SkyView Academy Foundation

Background Statement

The vision of SkyView Academy began in 2004 when a group of Highlands Ranch parents came together to create a more challenging and meaningful educational program for their children and the community at large. The founding team was comprised of many qualified and dedicated parents, teachers, and community members with diverse backgrounds who shared a common educational vision for the school.

After two years of planning and developing the school and receiving all the necessary approvals from the Board of Education, the founding team was unable to identify a suitable facility in Highlands Ranch. As a result, a school building was chosen in Parker, and the team opened their program in this community in August 2006, branded as North Star Academy.

Our founding team's original intent was to utilize the Parker facility as a short-term, temporary solution because it was not located in the originally desired Highlands Ranch location. The intent was to relocate the school to their community in three years after a suitable facility could be identified, and long-term financing was secured.

Our founding team did not expect the huge demand for their program from the Parker community. Thus, in the spring of 2007, the North Star Academy Board of Directors, comprised of many of the original members of the founding team, unanimously and collectively agreed to develop a new multi-campus strategy that would keep the original school in Parker and create a sister school in Highlands Ranch. The intent was to have the sister school, originally marketed as NSA West, open with the same mission, vision, and educational program as North Star Academy in Parker.

The North Star Academy Board of Directors spent the next year and a half further developing this multi-campus strategy, working with experienced consultants from the charter school industry. In November 2008, the Board received the necessary approval from the Douglas County Board of Education and was on track to open the Highlands Ranch school in the fall of 2009.

Unfortunately, several things happened in a short period of time that forced the Board to postpone their opening for one year and discontinue the development of the multi-campus strategy. The state of the municipal bond market caused the abandonment of the initial bond financing plan. A new committee had to be created to identify other possible financing opportunities that would provide the necessary funds to acquire the intended facility and proceed with the renovation. Additionally, the Board was informed by the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) that to receive necessary startup grant funding for their Highlands Ranch school, changes would be required to the intended governance and administrative structure, which challenged the feasibility of a multi-campus strategy.

As a result of these required changes, several members of the original founding team came back together to create a new plan to ensure the successful launch of the Highlands Ranch school. This team started down the path they had been down five years earlier - securing financing, acquiring a facility, recruiting students and parent volunteers, and ultimately, renaming the school.

As a result of some very creative strategies, an amazing group of parent volunteers, and lessons learned from their original school in Parker, the founding team successfully secured the necessary financing to acquire its facility and unveiled its new name to the community at a Ground Breaking ceremony on February 6, 2010.

The new Highlands Ranch school, now known as SkyView Academy, opened for its inaugural year on September 7, 2010, in its permanent home in Highlands Ranch at 6161 Business Center Drive.