WEEK OF MAY 29, 2025
VOLUME 53 | ISSUE 51
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Realities clash at school board meeting Educators showed up in numbers to talk salary BY CHRISTOPHER KOEBERL CHRIS@COTLN.ORG
Friends help Idaho Springs resident Lue Howard clean up pine needles and winters-worth of slash at the Idaho Springs Cemetery May 21
Educators from across the Clear Creek school district appeared as a united group at the May 19 meeting with school board members to voice concerns about salary, retention and a path forward in a financially troubled district. On-going negotiations and mediation between school staff and district administration in recent months have been challenging, “to say the least,” according to representatives from both sides of the table. Clear Creek County Education Association President Rachel Richardson said the board of education is offering staff a 1% cost of living adjustment for all certified and classified employees in the upcoming school year. “Our district prioritizes capital projects and spending. They have over budgeted and gone into debt because of those priorities and because of that they say they cannot afford to give teachers cost-of-living increases or a ‘Step’,” Richardson said.
PHOTO BY CHRIS KOEBERL
Locals clean-up Idaho Springs Cemetery Residents and friends gather to clean historic cemetery BY CHRISTOPHER KOEBERL CHRIS@COTLN.ORG
Every year around Memorial Day, Idaho Springs resident of
62-years Lue Howard gets some longtime friends together to canvas the historical city cemetery and pick up the needles and slash that has collected over the last year. The city provides the trash bags and public works hauls off the debris Howard and her team collect. On the morning of May 21 a couple dozen regulars grabbed
their trash bag, shovel or rake and headed into the cemetery to clean the some 3,000 internments Howard estimates are there. Brad Lewis, of public works, worked side-by-side the volunteers, heaving the large – and surprisingly heavy – black bags into his work truck for disposal. Although the cemetery is owned by the city, Howard said
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Funding to individual school districts is based on student enrollment numbers processed through a formula that even educators describe as extremely complex.
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the deeds to most individual grave sites are gifted to family members. Some graves no longer have family members in the area to maintain the sites, that’s where Howard’s team comes in to help. “You can’t explain it, you just feel like you need to do it so you
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