COLORADO SPRINGS — With the sun barely peeking above Pikes Peak on Wednesday morning, swarms of teachers gathered outside Palmer High School in Colorado Springs demanding their district and board leaders listen to them after the board stripped the Colorado Springs Education Association of its collective bargaining powers in December.
More than 1,000 demonstrators, including educators from Colorado Springs School District 11, teachers from across the state, students and community members, fanned out around schools in a one-day strike to call on the board and district to give them more of a voice and prioritize student performance over divisive politics that they say are distracting from learning. Later in the day, they planned to canvass their communities and promote a group of what they describe as “pro-public education” candidates running for three open board seats in November’s election before reconvening to rally at Acacia Park.
With most teachers outside Palmer High School wearing red — the signature color of public education — and some ringing red cowbells and wielding signs in support of their schools, they chanted: “Public schools are under attack. What do we do? Stand up, fight back!”
The strike is the culmination of months of outrage among members of the Colorado Springs Education Association, whose frustration boiled over in December when the board voted to let a decades-long master agreement with the local teachers union expire in June. Colorado Springs School District 11 was the last of El Paso County’s 17 school districts to hold a master agreement with union members.
Teachers, families and community supporters gathered outside Colorado Springs School District 11 schools, including Palmer High School, as part of a one-day strike October 8, 2025. (Mark Reis, Special to The Colorado Sun)
Even with about one-third of teachers on strike, classes remained in session Wednesday. The district, which educates about 22,000 students in preschool through high school, pulled in substitute teachers and former teachers who now work in central administration to staff classrooms, according to district spokesperson Jessica Wise. No classes were canceled.
Kevin Coughlin, president of the Colorado Springs Education Association, said the board’s decision to drop a collective bargaining agreement with the teachers union signaled that board members have no desire to work with teachers.
“Teachers want a voice at the table,” Coughlin, who also teaches fifth grade at Mark Twain Elementary School, told The Colorado Sun Tuesday. “We want to be recognized and honored for the work that we do and students deserve more than they currently have and are receiving by our current school board and that’s what I would like to see improved.”
The board’s rejection of a master agreement, in place for 56 years, has inflamed tensions in a district that is no stranger to controversy. After the board flipped to a conservative majority in 2021, Colorado Springs School District 11 drew a national spotlight for pushing back against policy protections for transgender students. In May, the district joined Academy School District 20 and District 49, both in Colorado Springs, and other schools and districts in suing the state and the Colorado High School Activities Association over policies that allow transgender students to participate on school sports teams that reflect their gender identity, Chalkbeat Colorado reported.
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During Wednesday’s strike — the first in the district since a walkout in December 1974 that continued into January 1975 — cars zoomed by honking in solidarity while one demonstrator carried a speaker blaring the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Signs waving above the crowd read, “On strike for our students” and “Bro! Can’t you just, like, pretend you care about our teachers or something?”
The strike, Coughlin said, represents a moment for teachers to elevate their voices and for the union to advocate for a slate of school board candidates in the upcoming election who members believe will give students the best shot at success.
“I hope we all get an opportunity to stand in solidarity with one another,” he said, “and show the community that teachers care about students and that we’re here in order to make sure that we get a school board that cares about our students and gives them the learning opportunities that they need.”
“Leaving their students in a lurch for a political stunt”
Across the street from Palmer High School, a counterprotest organized by the conservative Teacher Freedom Alliance stretched down the block with close to 20 people congregating for part of the morning. Many of them sported red hats adorned with “Make Classrooms Great Again” in white lettering, a play on President Donald Trump’s pledge to “Make America Great Again.”
A sign one participant held read, “I’d rather be parenting but this is important.”
Ryan Walters, CEO of the alliance, created by conservative think tank Freedom Foundation, was on the picket line. The former superintendent of public instruction in Oklahoma, who opposes unions, said teachers need to be in classrooms helping steer kids back on track with learning.
“(Unions) are going out and using kids as pawns, sacrificing their education to achieve their union goals, which is to get more power and more money,” Walters told The Sun during a phone interview. “We are not going to stand by and continue to allow teachers unions to weaponize their power to fight a war against parents and kids, and that’s 100% what they’re doing out there today.”
