ongoing leadership investigation is targeting nearly $3 million in contracts that former Superintendent Christopher Smith and his wife signed with an education company and examining whether the couple was influenced by paid international travel.

School board President Anne Egan confirmed the investigation is centered on the Smiths’ ties to after The Denver Post obtained letters and copies of five contracts between the district and the firm, including three signed by the superintendent and Brenda Smith, the district’s human resources officer.

The documents and Egan’s statement reveal the first details behind the Board of Education’s decision to freeze new contracts and subsequently change the threshold needed for board approval after Christopher Smith unexpectedly resigned in late January, and why Cherry Creek placed Brenda Smith on paid administrative leave days later.

“We are also looking into allegations of excessive travel expenses billed to the district by Education Accelerated,” Egan said in a statement. “When those types of issues were brought to our attention, the board moved to freeze certain contracts and travel until we could investigate them fully.”

The investigation, she said this week, remains ongoing.

Cherry Creek Schools terminated all contracts with Education Accelerated in February because of what staff called “substantial concerns” with the company’s performance, according to two letters district officials sent that month to notify the firm of their decision.

Those concerns range from incomplete work to the possibility that Education Accelerated — hired to create a teacher residency program — overbilled the district as much as $57,520.97 for travel expenses, the documents show.

The school board is also concerned about the relationship between the Smiths and David Palumbo, the founder and chairman of Education Accelerated, Egan said.

“That relationship may have included international travel taken by the Smiths during the contracting process,” she said.

Tony Leffert, an attorney representing Christopher and Brenda Smith, said all of the contracts and payments made to Education Accelerated were approved by the school board.

“I don’t believe any one of them did anything improper,” he said of the Smiths. “…My understanding is that the board approved the expenditures for that contract and the spending, and other staff were aware of these payments.”

Egan acknowledged that the school board approved “certain Education Accelerated contracts presented to us by Superintendent Chris Smith,” but had no knowledge of the Smiths’ personal relationship with the company’s founder. Records show the board approved at least two Education Accelerated contracts during public meetings in 2024.

Those contracts were part of the meetings’ consent agenda, which school boards typically vote on at the recommendation of staff and often without discussion. Agendas for the meetings showed Brenda Smith was the district staffer responsible for the contracts.

Superintendent goes to Brazil

Cherry Creek had at least five contracts with Education Accelerated, the values of which ranged from $41,800 to $2.6 million. The district had paid Education Accelerated nearly $2 million as of Jan. 29, documents show.

The company, which appears to be based in Austin, Texas, was hired by the district in 2023 and helped Cherry Creek launch its Aspiring Educator Pathway Program the following year.

That program aims to help solve the teacher shortage by training future educators in Cherry Creek schools while they earn bachelor’s degrees from the The approved the program during its most recent meeting in March.

Education Accelerated CEO Alicia Densford said in a statement to The Post that the company remains “committed to working cooperatively with the district.”

“It is a program that was approved by the school board and has been highly successful,” she said. “We remain confident in the integrity of the work and look forward to continuing to work collaboratively with the district to address any questions and ensure the program’s ongoing success.”

Densford did not acknowledge in her statement that the company’s contracts with Cherry Creek Schools had been canceled.

It’s unclear how much international travel the district is examining, but Christopher Smith did fly to Brazil in April 2024 while he was superintendent for a two-day conference called Think Tank 2.0 hosted by . That trip was not paid for by Cherry Creek Schools.

The Brazilian school’s superintendent at the time — Richard Boerner, an associate of Palumbo’s who now works for Education Accelerated — invited Smith to participate in the event. He told him the Cherry Creek leader that the school could pay for his hotel and flight, including if he decided to extend his stay through the weekend to “enjoy São Paulo,” according to an email reviewed by The Post.

Christopher Smith went on the trip and “the sponsors” paid for his hotel expenses, including when he stayed an extra night, Leffert said. “They paid for everybody,” he said. “There’s a whole conference of people.”

It’s not clear whether Brenda Smith also went on the trip to Brazil.

Palumbo, the co-founder and chairman of Education Accelerated, served as a facilitator of the event, the email showed. Boerner became the chief innovation officer for Education Accelerated in December 2024 and chief executive officer of , another company that has worked with Cherry Creek Schools, in 2025, according to his LinkedIn page.

“It was standard practice to invite external participants and cover certain related expenses,” Boerner said in a statement. “I’m not in a position to speak to or confirm the specific arrangements for any individual attendees as I no longer work there.”

He said TruFit Talent is “unrelated to these events” when asked by The Post about the Brazil conference.

Palumbo, who could not be reached for comment, is also chairman of TruFit Talent, according to the company’s website.

The school board knew about Christopher Smith’s trip to São Paulo, Leffert said.

“Everybody on the board knows that situation,” he said. “…The board knew about it and they approved it.”

Leffert declined to provide evidence that board members knew about the trip.

Egan pushed back on the attorney’s assertion, saying Christopher Smith did not share his calendar with the board, and trips such as the one to São Paulo aren’t something directors vote on.

“The school board had absolutely no knowledge of that trip,” she said.

Contract concerns

Christopher and Brenda Smith, who were married before either worked at Cherry Creek Schools, signed off on the largest Education Accelerated contracts. The rest were signed by Chief Financial Officer Scott Smith (no relation).

The district hired Brenda Smith as chief human resources officer in 2019. After the school board hired Christopher Smith as superintendent in 2021, Brenda Smith began reporting to a deputy superintendent to comply with the district����ap staff conduct policy, which states that employees may not engage in direct or indirect supervisory relationships with immediate family members, according to a 2022 district memo.

Brenda Smith signed an Education Accelerated contract worth at least $368,000 on June 11, 2024, less than two months after her husband’s trip to Brazil. Christopher Smith then approved the largest Education Accelerated contract — worth $2.6 million over several years — in October 2024, the documents showed.

Overall, the district would have spent more than $3 million of taxpayer money on all of the Education Accelerated contracts — excluding travel expenses — if they had not been terminated last month, documents show.

But it����ap not just the Brazil conference that has raised red flags with Cherry Creek officials.

Education Accelerated sent Brenda Smith invoices that showed the company routinely exceeded the $5,000 limit set in the contracts for travel expenses. For example, the firm billed Cherry Creek Schools for more than $33,779.07 in July 2024 for travel.

The travel expenses incurred by Education Accelerated staff were supposed to be pre-approved by Cherry Creek, according to the contract’s terms.

Leffert, the Smiths’ attorney, said contract terms can change, including if more travel is needed than necessary. “It doesn’t mean it wasn’t approved by the school board,” he said.

