Board to get first look at charter school application

BOULDER VALLEY SCHOOLS

Therapist Kathleen Warner talks to a preschool student on Oct. 2 at Bal Swan Children’s Center in Broomfield. Bal Swan is proposing a charter school in the Boulder Valley School District called Grove Elementary, which would offer a continuation of Bal Swan’s inclusive philosophy. CLIFF GRASSMICK — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

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By Amy Bounds

abounds@prairiemountainmedia.com

The Boulder Valley school board on Tuesday will have its first opportunity to discuss the charter school application for Grove Elementary School, which would be an offshoot of Broomfield’s Bal Swan Children’s Center.

The proposal calls for housing the elementary school, which would be overseen by a separate board of directors and principal, in a new building on the Bal Swan campus by the third year. Bal Swan is a nonprofit child care center that serves about 180 students ages 2 to 6, with an emphasis on providing an inclusive program.

The school board meeting starts at 5 p.m. Tuesday at the Education Center, 6500 Arapahoe Road. A livestream of the meeting will be available through BV22 or on the school board’s YouTube channel.

Tuesday’s meeting, as well as the Jan. 21 meeting, also will include a public hearing on the proposed school. The deadline to sign up for public comment is noon the day of the meeting. To sign up, fill out the “request to speak” form at bvsd.org/about/board-of-education.

The school board is scheduled to vote on the Grove application at its Jan. 28 meeting.

Grove Elementary is the first charter application in Boulder Valley in more than five years. If approved, the school could open as soon as August 2025. The plan is to start with early elementary grades and add a grade each year. Plans also call for enrollment to include a limited number of part-time homeschool students. At full buildout, organizers said, the school would enroll up to 350 students.

To help the board make a decision, the application was reviewed by the District Accountability Committee, staff members and two external reviewers. Reviewers praised the school vision and support from the community, while raising concerns in areas that include enrollment, budget, facilities and special education programming.

Organizers have said the proposal for Grove Elementary is the result of many years of requests from parents. Bal Swan, originally founded in the 1960s to serve children with disabilities, is located at 1145 East 13th Ave. The site is less than a mile from Boulder Valley’s boundaries with both the Adams 12 and Jefferson County school districts.

The plan, according to the application, is for the school to provide “an inclusive, responsive learning environment that challenges and supports all students, including learners who may struggle in traditional schools. Our approach to instruction will promote community, empathy, confidence and academic achievement.”

Organizers have said social emotional learning would be infused throughout the school day. The school would use an experiential, project-based learning model and provide a lower student-to-teacher ratio for more individualized attention. Every classroom would be staffed with both a teacher and a para-educator, organizers said.

Bal Swan, through a separate building corporation called the Bal Swan Building Fund, is currently raising money for a $30 million facility that would include an infant-through-preschool center plus the new elementary. Concerns raised in the review include needing a contingency plan if fundraising stalls and the new campus can’t be built as quickly as planned.

Plans call for renting a temporary building for the first couple of years. Organizers have identified three possible temporary sites: a Broomfield church; a former child care center in Louisville; and a vacant office building in Lafayette.

Along with needing to raise money for a building, Grove Elementary is proposing to open at a time when Boulder Valley is struggling with declining enrollment.

Though some of the district’s schools would lose students to Grove, organizers have said, they’re projecting that Grove will help grow Boulder Valley’s overall enrollment by drawing students from the surrounding school districts. None of Boulder Valley’s existing charter schools are located in Broomfield.

Reviewers cautioned that the school’s “enrollment projections assume steady growth, which may be overly optimistic given local competition from existing schools and demographic trends of declining school-age populations. Enrollment directly drives revenues, which will be reduced if enrollment projections are not met.”

Questions raised by reviewers include if the school can deliver on its educational promises in the first couple of years with limited staffing, including a part-time special education teacher. Recruiting high quality teachers when salaries will be below what’s offered in Boulder Valley was another potential challenge identified by reviewers.

“Overall, we are concerned that they are trying to do too much without adequate additional funding,” District Accountability Committee reviewers wrote. “Most BVSD schools would like to provide all these great things that are promised here, but they don’t have the funding to do so.”

In its response, organizers noted Grove plans to supplement its per-pupil operating revenue with grants. The school has secured grants from The Daniels Fund and the Colorado School Growth Fund, has applied for a Charter School Growth Fund Seed Grant and is applying this month for a New Schools Venture Fund grant, according to organizers.