The search for educators in rural Colorado has become so desperate in some districts that superintendents are staffing classrooms with adults still learning how to teach or relying on online learning programs to fill in the gaps when administrators simply can’t find anyone.
Enter Robert Fulton and Christine McConnell, whose job has been to figure out how to prop up the state’s teaching profession and fix a pipeline that year after year falls short of deploying enough educators across the state.
Fulton, director of the Colorado Center for Rural Education, and McConnell, director of the Colorado Teacher Cadet program, have been propelling solutions to help the state overcome the stubborn problem of teacher shortages.
Their efforts have chipped away at the scarcity: The center pours millions of dollars into funding stipends to support teacher candidates and also helps up-and-coming teachers figure out the best way to become licensed. The cadet program, meanwhile, each year plants hundreds of high schoolers in classrooms where they learn what it takes to teach and where many become hooked on a career in education.
The future of their fight on the frontlines against teacher shortages was up in the air after Gov. Jared Polis repeatedly proposed eliminating their $1.2 million budget while confronting an especially tight state budget. But last week, the Joint Budget Committee, which drafts the state budget, preserved funding for the center and cadet program in their budget draft. The JBC at least twice rejected the governor’s proposals to save the state money by pulling the $1.2 million.
It’s an encouraging sign for rural Colorado schools, where more than 110 teaching positions were left unfilled during the 2024-25 school year, according to data from the state education department. More than 1,000 other teaching positions were staffed through special shortage mechanisms permitted by state education officials that school year — including through alternative teacher candidates, long-term substitute teachers and retired teachers, state data shows.
“We’re going to get to keep doing what we’ve been doing and that is support future teachers and in-service educators and special service providers because the state is still suffering from a dramatic educator shortage, which hits rural Colorado particularly negatively,” Fulton said. “We’re still not out of the woods on the teacher shortage by a long shot in rural Colorado. Without the center, we would be in worse shape than we are for certain.”
The budget has a few steps to go before the center can fully exhale. It’s headed to the House floor this week, followed by the Senate. And while lawmakers largely follow the JBC’s plan, they’re also sure to make some changes before the budget is finalized and Polis can sign it into law.
Fulton said he remains cautious about the center’s future because he knows the state budget must still be finalized.
“It’s not done until it’s done,” he said, “but I feel more confident now than I did a month ago.”
Polis had proposed cutting program funding temporarily and maintaining the Colorado Center for Rural Education in statute so that future lawmakers could restore funding if they had the money. The governor’s office reasoned that slashing funding this year would not strain teacher recruitment and retention efforts in rural communities — both because of other programs doing similar work and because the state’s new funding formula boosts funding for rural schools.
“The new school finance formula prioritizes funding for rural and small school districts by introducing a locale factor which provides additional funding for rural districts,” Ally Sullivan, a spokesperson for Polis, said in a written statement. “This additional funding aims to support districts to help provide higher salaries along with other efforts to keep teachers in classrooms. Governor Polis has also signed legislation to help our rural school districts, like the HOME Act to help nonprofits and schools build more housing to attract educators to rural school districts, and provide workforce housing tax credits to help combat the high cost of living in our rural communities.”
State Sen. Jeff Bridges, a Greenwood Village Democrat and vice chair of the JBC, said the budget committee decided to preserve funding for the center because of its success in building up a corps of teachers in Colorado.
“The data we saw indicates this is one of the more effective of our many Colorado teacher prep programs,” Bridges wrote in a text message to The Colorado Sun.
“Living in a small community, it takes everybody to make it work”
In the 10 years since the legislature established the Colorado Center for Rural Education, the center has doled out $6.7 million in stipends to recruit new educators and help retain those already teaching.
Much of that money supports aspiring teachers who would likely rack up debt attending a teacher preparation program, including paraprofessionals who Fulton describes as “living at near-poverty wages.”