The company also sent Brenda Smith an invoice dated March 31, 2024, that requested the district reimburse the company for travel expenses it said were incurred in April, the following month. The bill totaled $3,156.13 to cover airfare, meals, hotels and other expenses for Palumbo and Densford to come to metro Denver, according to the invoice.

But Education Accelerated sent another bill — this time totaling $7,176.72 — to Brenda Smith on May 31, 2024, for what it said were also travel expenses incurred in April. It wasn’t clear from the document whether the expenses were in addition to the March 31 invoice that billed Cherry Creek for April travel.

The travel invoices contained inconsistencies, such as expenses for travel outside of Colorado, which led the district to cancel the contracts and ask Education Accelerated to provide documentation and records to substantiate charges and services, according to a Feb. 24 letter obtained by The Post.

Education Accelerated billed Cherry Creek $405.12 for Palumbo to rent a car in Virginia Beach in June 2024. The company also billed the district $5,613.09 for a hotel in San Francisco that same month, as well as $1,803.71 for another car rental in Virginia, invoices show.

“The district has not located documentation clearly authorizing or approving work performed in these jurisdictions,” general counsel Sonja McKenzie and Smith, the chief financial officer, wrote in the Feb. 24 letter. “Absent such documentation, the associated costs are presumptively unauthorized.”

They asked Education Accelerated to provide the district with itemized invoices and receipts, including for meals, entertainment, hotels, Airbnb stays and rental cars by March 4, according to the letter. It’s not clear whether Education Accelerated responded by that deadline.

“We are happy to work with the district as they evaluate the program and our work,” Densford said in her statement. “All invoices submitted were proper and consistent with the terms of the program as approved by board resolution, and we have provided the district with extensive documentation supporting the same.”

Education Accelerated also sent a $20,000 invoice for work TruFit Talent did related to the aspiring educator program in December 2024, documents showed.

But Boerner said TruFit Talent did not receive compensation from the district.

The termination of Education Accelerated’s contract applies to TruFit Talent as well as all third-party contractors s working on behalf of the company, according to Cherry Creek’s Feb. 12 letter.

School board’s changes to contract processes

It’s not unusual for a superintendent or human resources director to approve contracts for services, said Denver Public Schools Chief Financial Officer Chuck Carpenter. Such agreements can make it to their desks if they reach a certain cost threshold or, in the case of a human resources director, pertain to their department.

For example, Denver Public Schools has a policy that states the superintendent approves contracts worth more than $500,000 and the school board approves contracts above $1 million.

“We’re dealing with public money, so it’s important that folks can defend the purchases as being in the best interest of kids,” Carpenter said.

Cherry Creek, the state’s fourth-largest K-12 school district, enrolls 51,844 students and operates under a $840 million budget.

It’s common for contracts to set a limit, such as $5,000, for travel expenses, but vendors should notify districts if they plan to go over either the travel budget or the amount of the contract, Carpenter said.

A vendor should not bill a district more than the limit agreed upon in the contract, and in a scenario where a vendor believes they are going to go over budget, DPS reopens the district’s contract approval process, he said.

“Going over that amount is essentially a contract, too,” he said. “It’s not OK to go over without having that reapproval process.”

Vendors don’t typically overspend on travel expenses because, in most cases, those costs are overestimated to prevent such a scenario, Carpenter said.

Both of the contracts signed by the Smiths after the Brazil trip were large enough that they also had to be approved by the school board.

In February, the board approved what Egan called “reforms” to Cherry Creek Schools’ procurement and expenditure approval policies and contracts. Interim Superintendent Jennifer Perry also announced plans for an external audit to review the district’s organizational systems, including internal controls and fiscal responsibilities. 

At the time, Egan said the district’s decision to review policies and freeze travel and contracts was “a result of concerns being raised about the decisions and actions of former Superintendent Smith and Brenda Smith,” but she didn’t provide specifics.

The changes implemented by the board in February included lowering the threshold — from $400,000 to $250,001 — required for district staff to seek school board approval before agreeing to a contract for goods or services. (The threshold had previously been raised after the Cherry Creek Schools passed a nearly $1 billion bond in 2024.) 

Under the changes, employees are also required to get approval for purchases above $5,000. Who within the district — executive director, deputy chief of operations or another administrator — approves a purchase depends on the amount.

Now, the legal department also has to review and approve all contracts, and an employee’s failure to get approval can result in disciplinary action, including termination.

The classroom is where she had wanted to be, but Mills wasn’t sure how to achieve her dream of being a teacher while juggling both work and school. She attended in Washington, D.C., for two years, but moved back to Colorado in 2020 because she couldn’t afford tuition.

Mills worked as a librarian at until she joined a new initiative — the — that the launched during the 2024-25 academic year and which pays her to co-teach while she earns a degree.

“I always wanted to do something with kids,” Mills, 24, said, adding, “It����ap something I wanted to do but I had no way to go about it without the program.”

The Cherry Creek School District launched the Aspiring Educator Pathway in hopes of solving ��DZ��ǰ������’s growing teacher shortage and building a pipeline of educators for the district’s classrooms.

The district is spending $760,000 to pay 16 apprentices salary and benefits. The money comes from positions that are unfilled throughout the district, spokeswomen Ashley Verville said.

The program is akin to a medical residency, with future teachers getting trained inside Cherry Creek’s elementary and middle schools while they earn a bachelor’s degree from the .

The district pays participants an annual salary and benefits that total $47,500 as they complete their training and finish their education. And this year’s apprentices had their tuition fully covered via a grant from , a state program that pays tuition and other fees for community college students studying to work in high-demand fields.

Cherry Creek’s new program follows in 2023 that allowed the to develop an alternate route for people attaining their teaching licenses. Under the district����ap program, participants receive their degree from the Community College of Aurora but their licensure comes from the Cherry Creek School District.

The initiative builds on another program at the district in which high school students work and are paid to be paraprofessionals, or teacher aids, in the district����ap classrooms, Superintendent Chris Smith said.

“I do believe this is going to change the way we educate teachers to be teachers across the country,” he said.

Sixteen apprentices, including Mills, are currently participating in the program at seven schools in the district. Leaders of the Cherry Creek School District hope to expand the initiative so that 400 apprentices are participating in four years, Smith said.

The district will begin recruiting a new batch of apprentices for the program’s second year in January.

“There’s not as many teachers graduating from our teacher colleges,” Smith said. “…The cost of higher education is driving teachers away from the teaching profession because you don’t get into teaching to make a whole bunch of money. You get into teaching to make a difference in the lives of a whole bunch of kids.”

