Monument Academy closed its 2025-26 books with a $288,000 surplus, and the number hides more than it shows. The charter’s elementary campus in Monument earned $1.0 million; its middle school lost $141,000; its high school, with 90 students, lost $579,000. The surplus also depends on a $531,000 credit from a bond refinancing and on federal pandemic money the school says it is deliberately drawing down. The same August meeting that received those figures heard that a marketing firm had delivered 109 new students, waived the school’s own class-size policy to put 27 children in each fifth-grade room, and rewrote the calendar of a homeschool program that a new state law has changed. The Independent read the statements, the budget, the policy and the statute.
Monument Academy is the only charter school authorized by Lewis-Palmer School District 38, and it publishes more about its finances than most schools its size: quarterly statements, a 57-page budget, an annual audit and, since a bond refinancing in May, a continuing-disclosure policy that commits it to file the same material with the municipal bond market. This article is built from those documents. It is the first time the Independent has taken the charter apart campus by campus, as it has done for the district in its D38 series.
Three Campuses, One Ledger
Monument Academy runs two buildings. The West Campus on Village Ridge Point in Monument holds preschool through fifth grade and the school’s part-time homeschool program; the East Campus at Highway 83 and Walker Road, in unincorporated El Paso County, holds grades six through twelve. The school’s accounts split the East Campus into a middle school and a high school, so its general fund reports three sets of books.
The fourth-quarter statements, dated July 24 and presented to the board on Aug. 20, are unaudited. They show general-fund revenue of $14.0 million against $13.8 million of spending, a surplus of $288,231 in a year the school had budgeted to lose $323,747. By campus:
| Campus | Revenue | Spending | Result | Budgeted result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elementary (West) | $7,844,586 | $6,836,358 | +$1,008,227 | +$370,426 |
| Middle school (East) | $4,706,092 | $4,846,953 | −$140,861 | −$411,708 |
| High school (East) | $1,497,461 | $2,076,595 | −$579,134 | −$181,821 |
| All schools | $14,048,139 | $13,759,906 | +$288,231 | −$323,747 |
Two things about the split need saying before the numbers are read as a verdict on any campus. The first is that the East Campus’s shared costs, including the building, its utilities and central administration, are divided between the middle school and the high school by the school’s own allocation. In 2025-26 that allocation moved $2.69 million of cost onto the middle school’s books; a different formula would produce different campus results and the same total. The second is that the high school’s figures already include a credit. The monthly detail behind the quarterly statements shows a $677,791 reduction in the high school’s facilities line in May; the quarterly statements record a fourth-quarter credit of $531,349 for capital spending “reimbursed during the bond refinance,” and the monthly statements cite “refi adjustments” in the same facilities line. The campus lost $579,134 after that credit, not before it. The high school also began the year with the deepest reserves of the three, $3.0 million, and ended it with $2.4 million. That is by design: in September 2025 the board moved $1.8 million of reserves from the West Campus to the East by resolution, on the advice of its then-chief financial officer, Glenn Gustafson, who told the board the transfer would help the East Campus meet the higher debt service expected after refinancing and buy a year or more to grow enrollment, according to Our Community News.
Why the High School Loses Money
A high school of 90 students cannot pay for itself on state funding alone. Colorado funds Monument Academy at $11,120 per full-time pupil in the year just begun, and the state’s October 2025 count found 23 freshmen, 26 sophomores, 17 juniors and 24 seniors on the East Campus. That produced $994,228 of per-pupil revenue for a program that spent $2.08 million, or roughly $23,000 per student, against $16,600 of revenue per student from all sources. The middle school, with 361 students, ran at $13,400 of spending per student and came within $141,000 of covering itself. The elementary school, with 570 children in kindergarten through fifth grade plus the homeschool program, spent about $12,000 per K-5 student and produced the surplus that carried the rest.
Monument Academy expected the high school to lose money. Its budget planned a $181,821 deficit for the campus. The result was $397,313 worse than the plan, and most of the gap is revenue rather than spending. The high school’s “other local revenue,” the line that carries fundraising, was budgeted at $377,000 and came in at $73,515; the statements say the school’s gala revenue was deferred to the new fiscal year. Community-service and athletics fees fell $51,416 short of budget, and state special-education revenue $44,875 short. On the spending side the campus ran at 101.7% of budget, with special education at 131% of its allocation and facilities at 112%.
