s strike in El Paso County since 1975.
What is the strike about?
At the crux of the one-day strike educators losing their collective bargaining agreement with the district in December.
For 56 years, the agreement guided working conditions, salaries and benefits. It was the only remaining collective bargaining agreement among Colorado Springs area districts. Most other major school districts along the Front Range have bargaining agreements.
The educators’ contract expired in July. Teachers are now guided by a “handbook” that can’t be downloaded because it is in “live mode” and can be changed at any time, according to Angel Givler, a fifth-grade literacy teacher in an interview on the Colorado Springs Education Association’s web page.
“That means that if you aren't going through the handbook all the time, you actually don't know what the rules of your job are,” Givler said in the interview. “Before, our master agreement very clearly laid out the expectations for plan time to ensure that we could properly plan for students, that we could make sure that they got that recess, that our workday provided us time to do grading and planning. Now all of that is gone.”
Board vice-president Jill Haffley disagrees and said teachers had a voice in developing the handbook and get ample notice anytime a change is made.
“Look, we're not here to trip up teachers,” she said Monday. “We know that teachers are the best way for kids to get a high quality education. So why would we?”
Haffley contends the strike is not actually about teacher or student issues but is a political maneuver by the union to influence the upcoming board election. She said most of the strike day will be campaigning for the union’s slate of candidates.
Haffley also argues that the district has shown strong support for teachers. She notes they’ve received raises and excellent health benefits
“Without this collective bargaining agreement, we were able to provide teachers with a 10 percent raise,” Haffley said.
Classroom conditions
Givler said hundreds of teachers have left the district since the contract expired, including educators who decided to retire early.
Haffley confirmed that, and said that very few left because of the loss of the bargaining agreement.
"I'm told that 400 teachers did leave in the past year," she said. "The vast majority of those were retirements."
That still leave many schools short on educators.
“A lot of schools that have unfilled positions,” said Givler. “So they're either long-term subs, rotating subs, teachers are taking on extra students… classrooms are extra full.”
She said teachers are being bogged down with more meetings, more required training outside of school time, and much more work documenting what they do, for example, providing a three-page lesson plan for each lesson.
Givler said teachers don’t want to strike but work conditions have become untenable.
“We hate missing a day….we have this tremendous guilt not being in the classroom. So for us to get to the point of striking, even for one day… it was a hard decision.”
Matter of politics
In addition, teachers say they are fed up with what they say is the political agenda of the school board. Over the last several years, the district has become a roiling political environment, a flashpoint for national political and cultural debates in education. A group of conservative candidates gained control of the board during the 2021 election and forced out superintendent Michael Thomas, who resigned.
In the last six months, District 11 has entered lawsuit against the state about trans athletes, requiring consent on name identification, and displaying of pride flags.
After a new health textbook at the high school level went through a public approval process, health teachers found out that a section about gender and sexual identity was cut out of the books. Teachers say they don’t know who removed the pages or whether the curriculum still meets state standards.
Contentious school board races are also coming up, with some candidates backed by the teacher’s union and others by conservative groups such as Moms for Liberty, which supports book banning and a conservative brand of “parents’ rights.”
Intimidation allegations
Teachers told CPR that school staff have been pulled into private conversation with their principals to be asked if they plan to strike. Then that information is reported to district administration.
The district has sent emails threatening to fire support staff if they show signs of sympathy for teachers. That includes bringing doughnuts and coffee to people on the strike line, Givler said.
“We are generally overworked and underpaid. And it's a hard job and to have a school board and a superintendent who are actively telling you how terrible you are every day is disheartening and incredibly hard on us,” she said.
Superintendent says strike is a ‘nothingburger’
D-11 Superintendent Michael Gaal strongly opposes the strike. He told Colorado Politics it was the “biggest nothingburger that I’ve ever dealt with.”
“You don’t see (Academy) District 20, who does not have collective bargaining conversations, on the front of the paper about their teachers not wanting to come to school,” Gaal said. “And I’d match our pay scale against District 20’s any day.”
D11 board members have cited a variety of reasons for ending the contract, including alleging that the master agreement got in the way of swiftly hiring teachers and extending learning time during the pandemic. Board members also called out discomfort with the union’s right to issue grievances, and allegations that a union is a private corporation holding sway over a public institution.
“We want to remove burdensome bureaucratic processes when the district needs to make decisions quickly,” board vice-president Haffley said in December.
Gaal said the district approved a 20 percent increase in starting teacher salary in 2022 and says compensation is competitive.
Teachers say the one-day strike is not about pay.
“This fight is bigger than one contract; it’s about protecting public education itself,” said Coughlin. “What happens in Colorado Springs will set a precedent for the rest of the state. If extremists succeed here, they won’t stop in D11. They’ll take aim at other local unions, other districts, and the very foundation of public education across Colorado.”