Widespread staffing shortages have persisted in Colorado districts since the start of the pandemic, making it difficult for schools to have enough teachers, bus drivers and substitutes.

Statewide, districts and — or BOCES, which provide educational services, including special education programs, to districts — reported 3,425 total staffing shortages during the 2023-24 academic year. Nearly 70% of those shortages were for teachers, from state education department.

Districts and BOCES had 2,388 teacher shortages last school year, almost double the 1,197 shortages districts reported five years earlier, the data showed. The teacher openings were either staffed by what the state calls a shortage mechanism, such as a long-term sub, or went unfilled.

“We have a growing and somewhat silent crisis around the teacher workforce,” said Van Schoales, senior policy director at the , a nonprofit that conducts education research.

“There’s a zeitgeist that teaching sucks these days,” he said. “It����ap perceived to be, and by many measures, it has gotten more difficult over time. The perceptions are that it����ap not rewarding. The perceptions are that it����ap harder to make a difference.”

Schools also have become a battleground for culture wars playing out across the country, as politicians, parents and educators debate how to teach topics such as race and gender identity.

And teacher wages haven’t kept up with rising housing costs or inflation, Schoales said.

Several districts, including those across metro Denver, increased employees’ wages in recent years. But educators have said they still can’t buy or rent homes in the districts where they teach. The problem is so pronounced that some districts, particularly those in ��DZ��ǰ������’s high country, are becoming landlords and building tiny homes so that their teachers have places to live.

When teachers finish the Aspiring Educator Pathway program and stay to work in the Cherry Creek School District, they will receive the salary of a fifth-year teacher. This means their annual pay will start at $65,343, which is $4,000 more than if they were a first-year teacher, according to the district.

Educators who go through the program will receive a higher starting salary because they will have spent as many as four years in classrooms co-teaching with mentors. Apprentices will get more than 4,000 hours in the classroom, compared to the roughly 750 hours they would typically receive as student teachers through traditional programs, Smith said.

“Almost all of their time will be spent in our schools with the mentor co-teaching,” Smith said.

So, he said, not only is the program creating a pipeline of teachers, but also better preparing them to be in the classroom on their own than traditional programs.

The process to become a teacher “is old” and students spend much of their time learning the theory of education, he said.

But teaching isn’t just knowing how to help someone learn. A teacher also needs know how to plan lessons, manage a class and connect with students — skills that can only really be developed when a person is inside a classroom and working with children, Smith said.

And that, he said, is the benefit of the district����ap new program.

Mills, the apprentice at Ponderosa Elementary, said that by being in the classroom, she’s not only getting to learn from a seasoned teacher, but she’s also building connections in the school and district. Most of her classes for her degree are online.

If it wasn’t for the program, Mills would still be a school librarian. Now, she said, she wants to teach first grade.

“I love my class,” she said. “It makes me really happy to be here.”

Reginaldo Haro-Flores knew finishing college would be an uphill battle.

As the first in his family to go to a four-year university, he faced a struggle to pay tuition, buy textbooks and supplies, and balance a job while still helping to support his parents, who questioned the value of a college education.

Haro-Flores enrolled at the University of Northern Colorado in 2016, among a growing number of Latino Coloradans in the past decade heading to college. But like many in this wave, Haro-Flores never finished, contributing to the persistent gap in college completion.

Even as a more diverse group of students have enrolled in college, ��DZ��ǰ������’s ethnic and racial gaps among bachelor’s and graduate degree holders barely budged from 2010 to 2020, Census data shows.

The gaps are even wider among those earning any type of postsecondary credential. As of 2020, almost 60% of white , including industry certificates. But only 38% of Black residents and 25% of Latino residents did.

While other states also have gaps, between Black and Latino residents and their white counterparts.

The fissure will likely widen when the full impact of the pandemic becomes clear as students dropped out or chose not to attend college altogether. A healthy job market also has made residents question whether a degree was worth carrying long-term college debt.

Haro-Flores never expected his journey to mirror these state trends. In 2018, struggling to pay tuition, he dropped out of college. His parents’ immigration status meant his financial aid options were limited. He re-enrolled at UNC in 2019, but the pandemic forced him to quit again. He disliked online classes and wanted to work full time to help his parents, who had been laid off from seasonal jobs in warehouses and nurseries.

For some time, Colorado has wanted to shift away from importing a large number of educated workers to producing them. Part of its strategy includes earmarking to identify students who left school without finishing and help them complete their degree.

The need is pressing, as the with college training and ��DZ��ǰ������’s sharply rising cost of living have complicated employers’ efforts to recruit and retain employees.

Chalkbeat Colorado is a nonprofit news organization covering education issues. For more, visit .

The three-school Auraria Campus — home to the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver and Community College of Denver — that a “potential threat” was being investigated and asked people to “please remain calm and leave campus.”

At 2:21 p.m., the Auraria Campus Police Department “determined that campus is safe and there is no active threat,” school officials said on Twitter. The campus will remain closed Friday, it will reopen on Saturday.

Earlier in the afternoon, Denver police spokesman Sean Towle said the threat does not appear to be credible, but authorities were still investigating out of an abundance of caution.

Front Range Community College, which has campuses in Longmont, Westminster and Fort Collins, said that it is moving its campuses to remote operations on Friday and Saturday because of the threat and subsequent investigations. FRCC campuses closed at noon Friday.

“Upcoming events will have to be rescheduled for a later date. Sorry for any inconvenience!” FRCC said. “Please rest assured that the students and employees inside the building(s) are safe.”

At about 7:20 a.m. Friday, Westminster police were informed of the FRCC threat. Officers responded and shut down the Westminster campus.

Westminster’s investigation lead to a “person of interest related to the threats,” said Cheri Spottke, a police spokeswoman.

“Officers contacted the individual and it appears as if the threats are a form of doxing against this individual,” Spottke said. “At this time officers cannot validate any of the threats against the school.”

The Colorado Community College System on Friday morning that it had been “made aware of a threat against several metro-area CCCS colleges,” including Arapahoe Community College, Community College of Aurora, Community College of Denver, Front Range Community College and Red Rocks Community College.

“We are working closely with campus security teams and law enforcement agencies to monitor the situation,” Colorado Community College System officials wrote. “Some colleges are currently on lockout protocol; we encourage students, faculty, and staff to check their institution’s website for campus-specific information.”

CU Boulder also canceled all classes Friday and sent students home, though officials there was no direct threat to its campus.

