A charter school in Colorado shocked parents and students by announcing its closure two weeks before school opened.
CENTENNIAL, Colo. — Colorado Skies Academy, a Centennial-based charter school with a focus on aviation and aerospace education, abruptly announced its closure on Friday, just 16 days before the start of the school year.
The announcement, which came in an email on Friday at 8:17 p.m., leaves parents scrambling to find alternative schools for their children.
The school cited financial challenges as the reason for the immediate closure. A spokeswoman for the Colorado Charter School Institute, which serves as the school’s authorizer, said there were “unanticipated financial developments” over the summer which, caused the school’s viability to “rapidly deteriorate.”
CSI acknowledged the sudden closure was not ideal, but said it supported the board’s decision to close now, rather risk closing mid-school year which would have been more challenging.
Still, the timing of the announcement has particularly frustrated parents, who received the closure notice hours after the school posted on Facebook about an upcoming back-to-school night event.
“They posted in the morning, come join us for back-to-school night. Then they send an email in the evening saying sorry, there’s gonna be no school at all,” parent Erin Hess said. Her son Connor was set to attend sixth grade at the 6-8 school.