The high school also shrank. The school’s own count of funded students on the East Campus’s upper grades fell from 132 in 2024-25 to 90 in 2025-26, the middle school from 408 to 361, and the charter as a whole from 1,100.6 full-time equivalents to 1,046.1, a loss of 54.5 that the budget book records as the largest one-year decline in its fifteen-year pupil-count history. The 2026-27 budget, adopted June 4, assumes the loss is recovered in a single year: 1,100 funded pupils, of whom 103 are high-schoolers. It also plans, again, for the high school to lose money, $281,618 this time, offset by a $253,228 middle-school surplus and $28,390 from the elementary school, for a general fund that balances to the dollar.
| Program | 2024-25 | 2025-26 | 2026-27 budget |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elementary | 545.6 | 563.1 | 572.0 |
| Homeschool partnership | 15.0 | 32.0 | 48.0 |
| Middle school | 408.0 | 361.0 | 377.0 |
| High school | 132.0 | 90.0 | 103.0 |
| Total | 1,100.6 | 1,046.1 | 1,100.0 |
The First Day
The state’s count is taken on Oct. 1, but District 38 counts heads on the first morning of school, and its tally for Aug. 12, released under the Colorado Open Records Act and shared with the Independent, shows the charter ahead of its own plan. Monument Academy’s West Campus opened with 706 children, 84 more than the first day of 2025; the East Campus with 503, 41 more; the homeschool partnership with 73, 11 more. Converted to the funded pupils the budget counts, that is roughly 1,147 against a budget of 1,100, or about $500,000 of per-pupil revenue above plan at $11,120 a head if the numbers hold to October.
| Program | 2026-27 budget (funded pupils) | First-day headcount | ≈ Funded pupils | Against budget |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elementary, K–5 | 572 | 615 | ~607 | +35 |
| Homeschool partnership | 48 (96 children at half time) | 73 | 36.5 | −11.5 |
| Middle school, 6–8 | 377 | 398 | 398 | +21 |
| High school, 9–12 | 103 | 105 | 105 | +2 |
| Total | 1,100 | 1,191 (plus 91 preschoolers, unfunded) | ~1,147 | +46 |
The grade rows say where the growth is. Kindergarten opened with 110 children against 83 in last October’s count. Sixth grade opened with 131, some 25 more than the fifth grade the West Campus sent up in June. Ninth grade opened with 42, against 23 a year earlier; the freshman class nearly doubled, and it is essentially the whole of the high school’s gain, since grades ten through twelve (23, 23 and 17) are last year’s ninth through eleventh (23, 26 and 17) carried forward. Fifth grade opened with 109, which in four rooms is the 27 the board waived its policy to allow. The one program below plan is the homeschool partnership: 73 children where the budget assumes 96, consistent with what Vinchattle told the board about families leaving over the new rules.
The same district table gives one more number without answering the question it raises. Monument Academy gained 136 first-day students across its three programs; the district as a whole gained none, finishing eight below last year’s first day at 6,383, which means the district’s own schools opened about 144 students down. Lewis-Palmer High opened 58 below its 2025 first day, Lewis-Palmer Elementary 49, Palmer Ridge 28, Palmer Lake Elementary 28. The table counts heads by building; it does not follow a child from one building to another, and a charter gaining what the district lost is consistent with families moving across town, with a smaller cohort districtwide, or with both. What the record shows is the juxtaposition. Which it is remains the school’s to say.
Where the Cushion Comes From
Monument Academy ended June with $6.27 million in its general fund, about five and a half months of spending. Two things put it there, and neither recurs.
