Colorado’s “first public Christian school” is a Constitutional disaster waiting to happen
Riverstone Academy could be funded with taxpayer dollars despite openly promoting religion—a direct assault on the wall between church and state
This newsletter is free and goes out to over 23,000 subscribers, but it’s only able to sustain itself due to the support I receive from a small percentage of regular readers. Would you please consider becoming one of those supporters? You can use the button below to subscribe or use my usual Patreon page!
A few months ago, Riverstone Academy quietly opened up just outside Pueblo, Colorado. The school describes itself as a tuition-free public school open to students in grades K-5. There are currently 30 students enrolled. But the description went well beyond that, saying the curriculum will have a “Christian foundation.”
It’s not like they were hiding the Christian affiliation either. Just look at this Facebook post made months ago:
To that end, the school’s website mentions how the classes use Master Books Social Studies and Berean Builders Science—both of which are faith-based companies that usually cater to Christian homeschoolers. If you actually cared about kids learning solid science and social studies, you wouldn’t use their textbooks. You would purchase books from companies with better reputations because they don’t publish material specially designed for religious fundamentalists. The point is: Saying the school would have a “Christian Foundation” wasn’t a reference to their values; students were going to get a religious education and everyone knew it.
The school is managed by Education reEnvisioned BOCES, which is a “Board of Cooperative Educational Services.” Colorado has 21 BOCES that help public schools with specific needs, like special education. That’s why it’s easy to see how something like this could have gone under the radar.
There’s nothing legally wrong with opening up a private, tuition-free Christian school. But why the hell were they calling themselves a “public” school? You can’t just open up your own public school. Which means there must have been some kind of arrangement with the actual public school district, which in this case happens to be District 49.
And that’s exactly what happened.
Chalkbeat Colorado, a news outlet focused on education, also found that when these arrangements were being made, there was no reference to the Christian nature of the school:
References to the school’s Christian character are absent or muted in Riverstone’s application materials and contracts. An application for a school code submitted to the state in late June makes no mention of Riverstone’s religious nature. It also went unmentioned in the agreement approved by the Pueblo 70 school board in late June and in the contract between the school and the BOCES approved by the BOCES board in August.
[Riverstone Academy executive director Quin] Friberg said Riverstone wasn’t hiding anything, but that the school’s religious foundation wasn’t a relevant response to questions on some of the documents.
Seems like it would be pretty damn relevant.
The first time anyone even learned this was a Christian school was when the head of Education reEnvisioned BOCES, Ken Witt, openly referred to Riverstone Academy as “Colorado’s first public Christian school.”
We did authorize a new bricks-and-mortar school in Pueblo this year called Riverstone Academy. It’s in keeping with our mission of continuing to make certain that the programs that parents wish existed do exist. It is Colorado’s first public Christian school, and we are happy to have that school open.
We’re delighted that they came to us and said, “Hey, we’d like to operate this school.” We’re confident that the Espinoza ruling of the Supreme Court says we can’t care when we apply public money to these private educational institutions. We can’t care whether they’re religiously affiliated or not. And so we don’t. And we’re delighted to see this school open. And we will continue to move forward with innovative, exceptional educational programs throughout Colorado.
The Supreme Court’s Espinoza ruling said that taxpayer-funded vouchers that could be used at private schools could also be used at private religious schools. But it’s hard to see how that applied here since the state would be directly funding religious education.
At least one of the school board members noted that… while another member didn’t care:
At the Oct. 9 meeting, one member of the District 49 school board, which leans conservative, expressed alarm after Witt’s briefing on Riverstone.
“Eroding that separation of church and state is very concerning, and for us to be a partner in that … does not sit well with me,” board member Mike Heil said.
Board president Lori Thompson immediately responded, “Just a note of clarification, separation of church and state is not contained in the United States Constitution.”
It’s never good when a school district is led by someone who doesn’t understand the Constitution.
Just over two weeks ago, the Colorado Department of Education sent a letter to the head of D49 (Superintendent Peter Hilts) and the head of Education reEnvisioned BOCES (Witt), asking both of them to explain what the hell is going on here.
The state wanted to get ahead of the issue because public school districts will soon have to report how many students are enrolled in order to receive money from the state—the more students in your district, the more taxpayer-funded dollars you get.
Were students at the Christian school being included in those tallies? That’s what the Education Department wanted to know:
As it is October, D49 is completing its count of pupils and that count will be submitted to the state to receive per pupil funding for the submitted pupils. We presume that D49 will be submitting the students of Riverstone Academy in its 2025 October count and will be seeking full-time funding for those students. We also presume that D49 will retain some of that funding and pass along a contractually determined amount on to ERBOCES. In turn, ERBOCES will retain some of that funding from D49 and pass along a contractually determined amount to its private contractor that is operating Riverstone Academy.
