[ Local ]

• CO Springs settles $2 milloin lawsuit from three officers beating Black man during a traffic stop
• Boulder plans to install “bi-directional” car chargers that will be able to both charge vehicles and power buildings
•  Ranchers bemoan the loss of half a dozen cattle, call for halts, after wildlife experts reintroduce native Grey wolves to Colorado in a move that will help restore natural balance and strengthen the ecosystem
• Colorado prisoners injured while performing hard labor at below minimum wage for corporations have little recourse to sue, cannot protest, and can be sent to solitary confinement as punishment for not working
  The Northern Lights make an extremely rare appearance over Colorado skies putting on a natural light show for anyone with clear skies

[ National ]

• Trump makes several statements over the month, indicating he will revoke any LGBTQ+ protections he can, tells donors he supports Israel “crushing” Palestinians, and will deport students for protesting
• Supreme Court rules that a gerrymandered South Carolina district can stay rigged, which in effect excludes thousands of Black voters
• Biden and Trump agree to a debate in June, likely to change absolutely no one’s opinion of either candidate
• Judge Cannon indefinitely postpones trial on the former President’s mishandling of classified information, in a sign that our courts are totally healthy and functioning as they should to protect democracy and hold power accountable…

[ International ]

• U.S. State Department states it is logical to conclude that Israel has committed war crimes and violated international law, yet weapons are still being sent to the belligerent party
• Iranian president dies in a fiery mountain helicopter crash during foggy conditions on a mountain range near Armenia
• Horrifyingly, but not surprisingly, Human Rights Watch states that Israeli attacks on aid being sent to Palestinians are “not unusual”
• Assassination attempt against Slovakia’s far-right Prime Minister leaves him gravely wounded but luckily still alive, attacker was arrested immediately

Quotes

“These efforts target and single out an already vulnerable group of kids and, if successful, will place an additional administrative burden on our already-overworked teachers, coaches, and school administrators” – Bruce Parker of Out Boulder on anti_LGBTQ+ ballot initiative

“…under new anti-terrorism legislation just passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, that kind of hard-hitting investigative journalism could cost The Intercept our nonprofit status” – The Intercept about  losing funding over their criticism of the Israeli war in Gaza

“I used to believe I was born biologically… upon reflecting on my experiences I was convinced God had sent me” – Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, the world’s largest democracy

“All Colorado parents should be aiming to remove their children from public education” – email directive from director of special initiatives for the Colorado GOP

By the Numbers

$2 Million / 17 Children

City of Uvalde settles with the families of 17 children killed in the mass shooting that continued because of incompetent law enforcement

34 of 34

Guilty counts for the first ever felony conviction of a former president

2025

Project 2025 openly calls for an authoritarian take-over of the federal government following the next Republican presidential victory, remaking the presidency using executions and the military to quell opposition

50th / 1.1%

Colorado saw the second smallest increase in teachers’ salaries nationwide, at just over 1%, ranking 50 out of 51 (including Washington D.C.)

-18%

Property crime rates in Boulder dropped by almost 1/5 since 2020, but report notes violent crime rates have risen slightly over the same period

The post Month in Review | May 2024 appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Halle Thomas, an early childhood educator, embraces a student. Photo courtesy of Zoe Jennings

Working nights as a bartender, days as a master’s-educated teacher

A typical week for Halle Thomas looks like teaching her toddler class from 7 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. and heading straight to her bartending or serving job, which runs until 10 p.m. Weekends are her days off from both jobs, but Thomas usually picks up extra babysitting gigs or extra bartending or serving shifts. Stretches without a day off usually go for several weeks in a row.

“I don’t really have time for friends,” said the early child educator. “I don’t really have time for family. I don’t have time to take a vacation to Minnesota to see my family. It’s tough to live as a teacher here. I’m surrounded by so many teachers, my master cohort, and friends who live here, and they’re doing the same thing as me. They’re picking up babysitting jobs, odd jobs, whatever they can do just to make sure that they’re able to pay rent on time, which is crazy.”

Colorado educators make 35.9 percent less compared to other educated professionals, according to the Economic Policy Institute. As of 2022, the average Colorado educator is paid about $60,000 a year. “Low pay” was the second cited reason for leaving the profession, after “high workload.”

Thomas works at a preschool serving children of teen mothers in Boulder County. Thomas pays about $1,200 for living expenses, not including her car payment and health insurance payment, as most early childhood providers do not pay for employee health insurance benefits.

Colorado educators make 35.9% less compared to other educated professionals, according to the Economic Policy Institute. As of 2022, the average Colorado educator is paid about $60,000 a year. “Low pay” was the second reason for leaving the profession after “high workload.”

