Colorado hands out grants aimed at college opportunities, workforce training for in-demand jobs

BY SARA MARTIN CHALKBEAT COLORADO

Colorado is investing a chunk of its federal relief money in the future of students to boost the job economy.

e Polis administration announced in June that the state would award $27 million to 46 groups across the state in a rst round of funding to support workforce training in local urban, suburban and rural economies via the Opportunity Now Colorado grant program. Grants range from $50,000 to $7 million.

e grants aim to make college more accessible for high school students, open educational opportunities for older adults who never attended or nished college, and “are intended to help connect more Coloradans with in-demand, highwage occupations,” according to the governor’s o ce. It also will fund healthcare education programs in order to address the healthcare worker shortage that has been a persistent problem throughout the pandemic.

“ is is designed to help ll the workforce gap and get people the skills they need for positions that are available and ready to start today and tomorrow — it will help power economy and help Colorado shine in terms of workforce readiness,” said Gov. Jared Polis in an interview with Chalkbeat Colorado.

Eve Lieberman, the executive director of the O ce of Economic Development and International Trade, said, “Increasingly we were hearing from businesses that they want to be partnering with educational institutions and creating these innovative models. at’s exactly what we’re doing here is forming grant opportunities to allow for that innovation, those partnerships, and to have industry help co-create that talent.” e task force’s main suggestion was to create a statewide grant program for innovative ideas that connect community groups, colleges, and employers. e state is now using $85 million of the one-time federal money on the grants.

In 2021, Colorado lawmakers passed legislation that created the Student Success and Workforce Revitalization Task Force Report to determine how to spend federal pandemic relief money.

St. Vrain Valley Schools is using its $7 million grant to partner with multiple organizations and school districts, including Estes Park R-3, Weld RE-3J, and Adams 12 Five Star Schools, to further develop its early childhood/K-12 education, technology, and advanced manufacturing workforce pathway programs.

St. Vrain currently partners with CU Denver in a program for high school juniors and seniors to take dual education enrollment courses that can transfer to CU Denver after graduation. With the new funds, CU Denver will develop classes for adult working professionals and high school students to access college coursework and earn additional credits. e credits will be free to students and district professionals.

“Being able to remove so many nancial barriers, it gives students a real strong feeling of success and our older working professionals, where many of them haven’t been in school for a number of years, the same feeling,” said Diane Lauer, St. Vrain Valley School District’s chief academic o cer. e grant will support graduate students in becoming nurse managers, educators, and practitioners at the master’s and doctoral levels. It aims to enhance health equity in 15 counties in southern Colorado. and Spanish. is year’s data includes 2,639 respondents across all ages, races and income brackets, with oversamples of Black/African American, Native American/Indigenous, Asian American and Pueblo County residents. e second- and third-largest decreases in concern were political division, down 6 percentage points, and jobs and the economy, down 5. In the past year, Colorado’s job openings and unemployment reached something near equilibrium, so it tracks that anxiety over jobs has fallen since the 2020 polling, when uncertainty was rampant.

Students will be able to earn certi cates in the technology or advanced manufacturing elds in welding, metal fabrication, pipe tting, electronics, and machinery operation.

Colorado State University of Pueblo was awarded over $1.39 million to help address the healthcare crisis, especially for Coloradoans who are Hispanic, rural, and low-income. e money will help address the state nursing shortage with new nurses and instructors in the graduate program.

“One of the reasons that nursing shortages exist is because there’s a shortage of nursing instructors. is is due to retirements in the healthcare workforce, and could be a university or college-level nursing program not being able to admit the number of students that are applying because there are not enough quali ed faculty with the credentials to instruct,” said Alexandra Hansen, CSU Pueblo’s regional development o cer.

Hansen said that the university wants to listen to its community and encourage those in the southern Colorado region to join an in-demand, high-paying occupation. People who have experienced limited access to healthcare may nd the nursing eld a ful lling career, Hansen said.

Limited access could be due to sta ng shortages or “because they’re a Spanish-speaking family who have experienced going to a clinic where there are no Spanishspeaking providers,” she said.

Tepeyac Community Health Center in Denver received over $1 million from the grant program. Tepeyac’s program will initially focus on increasing equitable access to clinic positions, training, and licensing. Tepeyac historically has served the Latino communities in the Globeville and Elyria-Swansea neighborhoods since the early 1990s.

Two additional rounds of grant funding with the remaining $58 million will be available through Opportunity Now Colorado, with the next application period opening in August. e last of the grants will be announced by December 2024.

Chalkbeat is a nonpro t news site covering educational change in public schools.

One of the cornerstones of CHF is to serve folks with historically less power or privilege, according to Austin Montoya, senior o cer for policy advocacy communications, which is why the foundation takes larger samples of speci c populations. Montoya said that by sampling larger numbers of smaller populations, they are able to more accurately re ect the experiences of those populations. e data is later weighted to re ect Colorado’s population.

Since the poll’s inception in 2020, the biggest drop in respondents’ top concern was, unsurprisingly, COVID-19, which was top of mind for 26% of Coloradans in 2020, compared with 0% in 2023.

Homelessness had the largest increase as a top concern since last year, up 3 percentage points, while crime had the largest increase as a top concern over the past four years, up 8 percentage points. Both issues were a major focus for Denver’s mayoral election this year. While most concerns associated with costs — such as rising costs of living, cost of housing and jobs — tended to decline in importance as income levels rose, the percentage of respondents most concerned by homelessness was consistent across income levels. e di erence between the lowest and highest income earners concerned with homelessness was only 3 percentage points.

Having a home is one major concern; staying in it is another. At the time of polling, renters were signicantly more worried about not being able to make rent payments than homeowners were worried about their mortgages — at a rate of 49% compared with 19% of respondents. However, that number may ip as property owners come to terms with their new, exponentially high valuations, which were issued after the Pulse poll was conducted. e biggest divisions around e ective policy solutions were between Republicans and Democrats in the state, with Independents falling squarely between the parties for every proposed solution. e largest di erences between what the parties viewed as e ective solutions were requiring developers to build low-income housing — 86% of Democrats thought this would be an e ective solution, while only 49% of Republicans agreed — and increasing government investments in programs that prevent people from becoming homeless — 87% of Democrats believed in its e ectiveness, while 46% of Republicans agreed. e takeaway from this year’s data, Montoya said, was that it hasn’t changed much since last year. Montoya believes that Coloradans’ major concerns “skyrocketed” around COVID, and have continued to stay high ever since.

Respondents who identi ed as Native American/Indigenous showed the most concern over losing their homes, with 49% answering that they were worried in this year’s poll, while the Black/African American respondents had the largest increase in those worried, up 16 percentage points, to 47% from 31% last year.

Almost every household with an income below $150,000 was worried about their children being able to a ord a home in Colorado.

Montoya wants the information gleaned from these polls to help inform policymakers’ priorities. He said the foundation’s primary audience is local lawmakers and legislators.

When presented with a number of policy solutions, respondents thought that the most e ective ways to mitigate housing cost challenges are to reduce property taxes for homeowners with low or xed incomes, and to ensure that landlords cannot raise rents on tenants too quickly.

“ e majority of these worries have increased since 2020, but there hasn’t been much of a decline in any of them. ere is really just a plateau,” he said. “And a majority of folks are feeling concerned.” is story is from e Colorado Sun, a journalist-owned news outlet based in Denver and covering the state. For more, and to support e Colorado Sun, visit coloradosun. com. e Colorado Sun is a partner in the Colorado News Conservancy, owner of Colorado Community Media.