The first is the prior year. In 2024-25 the general fund earned $2.94 million, and the audited statements record $2,241,340 of it as a “special item”: employee retention tax credits, the federal pandemic-era payroll credit. Local revenue that year was $5.24 million; in 2025-26 it was $1.39 million. The school is open about what it is doing with the money. A note on the campus statements reads: “We are purposely deficit spending some of the ERTC money we received in FY25.” The June detail itemizes $249,100 of returning-staff bonuses charged against that credit, $136,800 of it at the elementary school, $59,300 at the middle school and $53,000 at the high school, and a further $5,000 for the owner’s representative on the performing-arts center. Stripped of those items, the school’s own “adjusted” result for the year is a $542,331 surplus. The bonuses were the 5% payment to returning staff the board approved in October 2025, capped at $250,000 and paid before Christmas in a year the school had frozen salaries; the same meetings appropriated up to $125,000 of the credit for new high-school sports and $19,650 for class trips, clubs and a digital sign, per OCN.
The second is the refinancing. On May 7 the school closed $44.07 million of Colorado Educational and Cultural Facilities Authority bonds, $1,135,000 of them federally taxable, combining the 2014 debt on the West Campus with the 2019 debt on the East Campus, whose $27.74 million of principal was due in a single payment on June 1. The new bonds carried $1.4 million of issuance costs and let the school recover capital spending it had already made. The general fund’s fourth quarter records a $531,349 credit under “building improvement services,” described in a footnote as “capital expenditures that were reimbursed during the bond refinance.” Without it the fund would have finished the year roughly $243,000 in deficit, close to the loss the school had budgeted. The first payment on the new bonds, $1.1 million of interest, is due Dec. 1. The amortization schedule in the June statements runs to 2036, when $38.9 million of principal comes due at once; the board’s strategic plan, adopted the same night, notes a four-year call and says the debt cannot be refinanced before fall 2030. Standard & Poor’s held the school’s rating at BB-, below investment grade, in December; Polen told the board enrollment was a factor, per OCN.
Against that backdrop the board approved a retroactive 3% raise for the year just ended, to be paid in September, and $20,150 of one-time stipends. Finance Director Laura Polen proposed the raise, according to the account of the meeting in Our Community News, citing a brighter state outlook, higher enrollment and more revenue per pupil; the school had budgeted a bonus instead. The stipend letter from Executive Director Collin Vinchattle is more specific about what the money bought: $4,500 to a teacher for building courses that let high-schoolers take AP Precalculus and both AP Calculus exams, $3,000 to a middle-school teacher for writing the high school’s biology and honors biology courses, $3,500 for summer work auditing seniors’ graduation credits, $6,650 for a preschool special-education role the letter says the district previously provided, and $2,500 for human-resources coursework.
One Hundred and Nine Students
The first item of business on Aug. 20 was a five-slide deck from Inkyma, the marketing firm the school retained for a two-year enrollment campaign. Its title slide reads: “Year One Delivered 109 Net New Students — 145% of the 2-Year Goal.” The goal had been 75. The deck describes the mechanism plainly. The website was rewritten so that every page ends in a single call to action, “Schedule a Tour”; a landing page triggers automated scheduling and follow-up emails; Google Ads and digital signage in local businesses carry QR codes to the tour page; parent and student testimonial videos on social media point the same way. A dashboard tracks the funnel. It counts 293 tour-form submissions between December 2025 and August 2026, peaking at 75 in January and 67 in April and falling to two in August.
The deck does not carry a cost, but the school’s books do. The mid-year budget the board adopted in January lists “Marketing (Inkyma)” at $75,000 for 2025-26, charged half to the elementary school and half to the high school, and Finance Director Laura Polen gave the board the same figure in December, per Our Community News. Against 109 students, that is under $700 a head for children the state will fund at $11,120 each if they are still enrolled on Oct. 1. The board chose Inkyma in September 2025 after an executive session, over a competing proposal priced at $20,000 for discovery and $35,000 for implementation; the contract terms were not discussed in public, according to OCN’s account of that meeting. The goal has moved. Board members set it in August 2025 at 125 new students by 2027, “focused on the high school,” in OCN’s words; the deck measures 109 against a two-year goal of 75.
