But one small stream of federal COVID funding — $23 million — was used for innovation in the sector rather than its survival. That money was distributed through the CIRCLE Grant program and helped fund more than 200 projects around the state. The projects included weekly bilingual preschool classes for Armenian-American children, a training program for Head Start parents working as classroom aides, and a loan program to help child care employees cover emergency expenses.

While the grant funding represents a fraction of the $678 million in federal COVID relief sent to Colorado’s early childhood sector, program leaders are proud of the grassroots efforts it sparked.

“Once again, we are seeing that folks that are closest to the problems have the best solutions,” said Jennifer Stedron, executive director of Early Milestones Colorado, which distributed the CIRCLE grants.

Read the full story from our partners at Chalkbeat Colorado.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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“Very good,” she said.

Next, the 13 children, most wearing maroon or blue polo shirts and dark skirts or pants, learned that everybody sins — even teachers, moms and dads, and the church pastor — and that although God hates sin, he doesn’t hate people who sin.

“He still loves us very much even when we sin,” Haynes said.

A minute later, Haynes led the 4-year-olds in a song about manners: “Always say thank you, always say please. When we’re ungrateful, God is not pleased.”

Such religious content has long been woven through the lessons at Landmark Preschool, which is nestled inside Landmark Baptist Church in the western Colorado city of Grand Junction. What’s different this year is that state taxpayers are covering the bill — more than $100,000 — for 20 preschoolers to attend classes there.

Colorado explicitly invited faith-based preschools to participate in its new $322 million universal preschool program, which despite a rocky rollout has proven popular with families. But state officials have sent mixed messages about whether preschools can offer religious instruction during state-funded class time. Prior to the launch, they said it was forbidden. Now, they say it’s not, but that next year it could be.

Debates about public funding for religious education come amid an ongoing conservative push to break down long-held ideas about the separation of church and state, including in a lawsuit underway now over a religious charter school in Oklahoma. Colorado’s Constitution, like those in many other states, prohibits using public money for religious purposes. But a series of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions has hollowed out such provisions.

In order to participate in Colorado’s universal preschool program, preschools, including Landmark, had to sign a contract agreeing to a variety of conditions, including that they would not discriminate based on sexual orientation and gender identity. That requirement is now the subject of two lawsuits — one by a Christian preschool in Chaffee County and the other by two Catholic parishes that run preschools near Denver. The contract that providers signed did not mention religious instruction.

Read the full story from our partners at Chalkbeat Colorado.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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But just two weeks before Kristian was set to start preschool, Spasova learned that wasn’t the case. Instead, the state program will cover just 15 hours of preschool, the same hours offered to Colorado children who don’t face barriers to success in school.

Colorado’s universal preschool plan called for children like Kristian to get up to 30 hours a week at no cost to their families, provided there was enough money. It turns out there isn’t.

In the final weeks before school starts, that shortfall triggered a provision in state law that tightened eligibility requirements so that only children who are low-income and have a second risk factor will receive full-day classes.

Instead of half of 4-year-olds being offered free full-time preschool, just 13% will.

Some of the affected children are learning English, like Kristian. Many more are from low-income families — and money for additional child care subsidies is limited, too. Meanwhile, the state is sticking to its plan to offer 15 tuition-free hours to all 4-year-olds, even those from well-to-do families — more hours than required by state law.

“To cut back on the ones who really need it does not feel fair,” said Jean Doolittle, the owner of Southglenn Montessori Preschool in Centennial where Kristian is enrolled. “Instead of taking a little bit from everybody, they took a lot from those who need it most.”

The decision illustrates the trade-off Colorado leaders made in designing the new preschool program, which launches this month. Many early childhood advocates cheered Colorado’s move from a preschool program that targets certain kids to one that’s open to all 4-year-olds, but as the program rolls out, some providers are concerned the universal model shortchanges children facing the toughest odds.

Read more from our partners at Chalkbeat Colorado.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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The answer: It depends.

On paper, there are plenty of seats. State officials expect only about half of Colorado’s 4-year-olds — around 31,000 children — to participate in the first year. Meanwhile, a Chalkbeat analysis found more than 56,000 preschool seats available for next fall.

“Right now, it’s looking really good,” said Dawn Odean, the state’s universal preschool director.

