At four rural community colleges in Colorado, 77 students are in the pipeline for teaching careers in rural Eastern Plains and southeastern Colorado school districts.

It’s part of the NxtGEN, or Next Generation of Teacher Preparation program, a higher education program funded by the U.S. Department of Education.

However, federal funding cuts from the Trump administration meant that almost $2.8 million disappeared on Feb. 7.

Attorney General Phil Weiser announced Thursday that Colorado has joined a multistate coalition in filing a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s termination of $600 million in grant funding for K-12 teacher preparation programs, including financing for NxtGEN. The latter received a five-year grant of $6.5 million, of which $2.8 million has not yet been spent.

The Trump administration said the move is part of its campaign to root “divisive ideologies,” notably “diversity, equity and inclusion” and “critical race theory” from schools.   

The Feb. 7 decision terminated, with “immediate effect,” the funding for those K-12 teacher prep programs. 

In a statement, Weiser said the Department of Education’s “unilateral termination will result in 21 jobs lost or reduced, an estimated 50 new teachers lost for rural school districts where there is a teacher shortage.” 

“The Trump administration’s unlawful termination of critical teacher preparation grants will have devastating impacts on rural communities across the state,” Weiser said in the statement. “When schools are unable to find qualified teachers, students suffer. Teacher shortages can result in larger class sizes, canceled courses, or classes staffed with teachers less able to teach a subject.”

The NxtGEN program, now entering its 11th year, is run by the University of Colorado Denver, in conjunction with four rural community colleges: Northeastern Junior College in Sterling, Lamar Community College, Otero Community College in LaJunta and Trinidad State College. The program has 121 teachers who graduated in its 10-year history and serves, through the community colleges, 58 school districts on the Eastern Plains and in southeastern Colorado, including many of the smallest districts in the state.

Celeste Delgado-Pelton, department chair for liberal arts and academic opportunity at Northeastern Junior College, said the program has been a complete game-changer for K-12 schools in northeastern Colorado. She said it’s difficult to recruit teachers from the Front Range to rural communities, and because these are small schools, competing on salaries is also difficult.

The teacher shortage on the Eastern Plains has been acute for years. Delgado-Pelton said teachers are teaching on long-term substitute licenses in some communities.

“We know we have lots of learners who are interested in an education degree, but it’s not in the cards to relocate to the Front Range,” she said.

The biggest interest at NJC has been from adult learners, who can complete all four years of the degree without leaving Sterling and can stay with their spouses and families.

Students first earn an associate’s degree in education at the community college. They’re then accepted as students at CU-Denver, which runs the program with the federal grant, with some courses taught by NJC instructors and others provided online by CU-Denver. The student can then complete the last two years of the bachelor’s degree at the community college without ever leaving Sterling.

“It’s been an answer to prayers for rural Colorado,” Delgado-Pelton said.

Initially, CU-Denver said it would be thrilled with six or seven students enrolled at NJC. The university got 15.

“People were that excited. As schools have recognized how helpful this is, they identify students who want to be teachers and plug them into the program. Our biggest struggle with (teacher prep) is that there is so much demand for teachers” that some students are getting hired while still enrolled in the program’s last two years, Delgado-Pelton said.

Delgado-Pelton said CU-Denver has promised every student in the pipeline that the program would be maintained until they finish.

“Our end goal is to see the grant reinstated or find some other funding sources, so the program won’t have a hiccup,” she said.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Massachusetts, includes the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Wisconsin.

The attorneys general argue the terminations were issued without warning and with immediate effect and violate the Administrative Procedure Act. The lawsuit also seeks a temporary restraining order.

In a news release, the U.S. Department of Education said the $600 million were being used by institutions and nonprofits to “train teachers and education agencies on divisive ideologies.” The department said the training materials included “inappropriate and unnecessary topics,” such as “critical race theory,” “social justice activism,” “anti-racism” and “instruction on white privilege and white supremacy.”

“Additionally, many of these grants included teacher and staff recruiting strategies implicitly and explicitly based on race,” the department said. 

The department said the grant applications included, for example, “requiring practitioners to take personal and institutional responsibility for systemic inequities,” and “equity training on topics such as ‘building cultural competence,’ ‘dismantling racial bias’ and ‘centering equity in the classroom.’”

Other examples from the grant applications included “acknowledging and responding to systemic forms of oppression and inequity, including racism, ableism, ‘gender-based’ discrimination, homophobia, and ageism,” the department said.