AURARIA ALERT: Campus is closed as a potential threat is being investigated. Please remain calm and leave campus. More details to come.

— Auraria Campus (@AurariaCampus)

MSU Denver about the Auraria Campus being closed, telling students that classes are canceled for the day and all students should leave campus. “Employees should not remain on campus and should transition to remote work for the rest of the day,” university officials wrote.

After a parent tweeted about her high school student being at Auraria for a summer program, the campus wrote on Twitter that “your students are safe and waiting on parents to come pick them up.”

Your students are safe and waiting on parents to come pick them up.

— Auraria Campus (@AurariaCampus)

A Hispanic-Serving Institution is a college or university with a high concentration of students with financial need and a student population comprised of at least 25% Latinos. The federal designation enables the institutions to apply for multimillion-dollar grants that can benefit the entire campus.

“That’s the bureaucratic formula,” said Antonio Farias, CU Denver vice chancellor for diversity, equity and inclusion. “I’m more interested in the human formula that’s not about the numbers. How are students finding that CU Denver is a place where they belong? That word ‘belonging’ is really powerful for me. It means more than just comfort. It means connection, co-creation and it means control. That you are an active, young agent of your own destiny and education.”

CU’s Denver and Anschutz campuses are the first research universities in the state to obtain the status. Ten other higher education institutions across Colorado are already HSI-designated, including Metropolitan State University and the Community College of Denver on the Auraria campus. Adams State University and Colorado State University Pueblo have also earned HSI status.

The increase in Latino college students makes sense when considering Colorado’s demographics, according to a CU Denver news release. By 2050, the Latino population in Colorado is expected to reach more than one-third of the total population and workforce

“The institution is embracing the changing landscape by implementing new policies and faculty appointments focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion that create a culture of belonging,” the news release read.

CU Denver student body president Chris Hilton is the embodiment of a Hispanic student who was drawn in by the university’s commitment to access and equity.

The 31-year-old non-traditional student started at CU Denver about a decade ago before life got in the way and he left the university after a semester. Right as the COVID-19 pandemic began, Hilton was intrigued by a CU Denver lecture series on public health that he watched, learning from CU Denver professors about the language and history around pandemics. The series was so interesting to Hilton that he re-enrolled and is now studying public health.

“This designation is the official title on what we’ve always felt,” Hilton said. “We are a diverse campus and to have something that says on paper, 25% of your student body is Hispanic and it matches what we feel, it matches the community we come from, I think it’s really exciting. Plus, who can say ‘no’ to getting more grants.”

Farias said the HSI designation will open up the door for grant money from the federal government and organizations like the National Science Foundation. Farias said the university intends to look at grants that will help remove barriers for students and provide them more opportunities and resources to succeed.

“Part of what becoming a real Hispanic-Serving Institution is is changing the optics of which we look at our students,” Farias said. “Students are coming to us exactly as they should be. They are not coming with a deficit. Some of this is reframing how we look at students and thinking there is nothing wrong with them. The old model says students are broken because they’re poor, Hispanic or a first-generation college student, and that’s an antiquated model that puts a stigma on them and says they’re not worthy …This gives us time to rethink how we deliver education and services and remove barriers.”

The steep downturn followed several years of gradual declines at community colleges in the state and across the country, as a strong economy pushed more young people into the workforce. ��DZ��ǰ������’s colleges are now left with dwindling revenue and hoping for a post-pandemic restart.

“We not only have fewer students,” said Joe Garcia, chancellor of the Colorado Community College System, “but those students are also taking fewer credit hours.”

To combat the downswing, colleges in the state are handing taxpayer money to students who agree to stay in school — including $1,000 to some students in Westminster — along with free laptops and car repairs. That has put more money in students’ pockets but not reversed enrollment trends.

“Free textbooks, $500 cash for college prep, we’re giving away tons of free computers, more than $1 million in scholarships, a bunch of federal COVID relief money to help with tuition,” said Warren Epstein, spokesman for Pikes Peak Community College. “All of that and we’re still struggling.”

Colleges have found that their poorest students, hurt most by last year’s economic freefall, face hardships that can’t be solved with free iPads. They need child care and food, so colleges have created small social safety nets on their campuses. Administrators worry that if they don’t, those students won’t come back to class and gaps between the rich and poor will widen.

“It really comes down to a student����ap ability to survive versus thrive,” said Patty Erjavec, president of Pueblo Community College. “That����ap what we’re facing right now. Their families are more important.”

“We’ve got to do better”

Community college enrollment has been easy to predict for several decades, because it runs counter to the economy. Good economy, enrollment is down. Bad economy, enrollment is up. So, when shutdowns sent unemployment spiking last spring, Garcia and others expected an increase.

“When the pandemic first hit, I was getting calls from reporters across the country asking, ‘What are community colleges doing to prepare for an incredible onslaught of students?’” said Martha Parham, spokeswoman for the American Association of Community Colleges. “Clearly that did not pan out.”

The Colorado Community College System has 13 colleges with 39 locations. At the start of the 2019 fall semester, 70,844 people were enrolled in them. At the start of the 2021 fall semester, 59,517 were. That number will increase as the semester continues but remain well below pre-pandemic levels.

Urban colleges have been hit the hardest. Enrollment at the Community College of Denver dropped nearly 12% between 2019 and 2020 and was down another 14% to start the fall 2021 semester. The Community College of Aurora saw a 9% decrease between 2019 and 2020 and was down another 15% to start the fall 2021 semester. Schools in Colorado Springs and Pueblo also saw big drops.

“So many people who have moved away from the city center would be in the community college population,” said Marielena DeSanctis, president of the Community College of Denver. “As the city center has gone through gentrification and rising housing costs, the people who are moving to downtown Denver have bachelor’s degrees, have master’s degrees, have PhDs, are pretty settled in the industries they’re in.”

Suburban and rural colleges have fared better, particularly Arapahoe Community College in Littleton, which gained 450 students (about 7%) between the start of fall semesters in 2020 and 2021. Several small schools on the Eastern Plains also increased enrollment in that time.

Colorado’s urban poor have left community college at the highest rates. Students eligible for Pell grants have declined by 23% the past two years and students who are the first in their family to attend college declined by 21% across the system’s 13 colleges. Male enrollment dropped by 20%, compared to 14% among women. The number of white students and students of color declined at similar rates.

“Across the board, the most marginalized students are the ones who have not come to college,” said Andy Dorsey, president of Front Range Community College in the north metro, “which is very concerning because those are often the students for whom college is the best return on investment.”

