DENVER Cortez Middle School teacher Justine Bayles was helping a colleague erase dirty words out of social studies textbooks when the page flopped open to a picture of the Twin Towers, still standing in New York City. Someone had drawn an airplane crashing into them.
Some of my students have taken the liberty of updating the book, the teacher told Bayles.
Bayles recounted the story Wednesday on the witness stand during the Lobato school finance trial. The plaintiffs, who include Montezuma-Cortez school district, want the courts to declare that Colorado is violating its own constitution by depriving students of a quality education a verdict that could require billions of dollars more to be spent on schools.
The constitution requires the state to provide a thorough and uniform education to all children, but Denver District Judge Sheila Rappaport will have to decide what that phrase means. The trial is expected to last through early September.
Bayles and fellow Cortez teacher Matt Keefauver were the first two teachers to take the stand, and their testimony provided the most dramatic moments yet in the trial, now in its second week.
Both teachers wept as they described their students falling behind as the schools lack the resources and staff to help them.
Our budgets have been sliced to zero. We have no classroom budget, said Keefauver, a fourth-grade teacher at Kemper Elementary School.
About a third of Keefauvers class is Native American, and he seeks ways to increase their engagement at school.
He arranged a field trip to Crow Canyon Archaeological Center. The experience was a turning point for one Navajo girl, who got more interested in her studies afterwards.
But the school district could not pay for the expensive outing.
I paid for it myself, Keefauver said.
Keefauver, mayor pro-tem of Cortez, started a side business of selling herbs at the farmers market in part to pay for field trips.
He broke down when he considered the prospect that he might have to leave teaching because he cant make ends meet and pay to keep his classroom equipped.
My kids deserve the same opportunities as any kids in the state of Colorado, any kids in the country, Keefauver said. Its unfair that they have to do without some of the things I had as a student growing up, things that we even had five, six or seven years ago.
The defense team from the attorney generals office declined to cross-examine either teacher.
In opening arguments, defense lawyers argued that the state does all it can for schools, and money alone will not improve the quality of education.
Bayles also wept when plaintiffs lawyer Natalie West asked her if she was meeting the individual needs of her students.
No, Im not, said Bayles, who teaches her science class at four different levels to accommodate students who are on track as well as slow learners.
She ended her testimony with a story about a rudimentary paragraph one of her students wrote a few years ago. He wrote poorly phonetic spellings, reversed letters but movingly about chaos and alcoholism at home. He vowed to give his future children a better life than he has had.
The first time I read this, I bawled. Its heartbreaking, because education is what breaks this cycle, and he does not have the skills to be able to do that, Bayles said.
He never returned back to school after that year. I dont know where he is.
Reach Joe Hanel at jhanel@cortezjournal.com.