Nor does the deck say where the 109 came from, or into which grades, and no document in the packet does. The one figure the school has put on the record is broader: Registrar Lena Gross told the board in October 2025 that 25.84% of Monument Academy’s students live outside District 38, some of them in Cheyenne Mountain’s district, per OCN. Whether the new families are D38 residents drawn from the district’s own schools, out-of-district choice families or newcomers to the area is a question the school has not answered in public. The district’s first-day count, above, puts the charter ahead of the 1,100 funded pupils its budget assumes, which means the 109 have done more than replace the 54.5 the school lost the year before; the count that sets the money is still Oct. 1.
Year two, the deck says, is about keeping them. It proposes search-engine and “AI optimization” content to reach parents earlier, a campaign calendar built around open houses and the school’s Casino Night, automation to relieve staff of the larger intake, and a first-semester “acclimation process” for new families. The board’s new three-year strategic plan sets the targets: 90% year-over-year retention, 80% re-enrollment by March 1, 90% of new families kept past their first year, and a hard look at what it calls the “leaky” transitions from fifth to sixth grade and from eighth to ninth. The same plan wants 5% to 10% of the budget to come from sources other than per-pupil revenue, a staff turnover rate under 18%, a facilities condition assessment for buildings it describes as aging, and a hybrid in-person-and-online program for secondary students, to be piloted through the school’s High Performance Program at a target cost per student of 60% of the traditional model.
Twenty-Seven in a Room
Monument Academy’s class-size rule is Policy JCS-MA, adopted in 2015 and last revised in February 2025. It is short. Half-day kindergarten is capped at 15 students, full-day kindergarten at 18, and “grades first through fifth have a maximum of 24 students. By exception, the administration may go up to, but not exceed, two additional students per classroom.” Grades six through twelve carry no limit at all, because band and chorus do not fit one. The policy’s stated purpose is to sustain enrollment and “provide its academic program in a collegial atmosphere of learning.”
Twenty-seven is beyond the exception, which is why the matter needed a board vote. According to Our Community News, Vinchattle told the board a fifth-grade teacher had resigned that week, giving notice at 10 a.m.; parents were told at 2 p.m. The option the administration chose was to fold five fifth-grade classes into four, at 27 students each, with a teacher’s aide added; he said teachers preferred larger rooms under experienced hands to a rushed hire, and that parents had come down on both sides. Board President Lindsay Clinton agreed, and the one-time waiver passed unanimously. The state counted 109 fifth-graders at the school last October and 102 fourth-graders, the cohort now in fifth grade; four rooms of 27 is 108.
For comparison, the Independent’s D38 series found that the district and the neighbor that kept its accreditation distinction staff their classrooms almost identically, at about 17 students per teacher. The charter’s cap has now been waived at the grade its own strategic plan names as a point where families leak away, the year before the move to the East Campus.
The Homeschool Program and Senate Bill 23
The Monument Academy Homeschool Partnership opened in the fall of 2024 in one classroom at the West Campus. Its founding documents, still posted on the school’s site, describe the model: homeschooled children in kindergarten through fifth grade attend one enrichment day a week, at no charge beyond a $50 materials fee, with “workshops, tutoring, clubs, or events held on Fridays” on top; families get a curriculum lending library and “access to 250 educational units ($250) to use toward their chosen curriculum”; the program hosts family field trips, skate nights and park days. The state pays for it. Colorado funds part-time homeschool students at half of a full-time pupil, and the FAQ says the program “utilizes designated per pupil allocated funds from the state of Colorado for all Partnership costs.” The October 2025 count found 64 children in it, or 32 funded pupils; the new budget assumes 48, which is 96 children at half time.
The law changed on May 28, when Gov. Jared Polis signed Senate Bill 26-023, the annual School Finance Act. Section 25 of the act writes a new section into the education code, C.R.S. § 22-33-104.3, governing “part-time programs for homeschool students.” Four of its provisions bear directly on Monument Academy’s program. A program “shall not, directly or indirectly, fund, reimburse, or subsidize a private activity or private purchase for a student or a student’s parent,” defined to include “activities, supplies, items, or materials of personal value that are generally not available to students in a local education provider’s regular full-time programs.” It may not enroll children who satisfy the compulsory-attendance law through a private or parochial school. It must verify eligibility by collecting a copy of each family’s notice of intent to homeschool, and keep it for the state. And it must operate inside its authorizing district’s boundaries, which for a district charter school means the district’s boundaries, unless the state or the host district signs off.