Not all degree paths have seen reductions. Overall enrollment is down at Pueblo Community College but career and technical enrollment is up 7%, according to the college’s president. Fewer students are seeking an associate’s of arts or an associate’s of science and going on to universities. More students are studying to be welders or computer programmers or health care workers. Others have left college altogether to take advantage of the tight labor market.

“For a lot of students who come to school to improve their economic situation, they’re looking at their job prospects right now and saying, ‘Hey, this is great. I’ve never made $18 an hour before. I’m going to put off going to school,’” said Garcia, chancellor of the community college system.

“Some students still have unemployment benefits and some students have pretty good job opportunities right now,” Dorsey added. “Some of the job market is heating up. So, there are a bunch of factors that have come together to make this an unusual year.”

The enrollment declines bode poorly for the state’s goal of having 66% of adult Coloradans obtain a post-high school degree or certification by 2025. That number is at 61% with a few years to go, according to Angie Paccione, executive director of the Colorado Department of Higher Education, and community colleges need to graduate more students in order to achieve it.

Graduation rates among schools in ��DZ��ǰ������’s Community College System. Only 17% of students who enrolled at the Community College of Denver in the fall of 2017 graduated by 2020 but 58% of students at Trinidad State Junior College in southern Colorado did. Across the system, the graduation rate but 27% for students of color and just 17% for Black students.

“We could educate every white, middle-class kid in the state and we wouldn’t get to 66%,” Garcia said. “We’ve got to do better with the Black and brown kids, with the low-income kids.”

Paying students to stay

The Colorado Community College System has received $355 million in federal stimulus money since the start of the pandemic, Garcia says. About $100 million filled gaps from state funding cuts and $95 million was for COVID impacts, such as personal protective equipment and building upgrades. But much of the money, $115 million, was for student aid and it fell on colleges to funnel that to students.

Front Range Community College used $3 million to forgive student debt and handed out $8 million in grants. This school year it must deliver another $16 million to students and has decided the grant process is too slow, so every student will be paid between $250 and $1,000.

“We decided to give money to every student enrolled this semester because the vast majority of our students have financial needs and that was consistent with what the federal government suggested,” said Dorsey, the college president.

At the Community College of Aurora, at least 75 students will be paid this semester and next semester if they stay in school with a C average or better as part of the school’s . That program, funded by donations, will pay them between $500 and $1,000, depending on need, according to John Wolfkill, executive director of the Community College of Aurora Foundation.

At Pueblo Community College, a grant program from the U.S. Department of Education and student loan company ECMC provides emergency money of up to $500 to correct anything that prevents a student from learning, including car repairs. One student who commutes from Colorado Springs receives gas station gift cards, according to Monica Hardwick, director of financial aid at the college.

As the whole world was changing in the spring of 2020, the staff at Arapahoe Community College created a list of its students and their phone numbers, split the list up and called every student to ask what they needed.

They heard some were hungry. So, the school’s foundation bought grocery store gift cards and Lisa Matye Edwards, vice president of student affairs, sat with her daughter at their dining room table labeling the cards and sending them out.

They heard some students didn’t have the technology needed for online courses. So, Matye Edwards loaded carts of unused iPads at the college into her vehicle and gave her son, who was just learning to drive, hours of practice by driving her to meet students in parking lots and hand them free tablet computers.

“Parents are tired”

Steven Mattson, 31, is studying electrical engineering at Pikes Peak Community College in Colorado Springs. His wife is also in school and the two are raising two children, ages 12 and 3.

“With COVID and everything, money isn’t exactly coming in all the time,” he said.

Child care is hard to find in the area and is costly when it is available, but a grant covers the cost of his daughter’s care on campus. That keeps him in school.

“I have to go to Pikes just for the child care. That����ap simply the reason I’m going to Pikes,” he said.

Sixty-eight kids stay at the campus’ child development center, which is operating at 35% capacity due to public health restrictions and staffing shortages, director Jennifer Hopper says. Federal and state grants keep costs low for parents attending classes at the college. The center’s waitlist has 167 names.

“Parents are tired. Parents are worn out. Just this last week we had to send two children home because they had COVID-like symptoms,” Hopper said. “We sent them home and both parents I spoke with were in tears and saying, ‘If this is how my semester’s going to be — I can’t go to class, I can’t get my homework done — how am I going to make it through this semester?’ They’re overwhelmed.”

Brittany Lee, 34, says she wouldn’t have been able to graduate from Arapahoe Community College and go on to Metropolitan State University of Denver without ACC’s child care center and grants that made it affordable. Once a week, she takes the staff coffee to thank them for watching her son, who is 3.

“It allowed me that leverage to put a bunch of classes on my plate, get them done and feel comfortable that my child was well taken care of,” she said.

Paccione, who runs the Department of Higher Education, said she would like every campus to have a child care center where students studying education can gain experience and parents can leave their children. She called it “a moonshot goal.”

“Basic daily needs — transportation, child care, food insecurity, mental health issues — all of those things are taking precedence over educational opportunities that might be available to students,” Erjavec, the Pueblo president, said.

Every urban community college in the state has a food pantry, which was “unheard of 20 years ago,” according to Garcia. Pueblo’s typically helps 25 students but last spring that number was 99, according to director Toni Skilling.

The last 18 months have been unpredictable and ��DZ��ǰ������’s community colleges hesitate to guess what comes next. Epstein at Pikes Peak Community College compares it to “a snow globe that we shook and we’re still all waiting to see where the flakes are going to fall.” Garcia said much depends on whether retention rates improve post-pandemic — whenever that is.

“If we bring students back then we’ll be able to continue to operate based on that increased revenue from increased enrollment,” the chancellor said. “But if they don’t come back, we’re still going to be struggling.”

The state’s public higher-education institutions recorded a 5.2% enrollment drop from fall 2019 to fall 2020 and revenue fell 2.8% overall, according to data from the Colorado Department of Higher Education. The institutions that served the most underrepresented Coloradans were impacted the most negatively, according to state data.

And some Colorado schools that saw enrollment hits last fall when students first returned to campus amid the pandemic are seeing even further drops this semester.

Enrollment across the 13-campus Colorado Community College System fell 6.3% from fall 2020 to spring 2021. All told, enrollment at the community college system this semester declined 9.8% compared to the same time last year, dipping from 78,975 students pre-pandemic to 71,190 students.

