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When the leaders of a new elementary school applied for a four-digit public school code from the Colorado Department of Education last summer, they didn’t mention a key detail: The school would be religious.
Instead, they said Riverstone Academy would offer traditional academics and trade-themed electives. But education department officials soon learned that the 30-student school in Pueblo County would also be run by a Christian group and use some Christian curriculum.
Several department employees raised red flags internally and escalated the issue to state lawyers, according to emails obtained by Chalkbeat through a public records request. Still, Riverstone got its school code, and the department didn’t confront the school’s authorizer until months later, after the group’s director publicly announced that Riverstone was “Colorado’s first public Christian school.”
That’s when the department cited the Colorado constitution’s ban on teaching religious tenets in public schools and warned that Riverstone students might not be eligible for public funding. But that didn’t stop hundreds of thousands of dollars from flowing to the school last year.
A department spokesperson told Chalkbeat that the state legislature hasn’t given the department “any clear authority” to enforce the state constitution’s ban on religious public schools or the Establishment Clause in the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. The clause prohibits the government from endorsing any religion.
“Compliance with the First Amendment has historically been enforced through the courts, not by state agencies,” Colorado Department of Education Chief External Relations Officer Emma Garrett-Nelson said in an email.
Riverstone’s story shows Colorado lacks any clear procedure to keep religious schools out of the public school ecosystem. The school closed permanently in May, but not because it was religious. Instead, state lawmakers imposed strict new limits on the group that authorized it.
As conservative activists around the country chip away at church-state separation in education, that leaves a key question unanswered: Can Colorado stop a religious school from being recognized and funded as a public school?
Steven Green, a law professor at Willamette University who specializes in church-state issues, said that state officials could have and should have stopped Riverstone from opening. He disagreed with the idea that enforcing the state constitution is an issue for the courts and not state agencies.
“As a state official, however far down it is, they’re still bound by the Constitution,” he said. “It’s not that you wait till litigation occurs.”
Department staff raise questions about Riverstone
Chalkbeat reviewed scores of emails exchanged among more than two dozen Colorado Department of Education employees over two weeks last summer as they pondered whether to give Riverstone a public school code, which is required for data-tracking purposes.
Riverstone’s school code application arrived June 27, 2025. It was shared with more than a dozen members of a committee that reviews such requests.
On July 2, Jessica Tribbett, a data specialist for the department, emailed committee members that the Christian contractor that would run Riverstone, Forging Education, “operates a network of private school campuses committed to academic excellence and spiritual formation.”
Janyce Skalla, a senior policy consultant in the department’s schools of choice unit, replied, saying that Riverstone’s website mentioned faith-based science and social studies curriculums, Masterbooks and Berean Builders.
“The school claims to be public but has some private school elements that are worth flagging,” she wrote.
That afternoon Tribbett emailed four higher-level department employees. She wrote that an internet search revealed that Riverstone would offer “a faith-based education” and should be assigned a private school code instead of a public school one.
“Are there guidelines or legislation stating that faith-based curriculum cannot be used if accepting public funding?” Tribbett wrote.
One of the recipients, DJ Loerzel, executive director of data operations, emailed another group of department leaders the next morning.
“This is the first time we encountered a situation like this,” he wrote. “Are there specific statutes/policies noting public funds for schools that potentially have a religious curriculum?”
A lawyer meeting, then a decision
By the time the July 4 holiday weekend started, emails show employees from across the education department had been looped into the Riverstone conversation, including executive directors, managers, policy advisors, and an assistant commissioner.
The next step was a meeting with Joe Peters, an assistant state attorney general.
On July 8, after Tribbett and a few others met with Peters, Tribbett sent a brief email to seven higher-ups indicating a decision had been made.
Two days later, Riverstone got its code: 7294.
Ken Haptonstall, who heads the Colorado BOCES Association, a group for public education co-ops like the one that started Riverstone, said a school code provides a kind of legitimacy.
“To me, once you give a school code, it’s almost like you’re giving permission in a way,” he said.
It’s not clear from the public records what legal advice the assistant attorney general gave the education department. The department withheld some emails from Chalkbeat based on attorney-client privilege.
A spokesperson for the Colorado Attorney General’s office declined to answer questions about whether state law gives the education department the power to prevent a public religious school from opening.
Garrett-Nelson, the education department spokesperson, described the school code review committee’s job as an administrative process and said it wasn’t the place to “litigate this important issue.”
“Based on the current U.S. Supreme Court caselaw, the department likely would have lost a lawsuit challenging the denial of a school code solely based on the religious status” of Forging Education, Riverstone’s contractor, she wrote in an email.
A 2017 U.S. Supreme Court ruling said government benefits can’t be withheld from an organization solely because of its religious status.
But department employees knew more than Forging Education’s religious affiliation. They knew the school planned to teach students using two different Christian curriculums.
Asked why that didn’t allow the department to take action, Garrett-Nelson said, “We were working closely with our legal counsel as more information was coming to light. Due to the high-stakes nature of litigation in this area, we wanted to ensure we were on stable ground before actively questioning the use of public funds on religious instruction.”
Green, the Willamette law professor, likened the approach to an ostrich putting its head in the sand, particularly because conservative legal groups have consistently pushed for publicly funded religious education in recent years.
“For any knowledgeable assistant attorney general to think, oh, if we give them just a little bit, or maybe it won’t manifest itself in the way we think it will … or maybe it will just go away, that’s pie in the sky.”
A delayed confrontation
State education leaders confronted Riverstone’s authorizer — Education reEnvisioned Board of Cooperative Educational Services, or ERBOCES — in October, three months after the school code decision and two months after Riverstone opened.
They’d already begun getting questions as word of the school spread, emails obtained through a public records request show. In early October, Scott Smith, the chief financial and operating officer for the Cherry Creek School District, sent screenshots of Riverstone’s website to two top department officials and said, “I’m wondering how this school can qualify for public funds?”
The department addressed the issue directly on Oct. 10 — the day after Ken Witt, the executive director of ERBOCES, called Riverstone “Colorado’s first public Christian school.”
Jennifer Okes, district operations special advisor, wrote to Witt, saying the department “recently became aware” of the school’s opening. She said that public schools are generally required to be nonsectarian — meaning non-religious — and that Riverstone students might not be eligible for public funding.
In the weeks following Witt’s headline-making announcement, department officials didn’t acknowledge they’d known that Riverstone would be a religious school from the start and that its school code had sparked a dayslong debate.
When Chalkbeat asked in late October whether a school that was clearly religious would be given a school code, department spokesperson Jeremy Meyer said by email, “If that hypothetical event were to occur, we would consult with our legal counsel on the appropriate course of action.”
A threat, but no action
Department officials never cracked down on Riverstone.
In January, they selected ERBOCES for a state audit, a lengthy process the department’s earlier letter had implied might provide them ammunition for withholding Riverstone’s funding.
But in February — the same day Riverstone and ERBOCES filed a religious liberty lawsuit against the state — department officials sent a letter to Witt saying the department’s audit wouldn’t consider religion.
Garrett-Nelson said the department changed course because religion wasn’t mentioned in its audit guide, which is a set of instructions for school districts. Officials “decided not to rely on this untested approach to claw back funding” because it would have “led straight back into the heart of the litigation risk,” she said.
Today, Riverstone is closed for good, the religious liberty lawsuit is dead, and ERBOCES no longer has the power to hand over school operations to a contractor. But it remains unclear if the education department can or will stop a religious public school, either through bureaucratic steps on the front end or the power of the purse on the back end.
Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.
Ann Schimke 2026-07-24 21:21:54
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