But things get stickier at the county level. Some parts of the state are awash in preschool seats and others don’t have nearly enough. Some families may also struggle to find preschools with the schedules and programming they want.

“The physical number of slots versus what parents actually need doesn’t necessarily align,” said Kelly Esch, who’s both the parent of a preschooler and executive director of an organization that provides early childhood coaching and resources in western Colorado’s Garfield County.

While Chalkbeat’s county-by-county analysis provides a snapshot of preschool availability across Colorado, there are plenty of factors it doesn’t account for — families who cross county lines for preschool or the uneven distribution of seats within counties. Plus, it’s possible more providers will join soon, adding new seats to the tally.

Read more from our partners at Chalkbeat Colorado.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

Get more Colorado news by signing up for our Mile High Roundup email newsletter.

The boy wasn’t there, but his father was — dusty from working on renovations inside.

After Castillo explained that they hadn’t seen Jason at school yet, the man quickly dialed the boy’s mother and handed over his cellphone. Madera took the call and, speaking in Spanish, learned that the family planned to send him to one of the district’s alternative schools.

“She said she meant to call,” Madera said as she and Castillo returned to her SUV, ready for the next stop on their home visit list.

Castillo and Madera are on the front lines of a push to get kids back in school after a pandemic that compounded many of the problems that contribute to chronic absenteeism, including student disengagement, academic struggle and financial insecurity. The rationale is simple: Students have to be in class to learn.

The Greeley-Evans district in northern Colorado is one of many school districts nationwide using federal COVID-19 dollars to fund attendance-boosting efforts. The 22,000-student district is in the second year of a three-year, $644,000 contract with the Denver-based consulting company Zero Dropouts to track down missing high schoolers and help them catch up on coursework or credits.

Castillo, the Northridge cheer coach, and Madera, a former secretary at the school, are among 14 Zero Dropouts employees, also known as attendance advocates, embedded in the district’s five high schools this year. They have a host of responsibilities, from helping out in classes and monitoring hallways to calling and visiting the homes of absent students.

The job is part detective work, part social work and part paperwork.

Before the pandemic, 35% of Greeley-Evans students were chronically absent, meaning they missed 10% or more of school days. That number rose to 40% during the 2020-21 school year, well above the state rate of 26%.

Lanny Hass, special projects manager at Zero Dropouts, said advocates help intervene quickly when warning signs pop up: an increase in absences, a grade that’s fallen to a D or F, or problematic behavior. The team works in tandem with counselors, mental health specialists and other school staff.

Read more from our partners at Chalkbeat Colorado.

Chalkbeat Colorado is a nonprofit news organization covering education issues. For more, visit co.chalkbeat.org.

That’s fewer than the 55 campuses that didn’t have air conditioning in 2020, when Denver Public Schools asked voters to pass a $795 million bond for a slew of projects, including installing air conditioning at 24 schools. Voters overwhelmingly passed the bond.

Hot classrooms are a perennial problem in Denver, where some school buildings are a century old and temperatures in August can reach the high 90s. The district pushed back the first day of school this year by a week to try to mitigate the likelihood of overheated students.

Of the 24 schools slated to get air conditioning with funding from the 2020 bond, work has been completed at seven schools, said Heather Bock, the district’s director of construction.

Read more from our partners at Chalkbeat Colorado — including the list of schools without air conditioning. 

Chalkbeat Colorado is a nonprofit news organization covering education issues. For more, visit co.chalkbeat.org.

“Boys and girls, remember how we’re learning about rotating?” she said to the soon-to-be kindergartners at her table. “Where do you guys get to go?”

A little boy answered immediately. “The park!” he said.

The correct answer was actually the block table at the other end of the orange-carpeted room, but such trial and error was part of the weeklong Jump Start program at Peiffer Elementary in Colorado’s Jeffco school district.

Paid for with federal stimulus dollars, the summer transition program is among a host of initiatives school districts are launching this year as they prepare to welcome a new crop of children to classrooms after more than a year of disrupted schooling — and in some cases, no formal schooling at all. District leaders also plan to reduce class sizes, add coaches and intervention teachers, and provide tutoring.

Many experts fear the youngest students could face the most substantial social and academic gaps, both because pandemic upheaval came during a critical time in their development and because thousands of children didn’t attend preschool and kindergarten last year as they normally would have.