The Colorado Department of Education’s guidance on the new section spells out the first provision. Among its examples of what a program may no longer buy: ski passes, museum memberships, a computer the student keeps, and “funds to cover the family’s curriculum materials of choice.” That is the $250 allowance. The department also says the legislature meant to end programs that turn what a family would otherwise pay for into public school; a private class advertised at $200 for five weeks does not become fundable because a homeschool program enrolls the student. The statute reserves further rulemaking to the State Board of Education, which must adopt certification rules by Dec. 31 for the 2027-28 year and beyond.
Monument Academy’s response is the calendar the board approved on Aug. 20. The 2026-27 homeschool calendar sets student hours Monday through Thursday, 8:45 a.m. to 3:45 p.m., with 94 contact hours in the first semester and 97 in the second, above the 90 the state requires for half-time funding. Enrichment classes began Sept. 1. The calendar lists no Friday student hours. The school’s homeschool page now carries a notice-of-intent form beside the fee schedule, which lists the $50 materials fee and a voluntary “educational partner donation” of $100 to $200 by grade. The agenda item’s own summary describes the change as an “update to the Monument Academy Homeschool Program calendar due to new legislative rulings.” Vinchattle told the board, per Our Community News, that the state changes had ended the Friday experiences and the reimbursement of curriculum and experiences, that some families had left over the paperwork and the lost benefits, that enrollment had fallen from 100 into the 80s and recovered to 91 as other enrichment programs closed, and that he expected to get back to the previous level.
The closures are the other half of the story, and they have a local address. The bill was written, as Chalkbeat’s Ann Schimke reported in June, to close loopholes that let a Monument-based cooperative, Education reEnvisioned BOCES, authorize a statewide wave of homeschool enrichment programs that the state estimated would cost more than $100 million in 2025-26. The act bars a BOCES from operating outside its member districts, and by August ERBOCES was down to one, District 49. On Aug. 17, three days before Monument Academy’s board met, District 49’s board voted unanimously to dissolve it, citing state actions that had rendered it nonviable; the wind-down runs through the coming school year, and its homeschool programs, which Chalkbeat reports enrolled more than 8,000 students last year, are not being taken on by the district. Monument Academy’s program is a different animal: a district charter school running a program at its own campus, inside its own district. The boundary rule that has sent other programs to the state for approval does not, on the face of the statute, reach it. The private-purchase rule does, and the calendar shows the school knows it.
The Rest of the Agenda
The board also approved a three-year cooperative agreement with Pikes Peak State College for concurrent enrollment under the Concurrent Enrollment Programs Act, running from June 18, 2026, to June 30, 2029, under which ninth-graders and up may earn college credit in the college’s courses; the agreement names the school by its state entity name, Monument Charter Academy. It adopted a continuing-disclosure policy required by the Series 2026 bonds, naming Digital Assurance Certification as the agent that will post the school’s quarterly statements, budgets and audits to the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s EMMA system, where investors will read the same campus figures reported here. It created a full-time executive assistant to the executive director and board clerk at $20 to $22 an hour, adopted a new organizational chart, revised its elementary and middle-school uniform policies, and amended its bylaws. A therapy-dog proposal went to legal review. An agreement with Wember Inc. for owner’s-representative services on the performing-arts center passed; the center’s fund shows a $17 million pledge, $1 million received and $441,234 spent on architects and equipment, and the new budget appropriates $10.78 million for it. The school hopes to break ground in October.
The one voice at the meeting from outside the table, as Our Community News reported it, was a teacher’s. Amy Mackenzie thanked the board for a public-conduct policy and for considering a four-day week, and asked how the school would keep teachers who could earn more elsewhere for less work while it spent on consultants and they worried about a pay freeze. She suggested an endowment, an investment fund or a gala goal dedicated to annual raises. The board’s next regular meeting, the same report says, is Sept. 10 at the East Campus.
