A small Christian elementary school in Pueblo is suing Colorado education officials, kicking off an anticipated court battle over whether religious schools should be allowed to use taxpayer money to fund their operations.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado on Friday, is one of several cases across the nation that aim to open the door for state governments to use public dollars to operate religious schools.
The Colorado lawsuit involves , which opened in August with 29 students and calls itself the state’s “first public Christian school.”
The news that Riverstone was a faith-based school caught state officials by surprise, spurring them to caution school leaders that the could withhold funding since the state constitution prohibits religious public schools, .
Riverstone and the , which authorized the school to open, are now challenging that state law with their lawsuit — a step that the school appears to have been designed for.
Emails from an attorney representing the school and the Education reEnvisioned BOCES last year revealed that, after the on whether to allow Oklahoma’s government to fund a Catholic charter school, the attorney was asked by the religious legal organization to “find a way for a parallel case to be initiated out of Colorado,” Chalkbeat reported.
BOCES provide educational services such as special education, staff development and other support across multiple school districts to help the districts split costs.
“Colorado’s laws discriminating against religious schools are unconstitutional under the First Amendment based on a series of recent cases which find that states are not free to exclude religious actors from generally available government programs based on religion,” said Jeremy Dys, one of the attorneys representing the Education reEnvisioned BOCES, in a statement.
“We look forward to the court declaring this odious discrimination unconstitutional and affirming the rights of religious students and parents to be treated fairly,” he added.
Riverstone and the Education reEnvisioned BOCES filed their lawsuit against state Education Commissioner Susana Córdova and members of the state Board of Education.
Jeremy Meyer, a spokesman for the education department, declined to comment Wednesday, citing the ongoing litigation.
A has also been filed by Wilberforce Academy, which wants to operate a religious school in Knox County, Tennesse.
Riverstone has received state funding, but the education department is now undertaking an audit of the school’s pupil count, according to the lawsuit. The school alleges that “those funds will imminently be clawed back following the ongoing audit,” according to the lawsuit.
in El Paso County, is the fiscal agent for the Education reEnvisioned BCOES. The group has an with , which allows Riverstone to operate within that districtap boundary.
Riverstone leaders didn’t mention religion on their application for a school code with the state nor did they mention it in the agreement with Pueblo 70,
In October, the state education department sent a letter to District 49 Superintendent Peter Hilts and Education ReEnvisioned BOCES Director Ken Witt, telling them that the agency had recently learned that the group had “opened a fully outsourced and privately contracted ‘public school’ called Riverstone Academy.”
The per-pupil funding that Riverstone received from the October statewide count of K-12 students comes from the state via District 49 and the Education ReEnvisioned BOCES, according to the letter.
Education reEnvisioned BCOES will give Riverstone $324,330 in per-pupil funding based on the school’s 2025-26 enrollment count, Dys said.
The education department’s letter also noted that the school has advertised itself as a religious school, but the Colorado Constitution requires public schools to be nonsectarian.
Witt, who is the former superintendent of the Woodland Park School District, replied to the education departmentap letter by saying, “We are alarmed at the threat to funding a school due to the religious status of Riverstone Academy.”
“…Education reEnvisioned does not find that Riverstone Academy is ‘sectarian’ under Colorado law,” he wrote, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by The Post.
The education department said in a Feb. 13 letter to Witt that its audit of Riverstone’s pupil count is “based on neutral criteria that were applied equally to all districts, BOCES and the Charter School Institute,” according to a copy reviewed by The Post.
“…(T)he religious status of the entity providing instructional minutes is not relevant to the analysis,” wrote Jennifer Okes, district operations special adviser, for the Department of Education.
It’s not clear where Riverstone Academy is currently located.
In January, Pueblo County officials ordered Riverstone to close its building because of unaddressed safety concerns, Chalkbeat reported.
Riverstone moved to a new location for a few weeks and expects to be back in its building soon, said Michael Francisco, one of the school’s attorneys. But he declined to say where the school is now operating.
