The CEA (Colorado Education Association) said that the walkouts happening in Denver needed to alert residents and lawmakers about the status of school funding in Colorado. The states school are currently being underfunded by $822 million and around $2,700 below the national average.

On April 27th, 2018 teachers all around the state of Colorado took off the school day to go up to denver and protest that they should be getting paid more. The largest school district in the state with a student enrollment of over 92,000 students, said it is canceling classes on Friday due to huge number of teachers joining their peers in a classroom walkout and rally at the state Capitol.

A teacher at Cherrelyn Elementary School, Tarkanian said she recently moved in with another family to save money. She says she’s been teaching now for 10 years and makes the same amount of money that a teacher does who’s been working only for three years.

“I’m not sure I can do it anymore,” she said.

On average, teachers spend 12 hours a day at the school they teach at. Some spend extra hours after school to plan and grade or help students with his or her classes and homework. If teachers work on an average of 12 hours a day for 190 days or nine to 10 months, that means they work about 2,245 hours. Divide the hours by a $57,154 a year, the average Jefferson County School District salary, teachers are making $25.46 an hour. A Lake County average salary at $40,508 comes to $18.05 an hour.

A lot of teachers say they use most of their off days to attended conferences and improve their education and what they came bring into their schools.Teachers get about nine to 10 weeks off during the summer, depending on the district. They also get another two to three weeks off during the school year for winter break, spring break and other holidays

Schools throughout the Downtown Denver Metro area were cancelled for those two days due to so many teachers using personal time to attend the rallies and there are not enough substitutes to staff classrooms.Teacher pay has become one of the biggest issues in 2018. Teachers and unions from West Virginia and Oklahoma have successfully rallied for bigger paychecks.