Anticipating at least $42 million in state funding cuts for the next school year, Denver Public Schools administrators are calling for salary freezes, a reduction of 3.5 percent in every school budget and less money for special education.

No widespread teacher layoffs are expected for 2010-11, but targeted layoffs are likely, said David Suppes, DPS chief operating officer, in a presentation to the school board Wednesday.

"It's impossible to think at this level of cuts there won't be jobs lost," Suppes said.

Throughout the state, school districts are beginning difficult discussions about their budgets as Colorado faces its worst revenue downturn since the Great Depression.

Immigrant sheepherders from South America working in western Colorado routinely are paid low wages and live in small campers without electricity or toilet facilities, according to a report to be released today.

However, officials with the sheep industry vehemently dispute the report's findings, calling them anecdotal and unsubstantiated.

The report by Colorado Legal Services was based on interviews over two years with 93 of the estimated 300 immigrant sheepherders working in the state under H-2A visas.

The workers, mostly from Peru, are brought in to work for up to three years herding sheep.

But there are few safeguards for the workers, the report said.

"A lot of the actual shocking stuff is allowed under current law," said Jennifer Lee, a Colorado Legal Services attorney who oversaw the report.

A quiz.

In what years were the following written:

A) "Racial gaps in suspensions — Black public-school students in Colorado are nearly three times as likely to face serious discipline as their white peers, a disparity that is persistently growing despite efforts to curb it. . . . Expressed as a rate, 18 of every 100 black students and 11 of 100 Latino students faced serious discipline, compared with 6.5 out of 100 white students."

B) "Minority school suspensions a shocker — Suspensions last year of more than 47,000 students, including disproportionate numbers of black and Hispanic males, have prompted educators and policymakers to ask why. Nearly half of all black males in Colorado's middle and high schools were suspended last year, along with nearly a third of Hispanic males and one in every six white males."

C) "Suspensions impact some children more than others. While the largest numbers of suspended children are white, proportionately suspensions hurt more children who are black, poor, older and male. Most striking is the disparate suspension of black schoolchildren. They are suspended at twice the rate of any other group."

The 2010 Colorado legislative session opened today with speeches from leaders of both parties that presaged the showdown over the state budget expected to dominate the next four and a half months.

And there were glimpses of other potential hot-button issues to come, ranging from stricter regulations on payday loans to placing tougher limits on initiative referendums.

Former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo wants every Colorado business to verify that new hires are U.S. citizens, a proposal that prompted cries of racism from critics.

Tancredo filed a ballot proposal Friday that would force the 2011 Colorado legislature to pass a law requiring businesses to use a federal program to check the immigration status of all newly hired workers.

The proposal is aimed for the 2010 ballot.

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