CLEAR CREEK COUNTY — Teachers and union members from a rural Colorado school district are urging their school board to approve bigger pay raises at a time they say the district is prioritizing construction projects over retaining educators while compensation lags behind the rising cost of living.
Teachers from Clear Creek School District RE-1 earlier this week asked the board to reconsider what salary increases look like next year after the board and local teachers union reached a tentative agreement Friday that would award staff a 1% cost of living adjustment. The agreement would also increase compensation for teachers pursuing advanced degrees and taking additional courses and would allow staff employed by the district for more than a decade to cash out five vacation days at half the pay they earn per day.
“While millions were committed to a state-of-the-art bus barn, we contend with declining enrollment, an aging and incomplete (bus) fleet and a shortage of drivers,” Rachel Richardson, president of the Clear Creek County Education Association and a third grade teacher at King-Murphy Mountain School, told the board during a meeting Monday evening at Clear Creek High School. “A strong district cannot be built on infrastructure alone — especially when it comes at the direct expense of the people who sustain our schools. Educators should not be asked to bear the cost of the district’s overspending on capital projects.”
Clear Creek School District, which educates 634 students in preschool through high school this year, is up against an approximately $94,000 budget deficit for next year, strapped by a series of financial challenges. Ongoing declining enrollment has translated into less state funding for the district, which also has maxed out the amount of property tax revenue it can collect locally. And, like all districts, Clear Creek School District is bracing for anticipated federal funding hits amid widespread funding cuts under the Trump administration and is also trying to manage ballooning costs, board treasurer Kelly Flenniken told The Colorado Sun.
“We’re trying to do the most that we can within the realities that we have,” Flenniken said.
Flenniken rejects the idea that the district has put construction projects ahead of teacher pay, adamant that they are separate issues.
“Capital dollars cannot be spent on salaries, period,” she said. “And the reason is because capital dollars are one-time dollars. Once they’re gone, they are gone. You need sustainable ongoing dollars to pay salaries because that is not just a one-time expense. That’s a huge gap in our community, of understanding that.”
Heidi Lupinacci (right), a sixth grade teacher who has worked for Clear Creek School District for 18 years, holds up a sign demanding school board members support teachers with better pay during a school board meeting May 19, 2025, at Clear Creek Middle & High School in Evergreen, Colorado. (Erica Breunlin, The Colorado Sun)Clear Creek School District drew community scrutiny in 2023 while constructing a new bus barn that ended up costing more than $5 million, funded using profits from the sale of Golddigger Field in Idaho Springs and a loan the district is still paying off.
Dollars from the sale could have never gone toward staff salaries since salaries are an ongoing expense, Flenniken said. Neither could funding from a bond approved by voters in 2021 that supported infrastructure projects at every district building but did not go toward the bus barn.
“We are not willing to bankrupt our district to pay salaries”
Heading into next year, the district is projecting a budget exceeding $11 million and a balance in its reserves of more than $5.6 million — well above state requirements under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, that require districts to save at least 3% of their revenue in reserves, and district rules mandating that at least 18% of its funding is kept in reserve.
A sign made by a demonstrator sits on a table during a Clear Creek School District board meeting May 19, 2025, at Clear Creek Middle & High School in Evergreen, Colorado. Teachers and community members attended the board meeting to raise concerns about low teacher pay at a time they say the district is prioritizing construction projects over retaining educators. (Erica Breunlin, The Colorado Sun)Educators like Alexis Johnson, a second grade teacher at Carlson Elementary School in Idaho Springs, say the district has more than enough money in savings to disburse some for staff raises.
“I believe it will have a cascading effect of encouraging families to stay inside the district instead of leaving the district or taking their children elsewhere,” Johnson, who also represents her building in the local union, told The Sun. “I also think the taxpayers gave us that money to spend it on students, and keeping it in a savings account for a rainy day that never comes doesn’t serve the students who are in the door today.”
It also does not incentivize teachers to remain in the district during a period of high churn, teachers say. The district’s staff turnover rate surpassed 33% this year, according to data from the state education department.
Johnson said she plans to leave her post at the end of the school year after two years of teaching in Clear Creek School District because it no longer makes “financial sense” for her to stay. During her daily commute, she drives past four schools in Jefferson County that she said pay more.
“So many of our staff are one act of God, one divorce away from having to leave the district,” said Johnson, who earns $56,920. “Many folks are only able to teach here because their partner makes enough to allow them to afford to live here.”
The district already pulls from its reserves to compensate teachers and will have to increase the amount it takes from reserves to pull off the 1% cost of living adjustment, Flenniken said.
“We are not interested in depleting those to the point that I think the teachers would like us to do because that really does put us in a precarious fiscal cliff position,” she said, noting state audits have raised concerns over the district’s finances.
“We are not willing to bankrupt our district to pay salaries,” Flenniken added.
Educators acknowledge the district has made progress in compensating teachers in recent years. Using funding from reserves and dollars from a mill levy override passed in 2018, Clear Creek School District has increased teacher pay by almost 47% since 2018.
The district has also tried to shield classrooms from cuts while working to shave down a budget deficit of about $900,000 earlier in the budget season, Flenniken said. Along with teaming up with other districts for bulk purchases that help save district dollars, Clear Creek School District has scaled back some administrative positions and replaced teachers’ laptops with Chromebooks.
“Quite frankly, providing a cost of living increase adds to that deficit, but that is what we are prepared to do right now,” Flenniken said. “Our position is really difficult. It really is and we look forward to thinking about creative solutions to increase our revenue.”
Teachers counter that the 1% cost of living adjustment, rather than the district standard of a 2.5% increase to base salary, amounts to a pay cut since it does not keep up with inflation and will also likely diminish educators’ long-term earnings.
The negotiations have amplified emotions across the district.
Clear Creek School District board members Kelly Flenniken (left) and Marcie King listen as Clear Creek High School science teacher Jill Stansbury (right) asks the board to reconsider how much it will increase teacher pay for next year during a board meeting May 19, 2025, at Clear Creek Middle & High School in Evergreen, Colorado. Stansbury, who has worked for the district for 20 years, was part of a small group of educators and community members who attended the board meeting to highlight what they see as a need to increase educator pay at a time teachers are struggling to keep up with the cost of living. (Erica Breunlin, The Colorado Sun)“I feel torn between my educator responsibilities to my students and my parental responsibilities to my own children,” Jill Stansbury, a science teacher at Clear Creek High School and a 20-year veteran of the district, told the board Monday while fighting back tears. “I’m not sure if Clear Creek can satisfy both at this point. I find that the actions and words of the board do not match. You continue to raise student enrollment as a high priority, devoting dollars to marketing efforts. Yet I cannot think of a faster way to push families out of the district than to foster instability in the classroom.”
Members of the local teachers union will begin voting on whether they want to ratify the tentative agreement Wednesday.
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