This story by Melanie Asmar appeared on Chalkbeat on May 7, 2025. Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.
AmeriCorps member Hannah Chung is spending this week like always: meeting one-on-one with the 25 Aurora students on her caseload, all of whom struggle to show up to school. Chung has been working to improve their attendance through solutions as simple as signing a student up for a bus route and as complicated as helping teenagers address mental health challenges.
This week, Chung has been telling students she won’t be at the school next year.
“And they’re like, ‘What? You’re the only person in the building I trust,’” said Chung, who plans to return to college to finish her degree in psychology. “It’s heartwarming to know we have that relationship, but heartbreaking to know they feel so alone.”
There may not be anyone doing Chung’s job — or nearly 300 others next school year — if a lawsuit by Colorado and two dozen other states isn’t successful at stopping the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal AmeriCorps volunteerism program. Cities and states across the country, including Philadelphia and Michigan, face a similar fate.
AmeriCorps is a federal agency that aims to improve communities through service and volunteerism. Members earn stipends and money for college.
In late April, the Trump administration canceled more than $400 million in AmeriCorps grants nationwide, which amounts to more than 40% of the agency’s funding for this year. The cuts hit 27 of Colorado’s 37 AmeriCorps programs, Lt. Gov. Dianne Primavera said, canceling more than $8 million worth of grants and disproportionately impacting education-focused programs.
Colorado joined a multistate lawsuit over the cuts that argues that the Trump administration’s “decision to dismantle AmeriCorps flouts Congress’s creation” of the agency.
“They’re making these terminations of the programs before the school year even ends,” Primavera said in an interview. “I’m really angry about it, to be honest with you.
“The sad thing is it really impacts the most vulnerable kids,” she said.
Although Colorado got termination notices that cited the same vague reason — that each AmeriCorps grant “no longer effectuates agency policy” — the work is continuing, buoyed by state funding as the court decides whether to block the cuts. But the funding won’t last forever.
“We had a tough budget year in Colorado,” Primavera said. “We’re turning over every rock to see if we can find some money. We don’t know how long we can keep this up.”
‘It’s just gone. That’s harmful and hurtful.’
Maria Chavez Contreras is the family services manager for Catholic Charities of Southern Colorado in Pueblo. She works with eight AmeriCorps members who serve in the Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters, or HIPPY, program and who are preparing for their annual preschool graduation ceremony this month.
It’s a big deal: The 5-year-olds wear mortarboard caps and walk up one by one to get a certificate and a backpack full of school supplies. Parents or caregivers get certificates too, in recognition of their weekly meetings with HIPPY home visitors to roleplay educational activities to do at home with their preschool-age children, such as building baking soda and vinegar volcanoes.
“The kiddos, they think they’re playing, while the parent is ensuring their kiddo is ready for kindergarten,” Chavez Contreras said.
In all, federal funding for 25 AmeriCorps members who work as HIPPY home visitors in Pueblo, Denver, Weld County, and the San Luis Valley was canceled, according to Brian Conly, the executive director of Parent Possible, the organization that oversees the program.
The program has real impact, Conly said. At the beginning of last year, only 22% of Colorado HIPPY parents said in a survey that they were confident their child was prepared for school, he said. By the end of the year, that number had jumped to 90%.
“It just takes one adult to make a difference in a child’s life,” he said. “If it’s the parent, even better.”
Losing the HIPPY program, Conly said, would mean losing “the infrastructure to go into a local community and teach its parents how to support their children’s success in life with their culture, with their language, and within their community of trusted folks.
“That just goes away. It’s just gone. That’s harmful and hurtful.”
Katie Navin, the executive director of the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education, said ending her organization’s AmeriCorps program would have similarly devastating effects.
Environmental Education Corps members reach about 25,000 students yearly through their work as educators with organizations such as the Colorado Canyons Association in Grand Junction, the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies in Brighton, and The Greenway Foundation in Denver.
The 16 AmeriCorps members lead outdoor field trips and tend school gardens. One program in Delta County teaches students to ride a bike in the summer and ski in the winter.
“You need the educator to be supporting and sparking these learning experiences,” Navin said. “So losing that is a tremendous hit to the field as a whole, to the community, and to schools. Those ripple effects, you might not see them for a while. Education is a long-term solution.”
A long list of AmeriCorps cuts in Colorado
Chung, who is working this year at Vista PEAK Preparatory School in Aurora, said she thinks of her position as a bridge between students and the things they need to succeed in school, whether that’s a referral to therapist, a free haircut, or the courage to talk to a teacher about their grades.
“A conclusion I’ve come to is this program acts as a lifeline for a lot of students,” Chung said. “It’s not even in a dramatic way. It’s in an actual way.”
Chung is one of 32 AmeriCorps members with the Corps for a Change program. Members are stationed in 26 middle and high schools across eight school districts in the Denver metro area.
“Over the course of the school year, a lot of what our members end up doing is becoming a school-based advocate for these students, helping them navigate attendance issues, navigate issues with grades, conflicts with friends and teachers,” said Manuel Aragon, the senior director of programs at Colorado Youth for a Change, which runs the program.
Corps for a Change is one of four AmeriCorps programs run by the organization. The other three programs, which focus on reading, math and preschool tutoring, were not cut.
While Primavera and others said it’s hard to figure out the rhyme or reason for the cancellations, Corps for a Change focuses most on mental health support, which has been a target of the Trump administration. Corps for a Change members are also part of Colorado’s new Youth Mental Health Corps meant to help connect teenagers to mental health resources and allow AmeriCorps members to earn college credit in the field.
According to the Colorado governor’s office, other education-related AmeriCorps programs that received termination notices include:
- The Alpine Achievers Initiative, which has 40 AmeriCorps members in five school districts in rural south-central Colorado, including in Alamosa and Salida. Members provide individual and group academic support during the school day and run after-school clubs. Many members were also part of the Youth Mental Health Corps.
- Peak Pathfinders, which has 10 AmeriCorps members doing similar work in the Eagle County School District. The governor’s office noted that several former Peak Pathfinders AmeriCorps members have gone on to become teachers who work in the area.
- Bright Futures, which has seven AmeriCorps members working in early childhood education centers in Gunnison, Montrose, and Delta. In addition to supporting students at the centers, members earn an early childhood teaching credential.
- The Rural Alliance for Dignity, which has 44 AmeriCorps members who provide a range of social services in the San Luis Valley. Some members work in after-school programs, including two who do one-on-one reading and math tutoring at a Boys and Girls Club.
- Spark Health Corps, whose 12 AmeriCorps members are earning a master’s degree in social work. The members do their practicum hours at schools in the Denver metro area, Pueblo, and Durango, providing behavioral and mental health support to students.
- TeamUP AmeriCorps, a program run by the United Way of Southwest Colorado that has 10 AmeriCorps members. Some members are focused on youth mental health, while others provide outdoor learning or tutoring for Spanish-speaking students.
Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.