Colorado Springs Education Association

A year ago this month, in a 6-1 vote the D11 BOE voted to sever the 56 year-old Master Agreement. A contract bargained collectively between the certified staff of District 11 and the Colorado Springs School District 11 Board of Education. The decision ended decades of collaborative work that supported educators, students, and families.

Since then, You, Your Union Sisters and Brothers, Students and Community have mobilized to fight back. D11 admin and the Board majority have made it so we now have to actively fight to protect our PROPWA and First Amendment Rights; basic human rights, all while putting students learning conditions at the forefront as we struggle with subpar working conditions. 

We are actively fighting for our PROPWA and First Amendment Rights. Dr. Angel Givler-Viers was recommended for termination based on unfounded allegations of unprofessional conduct in conjunction with social media posts leading up to the strike, attempting to squelch her constitutional right of free speech.

Other teachers have been removed from the classroom under the guise of allegedly violating BOE policy GBEG and other assorted provisions in the daily evolving D11 Employee Handbook. Many others have been reprimanded for letting potential substitutes know they would be subbing for striking employees in advance of October 8. These threatening, intimidating scare-tactics by D11 are targeting union activity and disrupting education.

We are actively fighting against censorship. During a candlelight vigil, hundreds of community members and students joined fellow CSEA members in protest of the Board of Education’s vote to enact policies that impose censorship of materials offered in libraries and classrooms all around the district. The freedom to read is under attack, we will fight to ensure the students of D11 have access to different perspectives, are not subject to imposing values, and can see themselves reflected in literature.

Middle school students were supposed to be reading about Frederick Douglass after having read about John Calhoun’s defense of slavery, but it was crickets after a districtwide email was sent by Krystal Rasmussen the new Chief of Curriculum that began with the words, “we’re pulling Frederick Douglass…” Teachers were instructed to skip that unit. Who would have ever dreamed that Callhoun and pro-slavery arguments would prevail in 2025?

The D11 curriculum department ripped pages out of student’s Health textbook in an effort to censor a section titled “Concerns About Sexuality.”

We elected pro-public education BOE members.  Colorado Springs voters pushed back against the policies of Mom’s for Liberty and the other extremist groups that have captured the school board’s agenda by electing two pro-public education and union advocates: Leann Baca-Bartlett and Charles Johnson. These Champions of D11 were seated on the School District 11 Board of Education on December 10, 2025.

We went on strike for our students. For the first time since 1975, we went on strike for our students, community, and our profession. While rare for Colorado, this strike was a stand against allowing extreme politics to dictate decisions in our schools. Why, did we walk those picket lines? It wasn’t over wages. It was to protest the district’s policies and attempt to silence educators and ignore parents, their attempts to weaken our voice for students because we stand against efforts to privatize and politicize public education.

We will continue to fight until we regain a collectively bargained contract that supports the best learning conditions for students and in return the best working environment for all staff in CSSD11.