Press Release

APOLLO CHARTER SCHOOL FOR HIGHLY GIFTED STUDENTS APPROVED

The Board of Education Thursday approved the launch of Apollo Charter School for the 2001-2002 school year.

The Apollo Charter School will serve 60-100 highly gifted students in grades one through eight during its first year.

"It's difficult to find another school district in this country that can match DPS for choices and opportunities," said Board member Bennie Milliner prior to the unanimous vote.

Apollo is the fourth charter school approved this year. The others are Challenges, Choices and Images (CCI) charter, approved in March; Denver Arts and Technology Academy, a school with a focus on classical education and technology; and Community Challenge School, a year-round school for at-risk students in west Denver.

Denver is already home to four charter schools (Pioneer, P.S. 1, Odyssey, and Wyatt-Edison) and sports a wide variety of magnet programs and theme schools throughout its system.

By March 1, 2001, under the Board resolution that approved formation of Apollo, school organizers must identify a location, provide a revised budget, submit a plan for identifying highly gifted students, and show how they will meet the needs of English language learners.

The maximum enrollment for the school would be 220 students.

The charter proposal was one of eight charter ideas originally submitted to the Board of Education last November. The plan called for placing students in classes based upon subject mastery (rather than by age or grade). Apollo proposed to offer multi-age grouping, flexible pacing, interdisciplinary studies, individual learning plans, and low pupil-teacher ratios.

The Board of Education recently announced the re-opening of Crofton Elementary School (2409 Arapahoe St.) as a school to serve highly gifted students. The opening of The Polaris Program at Crofton represents the first time that a program dedicated to meeting the needs of highly gifted and high achieving students has operated in an independent site in the Denver Public Schools.

The program, headed by principal Diana Howard, will open in September with a projected enrollment of about 75 students.