Author: Ann Schimke Chalkbeat Colorado

They want this time to be different. Whether they’re walking out of school on Wednesday to call for new gun laws or whether they’re “walking in” to broader community conversations about violence, Colorado students told Chalkbeat they want the 17 lives lost a month ago in Florida to serve as an impetus for changes that…

Last fall, Lisa Rickerd Mills, a medical social worker in Grand Junction, worked with a single mother who needed inpatient mental health treatment. The problem was child care. The woman had no one to watch her two small children during her stay and bowed out of treatment. It’s exactly the kind of scenario a group…

Thousands of additional Colorado families might be able to pay for child care if a federal spending bill due in March fulfills the pledge of a recently approved budget deal. That’s because the deal, passed by Congress and signed by President Trump earlier this month, promised new money for a subsidy program that helps low-income…

There’s good news and bad news for Colorado in a new state-by-state report on gifted and talented education. On the plus side, Colorado is one of only six states where at least 90 percent of high-poverty elementary and middle schools offer gifted and talented programs. In other states – such as Michigan, Massachusetts and Rhode…

The problem of teacher shortages has plagued some Colorado school districts for years, but it reached a tipping point of sorts in 2017. With a growing trove of anecdotes about teachers who can’t afford housing, who work second jobs to make ends meet or who leave the profession early, state education officials hit the road…