A letter to my representatives

State Representative Phillips and State Senator Mullica,

I’m reaching out as a parent of a child in the Adams 12 school district and as a resident of your house and senate districts.  While I’m extremely grateful that the Joint Budget Committee has managed to avoid major cuts to K-12 districts, deeply problematic cuts have still been made in other areas of public education while increased funding is provided to other areas of state government that hurt families.  I ask you to vote against cutting other impacted education initiatives and to vote against funding problematic offices and departments in the state.

Problematic Cuts

The Center for Rural Education has proved to be an invaluable asset for prospective and current rural educators and, thus, rural districts.  Through grants from the State of Colorado, they help recruit future rural educators, support rural teachers in training, and support current teachers in accessing continued learning opportunities to help them meet the needs of a swiftly changing student demographic. The budget they receive from the state is a modest $1.2 million dollars a year. 

The Teacher Recruitment and Education Program (TREP), too, has been an excellent resource in helping the state prepare the next generation of educators in the United States.   The program is designed to provide high school students with concurrent enrollment credits while they are pursuing education licensure.  The TREP program enjoyed a swift increase in student participation, opening college access to a growing population of students since 2022.  They began with a total of 50 participants in 2022 and are currently at 221 participants in 2026.  The per student cost is $10,841, but if you take this number and multiply it by 221, that’s roughly $3.4 million dollars, which is a drop in the bucket compared to some of the funds I express concerns about below. 

In essence, cuts to these programs are problematic for a few reasons.  Nationally, we are facing a critical teacher shortage.  In Colorado, the story is no different.  In 2025, 599 positions remained unfilled.  One hundred and twelve of those were in rural districts.  None of the rural positions were filled through “regular” or traditional teacher hiring mechanisms. 

The purpose behind a “grow your own” teacher recruitment initiative is to also ensure that more diverse teacher candidates are entering the field.  In cutting funding to these and other education grants, the state of Colorado sends a signal that they are divesting in teacher recruitment and teacher quality initiatives. 

Problematic Funding

Meanwhile, more problematic education funding mechanisms continue.  ER Boces, for instance, continues to receive funding despite violating numerous ethical if not legal norms.  ER Boces has acted as an authorizer when it has no authority to do so.  It has authorized schools and homeschool opportunities that impact districts for which ER Boces has no oversight.  And finally, it has violated the line of church state separation in authorizing and funding religious curriculum.  Please see it’s connection with the Everest Institute as a case in point.  In 2023-2024, the CDE Dashboard shows that they received $57,664,83 dollars at the state level.  They received $791,240 at the federal level.  At the local level, they received $35,481.  Let’s compare this to a similar Boces that actually acts as a Boces—Board of Cooperative Educational Services:  Northeast BOCES.  NE Boces provides alternative teacher licensure, they provide Special Education Services, speech language, and other services that are difficult for rural districts to justify due to smaller population numbers.  But the board draws resources together to offer that support to a number of districts in their area.  NE BOCES received $3,992,529 dollars.  NE BOCES received 7% of the budget that ER Boces received, demonstrating that ER Boces has clearly received much more funding despite it’s deeply problematic behavior.

Finally, the Bureau of Prisons has made two fiscally irresponsible requests.  Despite the population of the State of Colorado decreasing, they would like to increase the number of available prison beds with little context or explanation for why “crime is going up” and whether/how this correlates to violent offenders.  Second, the private prison system is requesting a nearly $20 dollar per diem increase.  In any other state system, a per diem increase of $20 dollars would receive a heavy dose of scrutiny as well as a difficult time getting passed.  

Final Thoughts

I appreciate that the Joint Budget Committee faced an extremely difficult task.  But I think that some of the decisions made were still not in the best interests of our community.  I ask you to heavily reconsider any continued cuts to teacher preparation and support grants.  Instead, I ask you to take a good hard look at ER BOCES funding as well as the Per Diem funding request from the Bureau of Prisons. 

Thank you for your time,

Paula Battistelli, PhD

https://ed.cde.state.co.us/educatortalent/researchandimpact/colorados-educator-shortage-survey-results/educator-shortage-survey-results

https://www.cde.state.co.us/schoolview/financialtransparency/organizations/9170

https://content.leg.colorado.gov/sites/default/files/CY26_pubsafsup2.pdf