The Denver Post reports that some teachers in Colorado plan to assemble at the State Capitol today to air their grievances, namely, low salaries, which have contributed to teacher shortages.
Inspired by walkouts in other states, teachers will meet with legislators to make their case.
“Earlier this year, 100 CEA members told lawmakers about a survey of more than 2,200 CEA members that showed the average educator spent about $656 a year out of their own pockets for student needs. Many CEA members presented invoices to the General Assembly for the past due amount.
“The CEA said educators in Colorado have had their pay cut by more than 17 percent when adjusting for inflation. A recent study from the Education Law Center, a group that advocates for more school funding, ranked Colorado dead last in the competitiveness of its teacher salaries.
“The typical 25-year-old teacher at the beginning of his or her career in Colorado makes just 69 percent of what a peer with a similar education level who works similar hours earns, the Education Law Center said….
”The CEA on Monday will lobby lawmakers to restore and increase education funding — K-12 public schools in Colorado are underfunded by $828 million in the current school year — and to secure a stable retirement program, CEA president Karrie Dallman said.”
It remains to be seen whether Colorado teachers will enlarge the protest and close down schools across the state. Public schools have been shortchanged by the Legislature.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m not sure where to post this article which just came out from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. It proves that gay, lesbian, bisexual students need more services than are now being given. I do believe that schools play a part in this lack of support. Where is the money and the desire to help these kids fight depression?
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Cyberbullying, unmet medical needs contribute to depressive symptoms among sexual minority youth
NIH study finds higher rates of dissatisfaction with family relationships.
Cyberbullying, dissatisfaction with family relationships, and unmet medical needs are major contributors to the high rates of depressive symptoms seen among adolescents who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or questioning their sexual orientation, according to researchers at the National Institutes of Health. Their new study on sexual minority youth now appears in Pediatrics.
Researchers used data from the NEXT Generation Health Study, a study from 2009-2016 of 2,785 high school students in 22 states, to assess teens’ depressive symptoms beginning at age 17 and continuing for three years after they left high school. They found that almost 30 percent of sexual minority teens thought they did not have adequate medical care for a 12-month period prior to the study, compared to 19 percent for heterosexual teens. Teens questioning their sexual orientation or attracted to the same sex or both sexes may fear that providers would disclose information to parents or may be embarrassed to seek mental health services, the authors wrote.
About 32 percent of the sexual minority youth surveyed reported being victims of cyberbullying — double the number of reported victims among heterosexual peers. Nearly 40 percent of the sexual minority students surveyed reported “low satisfaction” with family relationships — again double the rate of their heterosexual peers…
Pediatricians and health care providers are well-positioned to address the psychosocial and medical needs of sexual minority adolescents, the authors wrote…
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/cyberbullying-unmet-medical-needs-contribute-depressive-symptoms-among-sexual-minority-youth
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Public schools have been shortchanged by the tax and transfer policies
nation wide. Public school students have been shortchanged by the for
profit testing complex nation wide.
To lobby lawmakers, to restore and increase education funding,
and secure a stable retirement program, doesn’t touch the mind-
fracking-manipulation of testing.
We see the “Legislature” is NOT accountable to the people they
purport to serve. Testing is cut from the same cloth.
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Hooray. Englewood teachers are not being paid for today’s walkout.
These are COURAGEOUS Public School Teachers who CARE about their students.
On the OTHER HAND … The politicians care about their donors and would NEVER take a day without pay to protest inequality.
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It is ridiculous that something so important as education is so low in budget. We expect teachers to do everything and go beyond their job basically raising our kids as another parent and expect them to do extra work at home and buy materials for classes with their own money but we pay them almost nothing. Teachers put in so much work to make sure kids have the best advantage at life we can give them, they should be compensated accordingly.
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25-Year-Old Textbooks and Holes in the Ceiling: Inside America’s Public Schools
We invited America’s public school teachers to show us the conditions that a decade of budget cuts has wrought in their schools.
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