Colorado Approved a 'Public Christian School' Despite Warnings — Riverstone Received Public Funding

When organizers applied for a four-digit public school code for a new Pueblo County elementary school last summer, they described standard academics and trade-themed electives — but omitted a crucial detail: the school would provide explicitly Christian instruction.

How Riverstone Got A School Code

Emails obtained by Chalkbeat show Colorado Department of Education staff quickly discovered Riverstone Academy would be run by Forging Education, a Christian contractor, and planned to use faith-based curricula including Masterbooks and Berean Builders. Multiple department employees flagged the matter internally and escalated it to legal counsel, yet the department issued Riverstone a public school code (7294) in July 2025.

Internal Concerns And Legal Risk

Staff asked whether faith-based curricula could be used if a school accepted public funding and whether state statutes or policies addressed religious instruction in public schools. The issue was routed to Assistant State Attorney General Joe Peters, and some emails were withheld from public release under attorney-client privilege. The department told Chalkbeat that it viewed the school-code review as an administrative process and that denying a code solely because an organization is religious likely would have risked losing in court, citing 2017 U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

Public Disclosure And A Delayed Response

The department only publicly questioned Riverstone's eligibility after Ken Witt, executive director of the authorizer Education reEnvisioned BOCES (ERBOCES), called Riverstone "Colorado's first public Christian school." Officials then warned that the Colorado Constitution bars teaching religious tenets in public schools and that Riverstone students might be ineligible for public funds — but those warnings came months after the school code had been granted and after public money had already flowed to the 30-student school.

Audit, Lawsuit, And Closure

The department selected ERBOCES for a state audit in January, a move that could have affected funding, but reversed course in February — the same day Riverstone and ERBOCES filed a religious-liberty lawsuit — saying the audit would not address religion. Riverstone closed permanently in May; the related lawsuit has been dropped, and state lawmakers later restricted ERBOCES' authority to delegate school operations to outside contractors.

Responses And Broader Questions

Emma Garrett-Nelson, Chief External Relations Officer for the Colorado Department of Education, said the legislature has not given the department clear authority to enforce the state constitutional ban on religious public schools and that compliance with the First Amendment is typically enforced through the courts rather than administrative action.

Law professor Steven Green of Willamette University argued state officials could — and should — have acted earlier to prevent a publicly funded school from delivering religious instruction. The episode highlights a gap in Colorado's administrative tools for policing church-state separation in education and raises questions about how the state will handle similar cases going forward.

What Remains Unclear

Public records do not fully reveal the legal advice given to the department, and officials withheld some correspondence as privileged. The key outstanding questions are whether Colorado has statutory authority to block or defund a religious public school up front and whether the department will adopt clearer procedures to prevent similar situations in the future.

This article originally appeared on Chalkbeat.