In 1993, Colorado made public charter schools the law of the land. In 1995, Colorado Springs opened its first options for this kind of school choice.

Offering a classical liberal arts education, Vanguard is the culmination of parents searching for more rigorous and structured instruction that was typically found in private schools. Dress codes to present all students equally, smaller class sizes to foster closer teacher relationships and a focus on character development are among the school’s hallmarks.

Following the passage of the Colorado Charter School Act in 1993, The Vanguard School was one of three charter schools to first open its doors in Colorado Springs and offer local families an alternative to their neighborhood public schools. A charter school is a public school that is self-governing and free of many school district regulations and state laws, giving it greater control over staff decisions, curriculum and budgets.

The school’s more structured approach to ingrain discipline and respect in early grades eventually matures into more college-prep oriented instruction and classwork to equip students for post-secondary success.

“They knew they were getting into uniforms, they knew they were getting into structure, they knew they were getting into academic rigor,” Vanguard Executive Director Jim Smith said of families choosing the school.

“All of these different things with the hope that, when they leave, they’re prepared for any college they want to go to or they’re prepared for life and a career outside of high school.”

Initially chartered through Cheyenne Mountain D-12 as The Cheyenne Mountain Charter Academy, co-founded by late state legislator and Colorado Springs City Councilman Keith King, the school began as a K-8 school with one class per grade level, sharing space with a post office off South Nevada Avenue.

While public education trends have shifted nationwide since then, many of Vanguard’s approaches have remained largely unchanged.

All students learn to read and write in cursive starting in kindergarten, personal mobile devices have never been permitted in the schools and the implementation of technology in instruction has been minimal over the years.

Recognizing the debilitating effects on students’ mental health, a new law was passed earlier this year directing all Colorado school districts to enact a policy limiting the use of mobile devices during school time.

The Vanguard’s methods have yielded continued academic success. The school has consistently outperformed neighboring schools in its district and region, and enrollment has remained steady while schools across the state and country have experienced declines.

As word of mouth and the Vanguard’s strong academic performance grew over the years, so did its enrollment, and the school purchased the post office building in 1998. A desire from families to continue this education into the high school grades led to the school’s purchase of new property on South Corona Avenue and the construction of its current buildings in the mid-2000s.

In 2015, The Vanguard School, which was originally just the name for the high school, became the unifying K-12 name. The three schools now host a student population of nearly 1,500 students choicing in from 17 school districts.

“We’ve had students who have driven in from Pueblo, from Woodland Park to be a part of this school,” Smith said.  

With the expansion into high school grades came additional sports teams and fine arts programming, which have since yielded their own successes. Among the Vanguard’s graduating class of 2020 was Dominique Clifford, who would go on to athletic stardom at the University of Colorado and Colorado State University and later the Sacramento Kings by way of the NBA draft this summer.

Clifford’s coach at The Vanguard, Joe Wetters, said that while he eventually recognized Clifford’s athletic potential as he got older, it was his exceptional qualities as a student that first stood out.

“He’s always had an interest in basketball, but his parents were really focused on his academics. So, it’s been great to see him develop his character into what you see now, which is this well-spoken young man you see today,” he said.

“And we have hundreds of kids here with that same attitude.”

The rise of school choice in Colorado

Following the passage of the charter school act in 1993, the first two Colorado charters to open were The Connect Charter School in Pueblo and the Academy Charter School in Castle Rock the same year. Both continue to operate with specialized curricula and consistently rank among the top-performing schools in the state.

Elsewhere in Colorado Springs, the GLOBE Charter School and Community Prep School also opened in 1995. GLOBE would eventually close at the end of the 2023-24 school year after years of declining enrollment, while Community Prep has maintained operations in downtown Colorado Springs as an alternative high school for students.

Since then, different charters have opened to provide an array of specialized education, ranging from Montessori schools to college preparatory models to career and technical education and schools with a focus on expeditionary learning in more mountainous communities.

With charters now established along Interstate 25 all the way out to communities like Lamar, the Colorado League of Charter Schools’ director of data strategy Kevin Hesla said the range of different schools and models from the early years are the result of the collaborative efforts from groups of families up to policymakers.

“It’s a very broad coalition, in terms of school models, demographics and geography,” he said. “Colorado is one of the only states where charters are in rural, suburban, semi-urban and urban areas. And that was kind of by design right from the beginning.”

Hesla added that the development of charters over the years has often mirrored that of Colorado, with new schools resulting from population growth, new school districts or city leadership and various economic developments in specific areas in the state.

Nationwide, the National Center for Education Statistics reported that Colorado ranked second in the nation, behind only Arizona, in public charter school enrollment in 2021 at 15%.

As for school choice in general, with additional options like online schools and specialized homeschool programming now established, a study this year by the conservative education group Ready Colorado found approximately 40% of all Colorado students attend schools outside of their zoned neighborhood, both charter and traditional.

While many families have embraced the option for choice over the past 30 years, the growth of charter schools in Colorado and the U.S. has caused some concerns. In 2017, the National Education Association adopted a resolution claiming many charter schools had contributed to school and student inequities, a lack of accountability and institutional neglect because of their exemptions.  

Hesla argued that, since they are public schools, charters are beholden to the same accountability standards as their traditional counterparts. A 2024 report from the Colorado Department of Education found 79 charters had closed from 1993 through 2023, while 269 were in operation by then.

Hesla explained the reasons for these closures have largely stemmed from either declining enrollment, academic performance or financial hardships. Colorado has reported decreasing enrollment in public schools over the past three years, while the National Center for Education Statistics reported a decrease of over 1 million students nationwide between fall 2019 and fall 2023.

To the point on inequities, he argued the inclusion of charter schools into diverse neighborhoods and the option for parents to “choice in” to these schools mean that their demographics can and, in some cases have, become more diverse.

In the case of Colorado, he added, an analysis of state data conducted by the league found that the number of integrated schools increased, while the number of segregated schools decreased over the past 20 years.

“So, I know that that’s an argument that gets thrown around a lot, it just doesn’t show up in the data,” Hesla said. “At least, not in Colorado.”

“We kind of started this.” – Jim Smith

In the case of The Vanguard School, now chartered in Harrison D-2, the school’s population of minority students was reported to be 55.1%, 52.7% and 51.2% for its elementary, middle and high schools, respectively, while students eligible for free and reduced lunches ranged from 24%-35%, according to state data from the 2024-25 school year.

Despite the success the charter school has experienced over the years, it has not been without its challenges. Unlike traditional public schools, the school lacks busing for its families, which Smith admitted has been the single biggest factor in students and families leaving over the years.

The school’s high marks on standardized testing have also come under scrutiny in the past by former employees, alumni and parents, who have said they are partly the result of cherry-picking students most likely to succeed under its curriculum while giving less consideration to students with disability accommodations and individualized education plans. School administrators have denied these accusations of preferential treatment in previous Gazette reporting.

For the next phase of the school, Smith said they hope to eventually build a fieldhouse and improve existing facilities while maintaining their enrollment around their all-time high of 1,600 students.

As other charters with similar models like The Classical Academy, Rocky Mountain Classical Academy and Liberty Tree Academy have opened in Colorado Springs since The Vanguard’s opening, Smith sees their school as “a flagship program.”

“Other schools like TCA, which are hugely successful, look very similar to us, but we were first,” he said. “I think we helped to create a blueprint for a program or school that is attractive to some families and I think that will always be kind of the legacy: we kind of started this.”