… Our second question is whether you believe the educational program offered by Riverstone Academy, which appears to be sectarian, is eligible for funding under the School Finance Act and State Board Rules?
…
Based on the publicly available information viewed by CDE… any pupils that D49 submits for funding from Riverstone Academy would not be eligible for funding. Can you confirm whether you intend to submit these pupils for full-time funding and, if yes, your rationale on why these students would be eligible for public school funding?
To put that another way, there’s nothing wrong with D49’s partnership with Education reEnvisioned BOCES. It’s also possible the latter group could work with private organizations to deliver secular services. But public money can’t be spent promoting religion, and that’s what this looked like.
So… could the leaders of D49 and Education reEnvisioned BOCES explain themselves?
In his response, Witt said there was nothing shady happening and that his company “did not and legally cannot discriminate against this school on account of its religious affiliation.” And then he added a How Dare You clause to the state official for even asking these questions:
… application of Colorado law to harm Riverstone Academy on account of its religious exercise through academic and pedagogical choices would be contrary to the superior requirements of the U.S. Constitution.
Regarding your final question as to whether we intend to submit Riverstone Academy for funding, and if so why, the answer is yes. Riverstone is a fully qualified school that should be funded along the same terms as other schools authorized by Education reEnvisioned. Education reEnvisioned did not and will not discriminate against Riverstone Academy due to their religious affiliation.
The superintendent simply responded by saying they would request state funding for those Riverstone students and that the Education Department and BOCES would have to figure out eligibility concerns. To put it another way, this wasn’t his problem and the rest of you need to figure it out.
All of this comes after Oklahoma tried to launch a publicly funded Catholic charter school, only to have the State Supreme Court declare it unconstitutional. (The U.S. Supreme Court didn’t have the votes to take up the case.) It seems that the people backing Riverstone Academy want to pick up where that fight left off.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation has now sent its own letter to D49, demanding that the district “immediately cease funding Riverstone Academy in order to comply with the First Amendment.”
In this case, the District is unconstitutionally giving public funds to a Christian school in direct violation of the First Amendment. The District’s actions signal an undeniable preference for Christianity over all other religions and nonreligion. Additionally, the District is providing religious instruction to students by way of funding this Christian school.
FFRF also addressed the argument that this was legal because of the Espinoza case:
Here, the District is directly funding Riverstone Academy’s religious endeavors: teaching students to believe in Christianity and teaching subjects through an exclusively Christian lens. Moreover, Riverstone is not a private school seeking to participate in an otherwise neutral tuition assistance grant program. Instead, it is a public school seeking to receive public school education funds in order to teach students to believe in Christianity as part of an allegedly public, not private, education. Giving public funds to Riverstone Academy violates the Establishment Clause, while refraining from publicly funding this sectarian school would do no harm to the school’s Free Exercise rights.
This arrangement doesn’t just violate federal law, FFRF says, but Colorado law as well.
“The Colorado Constitution could not be clearer,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “No sectarian tenets shall ever be taught in public school — yet that’s exactly what is happening here.”
Interestingly enough, there’s surprisingly little coverage in the media about Ken Witt’s background in all this. He was the superintendent of the Woodland Park School District until he resigned earlier this year following a string of controversies. During his time in that role, he appeared at events run by the ministry of Christian Nationalist Andrew Wommack, who has spent years working to take over the public institutions of Woodland Park, including the city council and school district. before that, in 2015, voters chose to kick Witt off the Jefferson County School Board after he and fellow conservatives tried to impose a more “patriotic” curriculum and change how teachers got paid.
He’s a right-wing activist, so it makes sense that he’s using his latest job to shove religion into the public school system. State officials shouldn’t let him get away with it.
As it stands right now, this doesn’t appear to be some paperwork error or a bureaucratic misunderstanding. It’s a calculated breach of the wall separating church and state. Riverstone Academy represents a deliberate attempt to launder sectarian indoctrination through the public school system. You can bet that if this arrangement is allowed to stand, other conservative Christian groups will follow suit, stealing public money to advance their religious ideology.
Allowing taxpayer dollars to fund Christian education doesn’t expand freedom. Instead, it sends a message to non-Christian and Christian students alike that their public institutions promote one specific brand of religion. The public school system was designed to unite diverse communities around shared civic ideals; turning it into a vehicle for evangelism betrays that mission entirely.
The people running Riverstone Academy seem to know that. They oppose the mission of public education. Now, instead of creating alternatives, they’re just working to dismantle it from the inside. All the more reason for Colorado to draw a hard line in the sand before the next “public Christian school” makes the concept of “public education” meaningless.
"All at no cost."
Given what Christianity has done to its victims AND its followers, I question that assertion.
Is it a "Christian Value" to lie to the state about your school's intentions?