State Board Sends Pueblo West Charter School’s Application Back to District 60 on a 5-4 Vote
District 60 denied Pueblo Classical Academy on five grounds in June. The appeal file shows what each side argued, and the next decision is the district’s.
The Colorado State Board of Education voted 5-4 at its October meeting to send a charter application from the Pueblo School for the Arts and Sciences network back to the Pueblo School District 60 board for reconsideration, according to a Colorado Department of Education release dated October 16. District 60 had denied the application.
The release says the vote came on a Wednesday at the board’s October meeting and that the board gave “specific” instructions. It does not list those instructions or how each member voted.
Which school this is
The application is for Pueblo Classical Academy, a K-12 school at 694 E. Spaulding Ave. in Pueblo West, inside Pueblo County School District 70, according to the network’s opening brief to the State Board. The brief says the school has operated since 2021, served about 260 students when it applied, and has run as a contract school of Education reEnvisioned BOCES (ERBOCES).
The network already runs two District 60 charter schools, on Jones Avenue and at Fulton Heights. District 60 renewed both for five years on January 27, 2026, the brief says.
Why the school changed authorizers
A 2026 state law, Senate Bill 26-023, bars a BOCES from running a school outside its member districts’ boundaries starting with the 2026-27 fiscal year, according to the brief. The CDE release says the school applied to District 60 because of concerns about ERBOCES’s viability, and that ERBOCES dissolved in August. District 70 had given written permission for the school to seek any lawful authorizer, the brief says.
The district’s five reasons
The District 60 board heard presentations May 12, held a public hearing June 9 and denied the application by resolution June 23, according to the brief. The CDE release lists the district’s reasons:
- The school’s location outside District 60 boundaries.
- About $1.8 million in debt.
- Doubts about financial viability if enrollment projections were not met.
- Questions about its capacity to serve students with disabilities.
- Disagreement over its online high school program.
The network’s brief argues that none of those findings shows the denial served students. On debt, it quotes the resolution as saying about $1.7 million comes due in fiscal 2026-27, and says the district’s own staff analysis put the amount due in fiscal 2027 at “about $1.1 million.” That is the appellant’s reading of the record. The Ledger has not read the district’s response brief, and the resolution attached to the appeal notice is a scanned image we could not read as text.
What happens next
The release says District 60 must reconsider and issue a new decision. If the district denies the application again, the school can appeal to the State Board a second time. State law sets deadlines for the reconsideration and any second appeal. The Ledger could not open the statute text on October 17 and will confirm the exact timeline before reporting it.
A remand is not an approval. It sends the decision back to the elected District 60 board.
What we don’t know yet
- The State Board’s written instructions to District 60, and the roll-call vote.
- When District 60 will hold its reconsideration hearing. No date was public as of October 17 that we found.
- Who is authorizing Pueblo Classical Academy for the current school year since ERBOCES dissolved. The CDE’s August release on ERBOCES’s online schools does not mention it.
- District 60’s side of the appeal, in its answer brief.