While earning her master’s degree in early childhood education, Thomas worked for a private school, which connected highly with the educational philosophy she studied during her time in graduate school. Although the school fit well with her teaching philosophy, Thomas wasn’t able to pay the bills with the $40,000 a year salary they offered. Thomas found work at another school but is still having difficulty making ends meet.

“I’m struggling to pay the bills right now,” Thomas said. “It’s hard to do that when it’s something that very much opposes my educational philosophy. It seems like I’m selling my soul to work at this place, so I can earn some money.”

Now Thomas is searching for other options, which include leaving the teaching profession to do something adjacent like administrative work. The reason for possibly making the switch is purely financial.

“[Teaching] is my passion,” Thomas said. “It is what I was meant to do, which is why it’s been really tough for me trying to figure out what my options are here. I’ve dedicated the past six or seven years of my life to this now. It’s really what I was born to do. I am a teacher of little humans through and through. I would really like to stay. It’s my last resort to leave the teaching profession. Keeping up with all the different things I need to do to sustain my own mental health and sustain a living here is hard to figure out.”

Thomas sees small change in her community but still notices many people don’t understand that she is an early childhood educator, rather than “just a babysitter.”

“I surround myself with people who hold the same beliefs as me,” Thomas said. “Within my own personal teaching community, yes I do believe it’s getting better. The places I’ve worked at I’ve seen it get better and actually listen to

what we say and give better pay — not great pay — but better than we were getting. I see small community change, but until there’s legislature written about early childhood and pay, I don’t think it’s going to get much better.”

Teachers salary barely covers the bills

Katy Mathes and son Jaxson in Mathes’ classroom on Valentine’s Day. Jaxson attends the school where Mathes teaches. Both are wearing Widespread Love shirts. Photo courtesy of Katy Mathes.

Katy Mathes started teaching elementary art at Peak to Peak Charter School in Lafayette in 2008. She provided consulting services and sold Osborne books on the side. Around 2016 Mathes began her own business, Widespread Love, designing and printing t-shirts and home decor items. Doing the work out of her home with a heat press and laser for engraving, the extra money was useful to pay for childcare for her then 18-month-old son, Mathes said.

Mathes grew her design skills on the computer after undergoing a mastectomy and oophorectomy, which left her bedridden for nine months. Beyond working for her own business, Mathes is the chief design officer for MOJO Health, an organization offering a holistic approach to healing cancer and does design work for a mycologist.

“I pick up any extra work that I can,” Mathes said.

Mathes doesn’t think that teachers living solely on their teacher salary in Colorado can do much beyond just paying the bills.

“I don’t personally think it is [possible to live on a teaching salary], unless you’re willing to not have an adventurous life at all,” Mathes said. “I live in Colorado because I love to explore. I love the outdoors. It costs money to go do those things. It costs money to travel. I love traveling. It’s not something I’m willing to go without. If I didn’t have the second or third job, I would not have enough money coming into savings to do vacations.”

The places I’ve worked at I’ve seen it get better and actually listen to what we say and give better pay—not great pay—but better than we were getting. I see small community change, but until there’s legislature written about early childhood and pay I don’t think it’s going to get much better.”

Katy Mathes and founder of MOJO Health enjoy Panic en la Playa this January. Photo courtesy of Katy Mathes.

Mathes and her husband were only able to afford their first vacation six years into their marriage.

“If I don’t do the side jobs, I have a hard time saving any money at all,” Mathes said. “I pay off all my credit cards every month. I don’t have any debt. After the bills and credit cards and stuff, I have nothing in my savings. I have $200 right now.”

This year Mathes dedicated much of her free time to MOJO Health, which is a startup that is not yet paying her for her work, leaving less time promoting Widespread Love. With the holidays, Mathes hopes selling ornaments will generate some money for her savings.

“I live in Colorado because I love to explore. I love the outdoors. It costs money to go do those things. It costs money to travel. I love traveling. It’s not something I’m willing to go without. If I didn’t have the second or third job, I would not have enough money coming into savings to do vacations.”

Mathes has what she calls “golden handcuffs,” which make it a risky decision to leave the teaching field: Over her career Mathes has invested in the Colorado Public Employees’ Retirement Association. After 20 years of work, public employees start receiving retirement benefits at age 55.

“I don’t really have a choice unless I totally want to ditch my retirement fund,” Mathes said. “I have to stay teaching or doing a job that is a PERA job for at least four years, and then I wouldn’t get paid out until I’m 55. There aren’t a lot of choices.”

Mathes spends lunch breaks in virtual MOJO Health team meetings and sometimes uses her teaching planning time at the end of the school day to make it to the post office to send off orders for Widespread Love. That pushes her school planning time into night.