In Colorado, the biggest K-12 enrollment drops last year occurred in kindergarten, with a statewide decline of 7,000 students, or 9%. That matches national trends, including findings from a new Stanford University and New York Times analysis of 70,000 schools in 33 states.

Read the full story from our partners at chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat Colorado is a nonprofit news organization covering education issues. For more, visit co.chalkbeat.org.

The money paid for summer school, full-day kindergarten, and tutoring programs for students in kindergarten through third grade, but those efforts barely made a dent in Colorado’s dismal passing rates on third-grade literacy tests or the percentage of students seriously behind in reading.

Something else came out of the 2012 reading law that produced more promising results: a competitive grant program with three-year awards for schools that agreed to overhaul reading instruction. Unlike the reading money spread across all districts, the smaller Early Literacy Grant program came with strict rules about how schools should improve reading instruction, plus considerable state oversight.

Overall, participating schools did improve — with some schools making huge gains and others improving modestly, while a few made no improvement.

But in a local-control state where inconsistent approaches have complicated efforts to boost reading achievement, the grant program points to the benefits of whole-school reform and strong guardrails on spending.

Educators at some grant schools say the program was transformational, creating a cohesive system for teaching all students how to read and helping those who struggle.

“It is probably the best thing that ever happened at this school,” said Lisa Fillo, principal at Remington Elementary in Colorado Springs.

The school’s third-graders made big gains on state literacy tests over the course of the grant, moving from 36% proficient in 2016 to 55% by 2019. The school’s share of K-3 students with serious reading deficits decreased to 10% from 13%.

“Our school was very flat, very comfortable with reading techniques that our teachers were teaching” before receiving the grant, Fillo said. “There was no specific curriculum for intervention; everyone [was] kind of doing their thing. It wasn’t structured, science-based reading instruction.”

From Englewood to Lamar, other school leaders agree, and many have sought additional grant funding or district dollars to preserve initiatives begun during the grant.

Read the full story from our partners at chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat Colorado is a nonprofit news organization covering education issues. For more, visit co.chalkbeat.org.

The Cherry Creek School board on Wednesday chose an internal candidate — Chief of Staff Chris Smith — as the sole finalist for the 54,000-student district’s superintendent job.

Cherry Creek is the first of four large Denver metro districts to announce a finalist in the search for a new superintendent. Denver, Jeffco, and Douglas County are also looking for new leaders.

Cherry Creek’s current superintendent, Scott Siegfried, announced in January he would retire at the end of the school year. Jeffco’s former superintendent, Jason Glass, left his job last summer and Douglas County’s former superintendent, Thomas Tucker, left his job last fall, and both now work for the Kentucky Department of Education. Susana Cordova, Denver’s former superintendent, left Colorado’s largest district late last fall for a new job in Texas.

The Cherry Creek school board selected Smith unanimously from a pool of two internal candidates. The other candidate was Jennifer Perry, the district’s assistant superintendent, according to a letter from school board President Karen Fisher.

Read the full story from our partners at chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat Colorado is a nonprofit news organization covering education issues. For more, visit co.chalkbeat.org.

A Chalkbeat investigation found the state’s 30 largest school districts and three charter networks together use three dozen core curriculums, often different ones in neighboring schools. Experts on curriculum say such variation can be found in many states, but should raise questions about which students get left behind by the mish-mash of methods.

Six in 10 third-graders can’t read proficiently, even eight years after a landmark reading law that earmarked millions annually to help struggling readers. One reason for this is that many schools rely on methods that aren’t supported by research.

Often, the students who lose out are those who already face other challenges, like poverty and disability.

“It’s astonishing how much the United States under-teaches all of its students, but it particularly lowers the bar for its disadvantaged students,” said David Steiner, executive director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy in Baltimore. “It’s crucial at pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, grades one and two that rigorous materials are used.”

Now, amid activism by parents of dyslexic children, action from frustrated lawmakers, and news coverage about flawed instructional approaches, state leaders are taking new steps to boost reading skills. Curriculum — the roadmap for what and how teachers teach — is one front in that effort, with a new law giving state education officials stronger levers to ensure that schools are using scientifically sound methods for reading instruction.

Read more at chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat Colorado is a nonprofit news organization covering education issues. For more, visit chalkbeat.org/co.