A new K-5 school in Pueblo, referred to as Colorado’s “first public Christian school” by its founders and authorizer, is at the center of a debate over whether its students qualify for public funding.
School officials from the 2-month-old Riverstone Academy say their students are owed state funding under protections in the U.S. Constitution while state education officials argue that allocating dollars to a school with religious teachings would violate both the state and U.S. Constitution.
Riverstone Academy, where more than 30 children attend kindergarten through fifth grade, is authorized by Education ReEnvisioned BOCES, or Board of Cooperative Educational Service, and operated by Pueblo nonprofit Forging Education, which runs a network of religious private schools and home-school enrichment programs.
“Our culture has become hostile to the Christian faith, and the public school system is the primary perpetuator of the secular, progressive worldview,” Forging Education’s website states. “Christians increasingly see the need to protect their children while still providing a quality academic education with a solid spiritual foundation.”
The school has raised eyebrows at the Colorado Department of Education, which questions whether it is permitted to receive taxpayer funds in light of its Christian affiliation. Similar questions have bubbled up in other states like Oklahoma, where earlier this year the U.S. Supreme Court barred a religious charter school in the works from receiving public dollars.
Architects of the school, which opened Aug. 11, say they intend to submit a request for public funding, setting up a battle with the state the school believes it can win.
“The U.S. Constitution prohibits discrimination against Riverstone solely on account of its religious affiliation as such exclusion from a generally available governmental benefit would be unconstitutional,” Ken Witt, executive director of Education ReEnvisioned BOCES, wrote in an email sent Tuesday to the Colorado Department of Education. “Multiple recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions have made clear that the government cannot discriminate against a religious applicant, here a contracted school provider, when religious status would be the primary basis for exclusion.”
Witt did not point to any specific Supreme Court decisions in his email. However, while presenting to District 49 board members during an Oct. 9 board meeting, he cited the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Espinoza v. Montana Dept. of Revenue, which declared that discriminating against schools based on their religious affiliation is a violation of the First Amendment.
That case stemmed from a voucher program created by the Montana legislature that gives public funds in the form of scholarships to students to attend private schools and doles out tax credits to individuals who donate to organizations that facilitate scholarships. Central to the case was whether families wanting to enroll their children in private religious schools could benefit from those scholarships.
“I’m confident that federal law and the Constitution prohibits discrimination based on religion, and so we are not going to discriminate based on religion,” Witt, who resigned from the job of superintendent in Woodland Park School District earlier this year, told The Colorado Sun.
Witt’s email, addressed to Jennifer Okes, district operations special advisor for the Colorado Department of Education, was a response to an Oct. 10 letter Okes sent to leaders of Education ReEnvisioned BOCES and School District 49 with concerns about giving state funds to a school with religious ties.
Okes wrote that under the Colorado Constitution and the U.S. Constitution, “public schools are generally required to be nonsectarian in nature,” meaning they aren’t connected to any religion.
Since the BOCES is “a public entity bound by the federal and state constitutions,” any school it runs must remain nonsectarian, Okes writes.
Witt denied in his email that Riverstone Academy is sectarian under state law, though he did not explain why.
In an interview with The Sun, the school’s executive director, Quin Friberg, who also serves as executive director of Forging Education, said the school’s mission is “to provide quality education with an emphasis on hands-on learning that also incorporates a focus on character development and faith.”
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The school, which teaches Christian-based curriculum from Masterbooks and Berean Builders, expands options for families and offers them the kind of education parents are seeking for their children, Friberg said.
“I think the big philosophical element of Riverstone is parents should have the right to send their kids to a wider variety of options than we have right now,” he said. “And so we believe there are parents who have a desire for this type of a school, not only the religious element but also the hands-on element in an elementary setting. So we decided we would try to provide it to the community.”
Witt notes in his email that the school will seek state funding, defending Riverstone Academy as “a fully qualified school.”
Disagreements at the local level
Not all District 49 board members jumped at the idea of allocating public funds to a religious school after Witt touched on the school during the Oct. 9 board meeting.
Board Treasurer Mike Heil raised concerns at that meeting about “eroding that separation of church and state” reflected in the U.S. Constitution.
Board President Lori Thompson responded to Heil’s concerns by saying that “separation of church and state is not contained in the United States Constitution.”
Heil later told The Sun he “100%” believes routing public dollars to Riverstone Academy would violate the Constitution. He supports the school educating students so long as it does not receive public funding.
“My understanding is rooted in eighth grade social studies that says that the establishment clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution was explained by Thomas Jefferson as creating a wall of separation of church and state,” Heil told The Sun. “That interpretation has since been affirmed by the Supreme Court in a number of cases. In fact, they have frequently used his exact phrase. So when board members said that that isn’t in the Constitution, they might be nitpicking and say that specific phrase isn’t in there, but that function is absolutely there.”
Board Vice President Jamilynn D’Avola pointed to public school classrooms from decades ago, when prayer was a routine part of the school day.
“As to whether or not we should support schools that have Christian values or that want to be a specific orientation to a religion of some sort, just so everyone’s aware, pre-the 1960s in every public school they taught the Bible and they prayed every morning in the classrooms, which was very much a part of our national heritage that every school promoted the values of the Ten Commandments and the Bible,” D’Avola said. “And they were funded. So there you go.”
The practice of praying in public schools was outlawed by U.S. Supreme Court decisions starting in 1962 that determined that prayers in public schools were illegal.
Thompson, the board president, declined an interview with The Sun but said District 49, which is a member of Education ReEnvisioned BOCES, has nothing to do with the school.
The state education department included the district on the letter spelling out its concerns with the anticipation that the district would include Riverstone Academy students in its 2025 October count and would request full-time funding for those kids. The letter also noted that state education officials thought the district might keep some of the per-pupil funding and distribute some to Education ReEnvisioned BOCES, which would divvy up that money between its own operations and Forging Education.
Witt notes in his email to the state education department that District 49 is a member of the BOCES. He said the BOCES receives some funding directly from the state education department and some funding from District 49, which serves as a fiscal agent for the BOCES under direction from the department.
The state education department also relayed concerns about Riverstone Academy operating as “a contract school,” a term used by those behind the school, including Witt.
Witt says the BOCES executes contracts, or operating agreements, with private organizations to run a school.
Contract schools are not part of state statute, leading the state education department to question why the organizers of Riverstone Academy believe they can contract with private organizations to develop such schools.
Witt in his email wrote that the BOCES “firmly believes Riverstone Academy complies with all legally enforceable criteria and standards for a contract school.” That includes arranging major parts of a school’s operations, including background checks, instruction time, a school calendar and instruction and assessments that comply with state standards.
But he did not explain how he believes state law allows a contract school to exist.