Mathes likes teaching at the same school as her son and having mostly the same time off as he does, aside from professional development days when she must find childcare for him.

“I’m really good at [teaching],” Mathes said. “It’s something I know. It’s the only thing I know that I can get a steady paycheck. My side jobs have a flux to them. Right now I’m selling a ton because of the holiday season. Come January there might be nothing. It really depends on how much I have to put into it, how much I want to do social media.”

Mathes isn’t alone in her frustrations with the field. She’s seen many teachers quit in the past few years.

“These teachers are responsible for making sure that all of the children in the community learn and that they become responsible humans,” Mathes said. “We’re in charge of making sure that they are progressing. We’re not paid for the amount of work we do. Most elementary teachers spend lots of time in the summer working. They stay at school and work a lot of nights. I know my first couple of years I worked every other weekend the entire weekend on curriculum. We are not really paid proportionally for the work we are doing, the importance of the work we’re doing, and the volume of work we are doing.”

The post Living Off Side Jobs: Boulder County Educators Struggle to Pay Bills with Teaching Salary appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Colorado State Sen. Brandon Shaffer never would have joined the Navy had it not been for a Reserve Officer Training Corps scholarship. Shaffer might have paid his debt of public service some other way. But getting talented people into the military, even temporarily, helps the country.

Shaffer, a Longmont Democrat, figures the same thing applies to recruiting teachers to work in rural and inner-city public schools. So he borrowed on his own ROTC experience to find a solution.

There’s not really a name for it, Shaffer explains as he sits in the Senate chamber at the end of a long legislative work day.

“The idea is about encouraging kids who might not otherwise go into the teaching profession to accept scholarships and do their civic duty,” he says.

The bill Shaffer introduced enables such a program. He calls it his favorite law of the current legislative session. It seeks $500,000 to pay tuition scholarships for well-qualified high school grads to go to public colleges in Colorado. To be considered for the scholarships, students must enroll in teacher prep programs. They also get preference if they specialize in subject areas where teachers are in short supply— science, math and English acquisition.

Shaffer originally hoped for a $1 million budget and scholarships focused strictly on science and math to any school in the state—public or private. He also wanted students to commit to a year of teaching for every year of scholarship money they received. Amendments in the Senate education committee watered things down significantly. But Shaffer knows that when you set up important programs with tax dollars, you crawl before you walk and walk before you run.

So when he found half a million bucks in the general fund, he jumped on it.

“Basically, the scholarship money can be spent on any college student who indicates he/she intends to go into teaching,” Shaffer says. “The scholarship can be used to pay for a student’s last 60 course hours.”

With the possible exception of anti-government curmudgeons, folks shouldn’t find it too hard to understand the cost-benefit analysis of this concept. With amendments, Shaffer’s bill passed the education committee. Shaffer expects it to pass the appropriations committee and Senate in time for it to be considered by the House of Representatives.

“I think this bill has a good chance,” he says. “We’ve designated it as one of the Senate’s priority education bills.”

Whatever the bill’s final scope, the trick is to get the best minds instructing in public school classrooms.

“What I’m going for are the top-ranked kids in our high schools,” Shaffer says. “We want to encourage people who wouldn’t ordinarily go into teaching to go into it. That’s where I was when I took the military scholarship. I wouldn’t have gone in the military without the scholarship.”

He might still have gone to Stanford, but he would have graduated with unpaid loans equal to the mortgage of a home.

Those who don’t think the lure of a tuition-free undergraduate degree is powerful bait, need only visit websites of the state’s public and private colleges. In-state tuition at the University of Colorado at Boulder totals $6,635 for a normal fall-spring academic year. It’s easy to see why the National Honor Society crowd will look seriously at Shaffer’s plan.

What Shaffer hopes to create is “a steady flow of teachers over the years.”

He’s looking for the state to partner with private groups, such as the Daniels Fund and the Piton Foundation, that share an interest in improving education. Together, the public and private players might use matching-fund agreements to collect more donations. Shaffer is also looking to integrate his teacher program with existing state scholarship programs.

Mostly, though, he’s looking for money, which is why he agreed to the diluted program that’s working its way through the legislature. Shaffer’s idea depends on marrying the needs of various interests to create a coalition with enough clout to make the scholarship plan work.

He wants a group that includes representatives from the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, teachers and college faculty to help make the calls on who gets the scholarships. They’ll look at grade point averages, SAT and ACT scores, and extra-curricular activities.

“This is merit-based,” Shaffer says. “This is: You worked your butt off in high school and now qualify for a prestigious scholarship. And on the other side of it, you do your civic duty.”

Sounds like a great public investment.

This is Jim Spencer’s final column. Read about where he’s going and who we’ve lured to replace him.

The post An Education in Luring Top Minds appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.