Sources & further reading
The Independent’s own coverage: School Spotlight: Monument Academy, on the high school’s 2020 reopening · School Spotlight: Monument Academy Middle School, where the East Campus’s grade-by-grade count was first reported · Four Million Dollars, Frozen, the D38 series article on the district’s override, of which Monument Academy receives $676,346 · D38’s Board Sets June Deadlines on Pay and Retention, the district board’s August meeting · School Starts Aug. 12 in D38, Aug. 11 at Monument Academy, with the school’s fees and calendar.
Enrollment: Lewis-Palmer School District 38, “First Day Student Count as of 8/12/2026” (Colorado Open Records Act release, on file with the Independent) · Colorado Department of Education, Pupil Membership statistics, 2025-26 school-level workbook.
Monument Academy financial documents: Financial Transparency page · 4th Quarter Financial Statements (Pre-Audit), FY 2025-26 · Monthly Financial Statements, June 2026 (Pre-Audit), with the campus-by-month detail and the ERTC adjustment · Mid-Year Budget FY 2025/26, with the Inkyma line · Approved Annual Budget FY 2026/27 · Audited Financial Statements FY 2024-25.
Aug. 20 board meeting record: Monument Academy board meetings (Simbli) · Inkyma, “Monument Academy Enrollment Growth: Year One Results” · Board 3 Year Strategic Plan 2026 · Recommendation for Extra Duty Pay · Continuing Disclosure Policy · Pikes Peak State College cooperative agreement · Executive Assistant job description · Policy JCS-MA: Class Size · Jackie Burhans, “Board moves forward on facility plans, hears marketing proposal” (Sept. 4, 2025) · “Board selects marketing firm, transfers funds” (Oct. 2, 2025) · “Board appropriates ERTC funds” (Oct. 30, 2025) · “MA retains BB- credit rating” (Jan. 1, 2026) · “Board hears marketing update, approves strategic plan,” Our Community News, Sept. 5, 2026 (print edition; the issue was not yet posted online when this article was prepared).
Homeschool program and state law: Monument Academy Homeschool Partnership · Partnership FAQ (2024) · 2026-27 Homeschool Program calendar · SB26-023, School Finance Act, signed May 28, 2026, Session Laws ch. 181; § 22-33-104.3 at Section 25 · CDE, “Part-Time Programs for Homeschool Students: Application and Requirements” · Ann Schimke, “Tighter rules, more oversight now govern homeschool enrichment in Colorado,” Chalkbeat, June 11, 2026 · Ann Schimke, “Controversial group that opened ‘Colorado’s first public Christian school’ will close after 13 years,” Chalkbeat, Aug. 18, 2026.
Methodology
Every dollar figure in this article comes from Monument Academy’s own documents, read in full: the 23-page fourth-quarter statements, the 24-page June monthly statements, the 57-page 2026-27 budget, the 63-page 2025-26 mid-year budget, and the management discussion in the 2024-25 audit. The campus split is the school’s, from the “School Financials” supplement, and it is unaudited; the school’s auditor will report on the 2025-26 year later this fall. The columns of that supplement are headed “FY 24/25” although every total reconciles to the 2025-26 general fund, and the Independent has treated the heading as an error carried forward from last year’s template. The first-day comparison converts District 38’s headcount to funded pupils using the ratios stated in the table note; the district’s table is a records release, not a published document, and the Independent holds a copy. Per-student figures are the Independent’s, calculated by dividing each campus’s revenue and spending by the state’s certified October 2025 headcount, and are rounded. The $243,000 figure is the reported surplus less the fourth-quarter reimbursement credit; the Independent derived it from the school’s own lines, and the school has not published it. Both budgets are scanned documents; their text was recovered by optical character recognition and every figure quoted was checked against the page image.
What was said at the Aug. 20 meeting, and at the board’s meetings of August through December 2025, is reported from the accounts by Jackie Burhans in Our Community News, and is attributed to that paper in the text. The school’s recording of the meeting could not be retrieved from its YouTube channel when this article was prepared. The Independent did not contact Monument Academy, Inkyma or the district for this article; it is built from the public record, and the school’s replies are welcome. The statute was read in the enrolled act; the department’s guidance was read on its website as updated Aug. 21, 2026.
