Colorado alert! We’ve accomplished the breakdown of our public education system! It took us 145 years to build it and then take it down to the ground. Is that what we want?

It’s not because of COVID that our schools are in such bad shape and our teachers are at their wits’ end. But the epidemic has highlighted how badly we the people have conducted education policy and funding.

Past and current leadership in the state legislature as well as the Governor’s Office has inserted too many laborious mandates into the system. Most recent requirements are incompatible with lively, engaging education. They pin public school teachers in place and reduce students’ education to rote learning in order to score well on boring, high-stakes standardized tests.

Just as bad, we voters in Colorado are stingy. It’s irrational. Republicans and some Democratic politicians declare that school districts should do better with the money they have.

Here’s what that attitude means. Rural Colorado schools pay new teachers under $40,000, give them 30-35 students per class, and have them prepare up to five different classes per semester because they don’t have the money for better staffing.

These teachers are on a four-day schedule because the schools can’t afford a five-day week. There’s no time for creativity or enjoyment of learning on that timetable. Middle school and high school teachers are grading work from more than 150 students per semester.

In mountain communities, especially near resorts, rent is $1,500 per-month for a one-bedroom. Add health insurance, which with children can run another $1,000/month. Teachers in these areas can barely afford to rent yet alone buy a house. In resort towns, servers make more than teachers and they don’t have to grade papers at night and on weekends. The financial problems are worse for para-professionals and other support employees.

Out on the prairie, teachers make less than in the mountains. The teaching loads are the same. It’s difficult to attract teachers. New teachers can’t take the load of working with 30 to 35 kids per class, and in upper grades, of preparing so many different subjects.

The story is similar in suburban and urban schools. The pay is higher, but not enough. Staffing shortages and large classes are comparable to rural schools. Since returning to school post-COVID, kids are having difficulty adjusting. After being cooped up for more than a year, some students can’t stop talking and others can’t stay focused.

These problems are more poignant for our special-needs kids. There aren’t enough special education teachers to accommodate needs, and there’s not enough time in the shortened weeks in mountain and rural communities to provide required support for kids. For English Language Learners, there aren’t enough ELL teachers, translators and para-professionals to facilitate student learning.

Then there’s the unrelenting, organized attacks on the public teaching profession. Local elites at Colorado’s Gates Family Foundation, Gary Community Ventures, Colorado Concern, Ready Colorado, the Children’s Campaign, and Democrats for Education Reform have invested their ample financial muscle backing legislators who push their business-oriented competition model on public schools.

After more than a decade, the disaster is clear – no improvement overall in achievement scores, fewer teachers entering the profession and more teachers leaving the profession after fewer than five years.

State interventions to improve districts have had terrible results. The Adams 14 School District situation is instructive. The district in the Commerce City area has a high percentage of low-income students from minority communities who get to suck up bad air from Suncor Refinery all day. The State Board of Education deemed the district a failure and put a for-profit management company in charge. That decision has resulted in no improvement in achievement. Now the Board threatens to close the district’s high school in a repetition of Denver Public School’s closure of Manual High School a decade ago. This will not work out.

If public schools are to regain their capacity and vigor, a different education model must emerge. It should be supportive with rigor, not competitive. It should focus on adequate pay for teachers, classroom sizes where students strive and enjoy learning, support services so kids are fed and mentally and physically healthy, and educator evaluation systems emphasizing collaboration.

The sooner we get on this project, the better. It’s the least we can do for this COVID generation of kids.

Paula Noonan owns Colorado Capitol Watch, the state’s premier legislature tracking platform.