“My biggest concern is that we are going to take a huge step back this year in terms of pursuing our No. 1 goal, which is closing attainment gaps that reflect racial demographics,” said Joe Garcia, chancellor of the Colorado Community College System. “For years, we’ve known in Colorado that our white population has been much more successful at earning secondary credentials than our communities of color. We’ve been trying as a state to increase credential attainment for those students of color who are often low-income. Now, I think we’re going backwards.”

Within Colorado Community College’s enrollment drop, the biggest gaps include:

• First-generation college students, down 15.5% from 39,259 students to 33,193
• Black students, down 11% from 4,335 to 3,844
• Pell eligible (low-income students), down 16.6% from 22,090 to 18,429

“Those are the students who we serve primarily at the community colleges,” Garcia said. “These are students limited by financial resources, academic preparation, transportation. They’re place-bound, they’re parents or working full time or part time. We’re really the only higher education option for them, and if they don’t come to us, then they just don’t go.”

Although the enrollment drop takes a dent out of college budgets in lost tuition dollars, a greater threat looms in the eyes of higher education leaders: losing out on educating the students whose life trajectories would most benefit from a postsecondary degree.

“That impacts our ability to meet all the workforce needs that our state is facing,” Garcia said. “These are the students that need us most.”

While among the most impacted, Colorado’s community colleges were not the only institutions that faced an enrollment drop during the pandemic.

Colorado State University’s spring undergraduate enrollment is down 3.6% from last spring, from 22,566 students to 21,776. The University of Colorado Boulder’s spring enrollment is down 0.9% from the same semester last year, from 33,073 to 32,777.

Metropolitan State University of Denver is down 6.2% from fall 2019 to fall 2020, dipping from 18,917 students to 17,743. MSU Denver’s enrollment dropped even more — 9.6% — from fall 2020 to spring 2021.

The drop in tuition dollars that comes with lower enrollment is especially distressing in a state like Colorado, where higher education is funded 48th in the nation and relies heavily on students and their families footing the bill. The enrollment downturn has cost Colorado’s Community College System $37.5 million in tuition, fees and auxiliary revenues in the past year.

“We rely more on tuition revenue than we do on the state general fund,” Garcia said. “If we’re not generating that tuition revenue, we have to lay off people, consider shutting down facilities, we’re not able to invest in the technology we need to deliver courses remotely. The availability of programs is at risk. Our ability to meet the workforce needs of our communities is at risk. These efforts are already happening. We’re going to have to re-evaluate if enrollment doesn’t rebound for the fall. We’re going to have to make more cuts. The institutions, themselves, are at risk.”

Even so, the thought that most upset Garcia was considering the at-risk students whose pandemic stressors forced their hand and put a hold on their college education.

“Our concerns are around enrollment, but more so our concerns are around the students that aren’t enrolled,” said Leslie Taylor, Colorado State University’s vice president of enrollment. “Worrying about students who opted out is a big concern. When are they going to come back?”

“It wasn’t going to work out”

Lindsay Pryor, a 39-year-old mother of two living in Falcon, was sure 2020 would be the year higher education would finally fall into place for her. Pryor’s first and second attempts at college didn’t quite stick, but when she went back to Pikes Peak Community College in 2018, the puzzle pieces of her postsecondary life began aligning.

Pryor was getting straight A’s. Her dream of becoming a registered dietician had never been closer.

Then came the pandemic.

Pryor found it nearly impossible to focus on her own studies with two kids at home who needed help with remote schooling. Her grades began to slip, causing panic about losing her full scholarship from her Native American tribe, the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.

“In the summer, we thought maybe it would be normal by fall, but it wasn’t and we realized it wasn’t going to work out,” Pryor said. “My kids were still e-learning, and they needed me. I didn’t enroll for the fall semester, and I was disappointed because this was my third attempt at college, and this time it was really going well. I know I’m going to do it. I’m going to finish. It’s just going to take me a long time.”

To combat students dropping out, Garcia said the Colorado Community College System is personally calling students who were previously enrolled who didn’t sign back up for fall or spring semester.

“We don’t have millions to spend on TV and radio advertising that for-profit colleges have, so it’s tough to get our message out, but we want to remind students that while they may be out of work now, their best opportunity to get a job in the future is if they use this period to pursue their education and learn a new skill,” Garcia said.

A campus like Metropolitan State University of Denver — with nearly half of its undergraduate student population comprised of students of color and 57% first-generation college students — is hoping to learn from this enrollment downturn to figure out how to better serve their community.

“We’re thinking this is temporary,” said Mary Sauceda, MSU Denver’s associate vice president of enrollment management. “We’re thinking enrollment is going to rebound. There are a lot of students taking time off. Students may be thinking they’ll wait until they get the vaccine and then go back. We know with the economy it����ap not going to bounce back immediately and folks will want to go back to school.”

As part of its strategy, MSU Denver has a new director of diverse recruitment, Cameron Simmons, who plans to canvas places like churches and community centers — virtually for now, but in-person when safe — to find students who might not know higher education is an option for them.

MSU Denver also is offering a that allows students to pay tuition in monthly installments. The Auraria campus institution is working to make its transfer programs a more seamless experience, Sauceda said.

“Light at the end of the tunnel”

Lucia Delgado, CSU’s director of college access, and her team have been working to stay connected to underrepresented prospective and current students. staff transitioned their wraparound services for first-generation, low-income, ethnically and racially diverse, and non-traditionally aged students online because of the pandemic and committed to engaging the young adults they serve during a tumultuous time.

“We’re talking about students who have multilingual talents who serve as lead translators for their families, students who are working to help provide for their families as well,” Delgado said. “Our students are incredibly resilient and strong and they work really hard to continue their academics but also to support their families.”

The Access Center shipped hundreds of supplies to underrepresented students across the state who are a part of their pre-collegiate and collegiate programs, mailing essentials such as textbooks and laptops but also items like snacks and painting supplies so students could log into virtual support meetings and participate in activities to keep them coming back.

Taylor, CSU’s vice president of enrollment, said programs targeting vulnerable student populations were crucial to their efforts to keep students on track and in college.

“There is a light at the end of the tunnel,” Taylor said. “There still is value in earning a college credential, whether that’s a certificate in welding or a two-year associate degree or beyond. We’re not going anywhere.”

Domagala wants to stay in the energy business, but he was between jobs during the summer and decided to brush up on his construction and mechanical skills in case he needs to switch careers. “I’m very optimistic about the construction industry. I feel it����ap a pretty recession-proof type job.”

So far, that’s the case. A labor shortage that existed in the homebuilding sector before the coronavirus crisis is only growing, said Robert Dietz, the chief economist with the

“In any given month, there’s a shortage of 200,000 to 300,000 workers,” Dietz said.

