Last week, the teachers union in the Douglas County School District — Colorado’s third-largest — asked the district’s board to restore collective bargaining. A previous board ended it in 2012. 

The union pointed to Douglas County’s starting educator salary, calling it the lowest in the Denver metro area despite a hefty, 61,000-student enrollment.

Perhaps the union reps had forgotten Douglas County voters approved a $66 million mill-levy override in 2023, raising taxes to pay teachers more. That boosted the starting salary to $51,000. And Douglas County’s school board is now weighing another initiative for an additional 4% increase.

In other words, educators don’t need collective bargaining for a pay raise. They just need to earn the confidence of voters and the school boards they elect. Obviously, Douglas County’s teachers have done so.

In its presentation, the union claimed a master agreement — i.e., a labor contract with the union strictly governing pay, benefits and working conditions — “replaces inconsistency with a transparent framework” that will foster public trust through a “formal process.” The union also argued a contract would “retain talented teachers” and make the district more competitive. 

But the experience of other districts — and declining teacher union membership in general — makes a strong case for saying “no thanks.”

Of Colorado’s 179 school districts, fewer than 40 are formally “unionized” through collective bargaining agreements. In the rest of the districts, union locals function more like clubs — and are of little interest to most teachers.

In Jefferson County schools, Colorado’s second-largest district, barely 30% of educators are union members. In a letter to Jefferson County’s board last year, the associate HR chief noted the majority of employees “have consciously opted out” of the union.

“Why do we act as if they represent a majority voice, when clearly, they do not?” he asked.

Douglas County’s school leadership ought to ask itself the same question. Its union membership has sat at roughly 20% of teachers since collective bargaining ended in 2012.

The district also can look to another of the state’s more prominent school systems, Colorado Springs District 11.

In 2024, D-11 — where only about 33% of teachers are union members — terminated collective bargaining, becoming the last El Paso County district to do so. The union predicted a mass teacher exodus and lower pay.

The reality? D-11 was fully staffed at the start of the current school year — a first in years. The district freed up $6.5 million from bureaucratic compliance with union contracts — and gave classroom teachers a 10% overall pay raise.

As the Freedom Foundation’s Aaron Withe wrote recently in The Gazette, “Without a union contract, D-11 teachers got better pay, administrators got the flexibility to build stronger teams and the district saved millions.” 

Only two of the state’s top 10 performing districts, in fact, have union contracts.

Douglas County is one of the eight without.

In the 14 years since ending collective bargaining, Douglas County has become the top-performing Denver-area district and the first to recover pandemic learning loss. The flexibility afforded to districts when they aren’t bound by one-size-fits-all terms is liberating.

The results reflect a longstanding principle recognized even by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a champion of organized labor, who warned that collective bargaining “cannot be transplanted into the public service.”

Why should any Colorado school district trade years of success for the shackles of a union contract? Collective bargaining only would tie the hands of elected school leaders and taxpayers alike — to benefit a union most teachers don’t even join.