Jill Haffley, vice president of the District 11 school board, was among those in the crowd across the street from teachers on strike.
Haffley, a former teacher in the district, said she supports people’s right to strike, but she accused the union of holding “a political stunt” two days before voters are set to begin receiving their ballots in the mail in an attempt to sway the November election.
“It’s unfortunate that the very job that they do they’re leaving behind and leaving their students in a lurch for a political stunt,” Haffley told The Sun on Tuesday, questioning why the union waited to strike instead of picketing sometime during the last school year after the board vote that allowed the master agreement to end.
Both Haffley and board president Parth Melpakam continue to defend the new direction the board is taking. Under the master agreement, board members say they were bound to rigid rules under the contract that inhibited the district from moving quickly on decisions around hiring teachers or offering signing bonuses. When the district has a vacancy in the summer, Haffley said, the union must be part of interviews, but because teachers aren’t available in the summer, the district would tend to lose out on teacher candidates who would move on to other districts rather than wait.
The district also needs more special education teachers, calculus teachers and chemistry teachers, Melpakam said, but because the master agreement spells out teacher pay and doesn’t allow the district to offer more money for positions that are hard to staff, the district struggles to compete against peer districts that have more flexibility in the compensation they can offer new hires.
“Ultimately, it’s the students that end up suffering the consequences when we don’t have highly qualified teachers,” Melpakam said Tuesday.
An employee handbook, cobbled together by a group of staff, teachers, administrators and support personnel, has taken the place of the previous contract. That handbook — which includes policies from the master agreement and borrows policies from other local districts — doesn’t change working conditions for teachers and preserves protections that were already in place, such as planning time, board members say.
“Our assurance was nothing was going to be taken away and that has been reflected in that employee handbook,” Melpakam said, adding that “our promise is, with or without a master agreement, we are going to take care of our teachers.”
Board members balk at the idea that they dismiss teacher voices, saying they have listened to feedback from educators and taken action. They avoided scaling back teacher positions even as the district’s enrollment has fallen, cut more than $6 million from the central office to reroute more money to classrooms, banned students from using cell phones in schools after hearing from teachers how distracting they are during lessons and approved a 10% raise for teachers this year.
Board members say they will solicit input from the employee engagement group that devised the new handbook when considering future pay raises. The board has no plans to return to a master agreement.
“We can’t be held hostage by a teachers union telling a school district what it is the union wants the district to do, especially when there’s no public accountability for that,” Haffley said, noting that the board’s job is to look out for taxpayers.
“We are fiscally responsible with their money and we’re elected for that purpose,” she said. “No union member is elected for that purpose.”
A lesson that will last longer than most
Coughlin, the president of the union, counters that the current board is responsible for friction with the union, souring a once-healthy relationship under previous boards and driving hundreds of teachers to leave Colorado Springs School District 11 last year and this year.
Coughlin said “droves” of educators have left their posts in the district, fleeing job uncertainty, a “lack of respect” for teachers and “distress” caused by the board removing teachers’ collective bargaining powers.
“When you take away teacher voice and collective bargaining rights,” he said, “then you have impacted every single student.”
Some Colorado Springs students skipped classes Wednesday to throw their support behind their teachers on the picket line. Palmer High School senior Ian Schriener, the son of a Spanish teacher at the school, shadowed educators as they circled the front of the school.
Ian, 17, said the strike was the right place to spend the morning because of how essential teachers are, calling them “the cornerstone of our community” and the people who best understand kids because of how much time they devote to them.
Lessons gleaned from the strike are likely to shape him far beyond much of what he learns in school, he said.
“This is something that will be a lot longer lasting than any math or Spanish class ever could be,” Ian said. “This matters more because this encompasses all of education across the entire school district.”
His mom, Ali Eustice, the Spanish teacher, said Ian has blossomed at Palmer High School thanks to his teachers. But if the current board had been in power when her family was deciding where he should attend school, she suspects they would have considered another district.
“He thrived because those union teachers had a real voice and a collective bargaining agreement that ensured we had the classroom support he needed,” Eustice said, speaking to a throng of educators. “That was the agreement this board shredded so they could make top-down decisions that have undermined the quality of education in D11. Their decisions have left our students less safe and our educators less supported.”