The ongoing labor shortage and queries from around the country led the Colorado Homebuilding Academy to look into franchising its model. The academy was the first organization to sign an agreement with Franchise For Good, the newly formed nonprofit arm of Franworth. The Michigan-based company works with businesses that want to establish or expand a franchise.

“We’ve thought more about how we can expand nationally because the need across the country hasn’t diminished at all,” said Damon DiFabio, director of the home-building academy.

Other organizations, including one in Alabama, have recently used the academy’s templates for training, DiFabio said.

Pat Hamill, founder and CEO of Denver-based Oakwood Homes and the force behind the academy, talked to people he knew at Franworth about making the program national. About a year ago, Hamill unveiled his goal of opening 20 locations over 15 years and training 1 million people who need jobs or want to change careers.

“It will probably be more than 20 locations, with a variety of sizes appropriate to the local market. We don’t have it all figured out yet, but I think we have it worked out enough that we want to share our story and share our model,” said Amy Schwartz, executive director of

Hamill founded BuildStrong Education, a private foundation that supports schools in and around communities where his company is involved. BuildStrong merged with a nonprofit to form the homebuilding academy and partners with education and industry organizations. was formed to provide hands-on learning for people who want to pursue jobs in the construction and trades industries and is teaming up with Franchise for Good to do that across the country.

Dave Keil, president and chief operating officer for Franworth, said the company created Franchise for Good earlier this year to work with nonprofits.

“One thing I noticed is that there are 1.2 million nonprofits,” said Keil. “No one has ever really applied the tools of franchising to the nonprofit space.”

An agreement with BuildStrong Academy followed after discussions between Keil and Hamill.

“Partnering with Dave Keil and the team at Franchise For Good has propelled and accelerated our vision to expand our nonprofit����ap support systems nationwide,” Hamill said in a statement.

The timing is right, Keil said.

“Building is still happening, but there’s a dearth of labor. Yet there’s high unemployment, so that combination is a perfect set-up to go scale something,” Keil added “They’ve proven the model works in Colorado and gets wonderful results, so it’s just prime for scaling up and replicating.”

Dietz with the National Association of Home Builders said he always thought that home building would be one of the industries leading the economic recovery. “What caught us by surprise was how quickly we saw the rebound.”

There were nationwide in October than in October 2019, according to the association. Dietz said the country is short about 1 million new homes.

The 178,000 construction jobs reported for October by the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment was up 3,200 from September. There were 182,200 people working in construction in Colorado in October 2019.

A low inventory of existing homes in the Denver area has real estate analysts predicting that builders might not just surpass 2019 sales, but see their best year ever. Those dynamics have prompted people looking for a change or a more secure job to check out the home-building academy.

Paulmiko Parker sees working as a self-employed contractor to remodel old homes as the ideal job. The Denver woman has been a network engineer for telecommunications companies most of her career, but has always wanted to bring old homes back to life.

After taking courses at the homebuilding academy, Parker has been scouting opportunities in the construction industry and is looking for a mentor.

“It����ap something I always wanted to do when I was little. I didn’t pursue the career because when I got pregnant, I thought being a network engineer was a great safe haven of a career for my kids,” Parker said. “Now I am changing my career in mid-life and I enjoy it.”

Director DiFabio said while the average age of students at the academy is 32, it’s common for people in their 40s, 50s and older who are “underemployed” or looking for a change to attend the academy. The tuition for the basic programs is waived for students committed to pursuing construction jobs.

More than 220 people went through the homebuilding academy’s  “boot camp” last year. People can also take basic courses in concrete and electrical construction. The academy partners with the Community College of Aurora on a management program that offers certificates in being a construction superintendent and construction estimating.

The academy works with five area high schools, DiFabio said, concentrating on basic skills in the first semester and taking “a little more intense dive into the trades” in the second semester.

This year, COVID-19 pandemic has forced changes to the curriculum, such as conducting more classes online. But DiFabio said students are still getting hands-on training at the academy’s site in north Denver. The classes are smaller to accommodate social distancing. People’s health is checked and sanitizing is a priority.

And the number of boot camp graduates this year is expected to reach 360. DiFabio said the academy is directly placing 12 to 14 people per month in jobs and figures there might be another two to five people who get jobs but don’t report back.

“We’re trying to help people get jobs,” DiFabio said. “We have a recruiter on the front end, trainers in the middle and a career coach to support people as they graduate.”

“I have very intense ideas about what should happen,” said the Community College of Aurora student. “I want radicalism. Bernie’s loud and angry, so maybe we’ll get there.”

Marshall’s two most important priorities probably won’t come as much of a surprise, either: The 19-year-old wants equality and environmental protections — issues they think older generations have a hard time grasping.

“Honestly, that’s almost all I give a (expletive) about,” they said. “I just think that the health of America pales in comparison to what’s happening to the health of our Earth.”

Young Coloradans like Marshall are driving Sanders’ 12-point lead in the Democratic primary here, according to a Magellan Strategies poll released last week. Almost half of likely voters under 45 years old will likely or definitely support Sanders, while he was tied with Pete Buttigieg — who ended his campaign Sunday –among 45- to 64-year-olds and comes in third with the 65-and-older crowd.

But young voters have historically been unreliable.

“If young voter turnout is low, the race could tighten for Bernie,” said Ryan Winger, director of data analysis at right-leaning Magellan, which is based in Colorado. “His theory was that he could raise turnout, but we didn’t really see that by a huge margin in the first few states.”

Values vs. electability

According to the Magellan survey, a slight majority of young people prefer a candidate that shares their values over a candidate that’s seen as electable, which explains why about 70% of young voters plan to support Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, the leading progressives.

Still, most young people’s dislike of Republican President Donald Trump created a “watershed” moment for young voter turnout in the 2018 midterm elections, Winger said, which could similarly spark interest in voting this time around.

“A lot of voters were unhappy with Trump,” he said. “Even though he wasn’t on the ballot, he injected a lot of energy into the Democratic base.”

Zoe Baumgartner, a graduate of Denver’s East High School, is joining that growing base of young Democrats determined to secure the presidency. But her vote lies in more than just individual values.

“I consider myself a very liberal person,” said Baumgartner, now a freshman at Northeastern University. “But at the same time, I’m leaning toward more moderate candidates and who would be best for the democracy as a whole rather than who I see reflected in my personal beliefs.”

And that candidate hasn’t been so clear to her throughout the race. Baumgartner said in the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s primary, her favorite changed often — sometimes on a day-by-day basis. She finally settled on Amy Klobuchar.