“When they’re sitting around the kitchen table trying to decide if they want to go to college to become a teacher, how much it costs is definitely part of their conversation with their loved ones,” he said. “And if the cost is too high, they just don’t choose to do that.”
Financial support includes Colorado’s Rural Teaching Fellowship, which has awarded stipends to 78 Colorado Mountain College students enroute to becoming a teacher. The program, a collaboration between the center and the state higher education department, gives individual teacher candidates $10,000 stipends. Students are eligible for a stipend so long as they train within a Colorado teacher preparation program, student teach for at least a year with a rural school in the state and pledge to teach at least two years in the same school or district.
The teaching fellowship has also been in jeopardy alongside the center, an alarming possibility given the payoff of the teacher retention stipends, Fulton said. An analysis by education consultant Marzano Research found that a higher percentage of student teachers and full-time teachers who received a stipend through the center stayed in rural schools for at least one year, compared to other teachers.
Another centerpiece of Fulton’s job focuses on coaching individual students through their options when deciding upon how to go about getting licensed as a teacher. That can be an especially complicated task in a state that offers four pathways into teaching and 21 credentials teacher candidates can earn.
Fulton spends many of his waking hours exchanging emails with teacher candidates and paraprofessionals all over the state who need someone to help them weigh their best options for finding a teacher preparation program recognized by the state while saving every dollar possible while in school.
He also hops on weekly calls with teacher candidates who don’t yet hold an undergraduate degree as well as alternative licensure candidates, or those who already have a college degree, to answer their questions as they wade through what can be a daunting process leading to their own classroom.
“Those conversations aren’t just about financial help,” said Fulton, whose center is housed within the University of Northern Colorado. “They’re about making the best use of their time. How do you get your foot in the door with school districts? How do you reach out to HR departments? And all of the things around helping somebody move into the profession as quickly and as efficiently and as cheaply as possible.”
Among those Fulton shepherded is art teacher Holly Kurtzer, who wanted to pivot into teaching for the small town she calls home, Haxtun in Colorado’s far northeastern corner, after working for herself as a paint contractor. Kurtzer, whose four children have attended Haxtun School District RE-2J, secured an adjunct license to teach in an emergency capacity after the district approached her in need of an art teacher.
With help from Fulton, she settled on an online program through Western Colorado University, through which she completed an alternative teacher’s license in two years, shaving off time because of previous college credits that counted toward her license.
Kurtzer also received funds from the rural education center that helped her cover courses in her alternative licensure program — along with a heavy dose of encouragement from Fulton.
“Living in a small community, it takes everybody to make it work,” Kurtzer said. “So you don’t just do your tiny little part and that’s your involvement in your community. Everybody has to invest a little extra. For me, it was perfect alignment for something that I’m passionate about, which is art and serving in my community. All of it came together for me to be in the perfect position that I could be in and that spills over into my community.”
Other prospective teachers who could help make a dent in rural teacher shortages one day begin learning how to teach while still learning core high school subjects like math, English and science. They’re known as teacher cadets, part of a state program that launched in 2001 following similar programs in other states. Colorado’s program has since ushered about 7,500 teacher cadets through basic classes that teach them the art of being a teacher and give them college credit in the process.
The cadets — ages 16, 17 and 18 — also build initial experience by assisting teachers with key instructional practices, such as sitting with small groups of children to polish reading comprehension.
The promise of the teacher cadet program is panning out — 75% of Colorado’s teacher cadets consistently report that they plan to pursue a career related to education while national data shows a trend of teachers landing in jobs within a 100-mile radius of their high school.
Just as the program has revved up momentum in recruiting teachers at a young age, McConnell, the program director, has been deeply concerned about scaling the program back, rather than scaling it up, as she waits to learn if the program becomes a casualty of the state budget.
The teacher cadet program is a boomerang, sending kids off to college and pulling them back to their roots to take over classrooms.
“There are some really great things about being a teacher,” McConnell said, “and if we can highlight that, if we can promote that, that gets kids really excited.”
Staff writer Brian Eason contributed to this report.