The Bern 

But Colorado voters have a history with Sanders. In 2016, he led the Colorado caucus with 59% support in a head-to-head race with Hillary Clinton. Though the state’s switch to a presidential primary with a large Democratic field makes this year’s vote very different, Winger said, it did prime voters here for the liberal’s message.

“He really laid the groundwork in 2016,” he said. “People in Colorado may not be paying that close of attention to the election. But that helps Bernie because his appeals are consistent. There’s no doubt as to what he believes.”

For young people, Sanders has the cachet. Even for voters who haven’t made up their mind or haven’t paid a ton of attention to the race, the energy from Sanders’ campaign is hard to ignore. His proposals for free college tuition, taxing the wealthy and Medicare for All resonate with students.

“He has a lot of different views that other politicians don’t really have toward college,” said Christina De Luna, a student at Metro State University. She hasn’t made up her mind yet on who she is planning to support, but Sanders’ campaign is drawing her attention.

“I was on Medicaid for a while and now I’m trying to get back onto it, and tuition is really hard to pay for,” said Xavier McGee-VanDenburgh, a freshman at the University of Colorado Denver who likes Sanders’ plan for health care. “I’m trying to afford all these things that other countries built into taxes.”

Young voters could play a larger role than usual in the general election, representing about 16% to 17% of all ballots cast, according to Chris Keating, president of Keating Research, a Colorado-based research firm.

In a poll released last year, the left-leaning polling group found that 79% of 18- to 29-year-olds feel unfavorably toward Trump.

“That’s the highest number of any age group in Colorado,” Keating said.

“Based on that, I would think three out of four of them will vote for the Democrat,” he said. “Trump would need 54% of the remaining vote to win. Democrats would only need 47% of the vote to win. So, I think with young voters really going for anyone who’s not Trump, it makes it really hard for him to win the state.”

Keating said if Democrats nominate a candidate that younger voters are really fired up about, their general election participation rates could be higher than he’s projecting.

“Right now, it seems that that candidate is Bernie Sanders,” he said.

Identity politics

For young Democrats, social issues are at the heart of their political leanings. Having grown up through the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements and amid a sea change in rights for LGBTQ+ people, tolerance is central to how young Democrats approach politics.

“Equality through race, gender, sexuality, all that stuff,” said Lydia Prather, a senior at Colorado School of Mines.”That’s the biggest thing, really.”

Among young Republicans, social issues are more complex.

“It’s a lot easier for us to disagree on economic issues or foreign policy than it is on social issues,” said Joey Fratino, president of the College Republicans at the University of Colorado Boulder. “It’s not a winning debate on college campuses.”

Fratino said some of his fiscally conservative friends are voting for Democratic candidates because they disagree with Republican candidates’ stances on social issues.

“I think we should be emphasizing individual freedom instead,” he said.

Still, young Coloradans were among the 15,000 to 20,000 people who turned out for Trump’s rally in Colorado Springs last month, and some of them feel strongly about keeping social issues part of their politics.

“Immigration still hasn’t been fixed,” said Jose Rodriguez, a Pikes Peak Community College student who is an unaffiliated voter and neutral on Trump, despite attending the rally. “… We should be making it harder to enter but easier to get status.”

Pollsters’ findings can help understand how young voters are thinking about the election, but whether they will vote in large numbers remains a big question.

With Sanders’ primary success in Colorado and across the country hinging on young people coming out to support him, Winger said, “There’s still so much up in the air.”

Jack Crowley , a student at CU Denver, said he thinks Sanders has a better shot at winning the Democratic nomination and the presidency this year than in 2016, and Crowley is all-in for him.

“I’m not sure how feasible it is for him to get elected, but I would like to see him get elected, so I’m going to vote for him,” he said. “He represents a lot more of an inclusive energy, and I think he’d be beneficial for the American people.”

We get it. Equitable, temporary service reductions make sense as a short-term solution. What doesn’t make sense is why the Regional Transportation District rolled out their plan without asking the Aurora community what might best serve our city’s RTD customers and our transit future.

Aurora is the metro area’s second-largest taxpayer population funding RTD. But we are now facing some of the deepest cuts of any municipality in RTD’s service area.

No other light rail line is being targeted for such drastic reductions in service. In fact, no cuts are proposed for the A, B, E, F, G, L and W lines, and weekend service would increase on the C Line. The five-minute average frequency on the R Line’s southeast extension from Lincoln Station south would stay put thanks to federal funding mandates but then slow to every 30 minutes in Aurora if this reduction plan remains intact.

We say “no” to service cuts on the R Line and bus routes 153 and 157.

The city and RTD invested hundreds of millions of dollars to bring light rail to the metro area’s eastern corridor. The R Line was built to be part of a larger system–one that would bring people to the airport, to major healthcare institutions, to key job centers and to the hub of downtown Denver.

Ridership on other lines is higher because other lines are well established. Yet ridership on the R Line — built without the advantage of federal funding — has maintained a slow but steady growth trajectory since day one, with about 6,500 dedicated daily riders on average. The line’s 6.2% ridership increase in the last year is the highest among all of RTD’s light rail lines.

People have moved into the 5,500 new homes built next to R Line stations in Aurora to embrace mobility freedom. Employers along the line are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in transit passes to encourage ridership and reduce regional congestion. Developers have sunk hundreds of millions of dollars in transit-oriented development on the R Line.

A reduction in frequency to every 30 minutes will have a chilling effect on ridership and future development. Why would anyone wait that long unless they have no choice? And is that fair to our most vulnerable populations who have no other option but to ride RTD?

It’s the same questions that we ask for the residents who rely on bus route 157, the only direct route from the R Line to the Community College of Aurora and Buckley Air Force Base, and bus route 153, which transports students to Hinkley, Gateway and Smoky Hill high schools every day and is a major north-south bus arterial for the city.

Under the plan, the 157 will be completely eliminated, and the 153 will run only every 30 minutes. This is unacceptable for the students, military service personnel and civilians, and residents from adjacent neighborhoods who rely on these routes to get to school and work.

It����ap only been a couple of months since I took office as Aurora’s mayor, but I have been around long enough — as an Aurora resident, as a past congressman for the 6th Congressional District and as a veteran — to know what R Line means for this city and the region and what these bus routes mean for our community.

We consider RTD to be a partner in good times and in bad. And we are asking RTD to meet us at the table. Let����ap come up with some solutions that will truly support our community, RTD’s customers and the future of transit in Aurora and metro-wide.

Mike Coffman is the mayor of Aurora and a former congressman.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.