School Spotlight: Lewis-Palmer High School, the Original Ranger

School Spotlight is a Monument Independent series profiling the schools that serve Tri-Lakes families — every D38 school, plus The Classical Academy, the D20 charter that many Monument students call home. We start where Monument’s school story started: Lewis-Palmer High School.

If you grew up here, “Lewis-Palmer” isn’t just a high school — it’s the original. High school instruction in Monument dates to 1917, and the Lewis School, built in 1920 and named for district founder Inez Johnson Lewis, educated generations before the current campus opened on Higby Road in 1980. For decades, LP was the town’s high school, full stop. Then Palmer Ridge opened in 2008, the Tri-Lakes got a crosstown rivalry, and every relocating family inherited the same dinner-table debate. More on that below.

Academics: top tier, with an asterisk

By Colorado standards, LP is an academic standout. On state testing, roughly 80% of students are proficient in reading and writing against a state average around 45% — and the school’s 92% graduation rate beats Colorado’s ~82% comfortably. SchoolDigger places LP in the top 5% of Colorado schools; the state’s accountability system gives it a Performance Plan rating, the highest tier; and D38 as a whole is one of just 17 districts statewide Accredited with Distinction.

The asterisk is math. About 55–59% of LP students test proficient — still far above the state’s dismal 33%, but a visible step behind the school’s own reading numbers. (Self-reported SAT averages on Niche run around 1230, against a national average near 1024; official school-level SAT means are published by CDE and we’ll update this profile when the 2026 file drops.) Colorado gives every 11th grader the SAT, so there’s no opt-in inflation in these numbers — what you see is the whole junior class.

AP, concurrent enrollment, and the new Career & Innovation Center

About 47% of LP students take at least one AP course, with offerings spanning the usual suspects across English, math, sciences, and social studies (the full list lives in the LPHS course handbook, linked on the school site). Students can also bank real college credit through concurrent enrollment with UCCS ($175 per credit hour) and Pikes Peak State College.

The newest feather in D38’s cap sits a mile from campus: the Career & Innovation Center on Synthes Avenue, opened August 2025, where about 200 students from both district high schools study welding, advanced manufacturing, homebuilding, aerospace engineering, healthcare, and computer science. For a district that spent years watching career-tech students drive to Colorado Springs, it’s a big deal — and the school board has already approved expanded coursework for next year.

The AP roster isn’t the only path through Lewis-Palmer. The school runs a full slate of career and technical education — from a Career Start cosmetology track with the International Salon and Spa Academy to certifications that travel straight into the workforce — and it offers a district online-school option for students whose training, performing, or family schedules don’t fit a standard bell. Paired with the Career & Innovation Center a mile away, it gives a college-prep school a genuinely vocational second gear, and it means a Ranger can graduate with a cosmetology license or a semester of college credit already banked.

Sports: hang a banner, any banner

The Rangers compete in the Pikes Peak Athletic Conference, and two programs border on dynasty. Girls volleyball owns nine state championships, including four straight 4A titles from 2016–2019 (the last of those won, deliciously, over Palmer Ridge). Boys basketball has five state titles — a perfect 28-0 season in 2019, another championship in 2022 — and this March made the 5A Final Four after moving up to Colorado’s biggest classification, falling 51-47 to Silver Creek. The girls wrestling team, meanwhile, ran the conference undefeated in 2025.

The full menu runs 20+ varsity sports: football, baseball, softball, soccer, basketball, volleyball, cross country, track, tennis, golf, swim/dive, ice hockey, lacrosse, wrestling (boys and girls), cheer, and poms, with field hockey, gymnastics, and girls lacrosse offered as co-ops with Palmer Ridge. Yes, the two rivals share teams in some sports. It’s very Tri-Lakes: feud on Friday, carpool on Saturday.

Clubs: from robots to lumberjacks

The club list rewards browsing: DECA, HOSA, Science Olympiad, Speech & Debate, National Honor Society, and the district-wide Bearbotics FIRST robotics team anchor the résumé-builders, alongside Esports, Combat Robotics (robots, but angrier), WISE (Women Interested in Science & Engineering), Outdoor Adventures, Rock Climbing, a Mountain Bike club, and — our favorite discovery — the Lumberjack Club, because this is Colorado and somebody has to throw axes competitively. The Ranger Tutoring Center, a peer-tutoring operation, has logged more than 4,000 sessions since 2021, and the Student Council was recently recognized by the state. Performing arts run through a dedicated pathway — band, choir, orchestra, and a theatre program that comes with its own resident ghost, according to student lore we are choosing not to fact-check.

What LP does well

The fundamentals are genuinely strong: top-decile academics, a 92% graduation rate, championship athletics, an engaged community, and a Niche survey in which 86% of students say their teachers genuinely care — a stat that’s hard to fake. The gifted-and-talented program drew a “high performing” review in a recent state audit. And traditions run deep: painted senior parking spots, Senior Sunset, Ranger Round Up for freshmen, and a 3.75-GPA study-hall exemption charmingly called “Responsible Rangers.”

Where there’s room to improve

Three themes recur in the data and in parent/student reviews. Teacher retention: roughly one in five LP teachers is in their first or second year, average district salary trails the region, and “my favorite teacher left” is the single most common review complaint — a problem D38 has wrestled with since a teacher-pay mill levy override narrowly failed in 2022. Class sizes: the 22:1 student-teacher ratio sits well above the 16:1 national average, a direct consequence of Colorado’s bottom-ten national rank in school funding ($10,691 per pupil spent here vs. $17,834 nationally). Math scores: good relative to the state, but the school’s own reading numbers prove the ceiling is higher. Facilities draw a B grade — the campus is a 1980 building doing 2026 work — though the new Career & Innovation Center takes some pressure off.

One advantage never shows up in the test scores: you can actually get in. Lewis-Palmer is D38’s neighborhood high school for much of Monument — about 1,144 students, fed by Lewis-Palmer Middle School — and the district’s open-enrollment and choice policies let families outside the immediate boundary request a seat as space allows, with no lottery and no waitlist. In a Tri-Lakes market that now includes a charter with more than 5,000 names waiting for a chair, being a school a family can simply enroll in this fall is its own kind of feature — and one reason the LP-versus-Palmer-Ridge decision is a real choice rather than a hopeful application.

The question every Monument parent asks: LP or Palmer Ridge?

Both are A-range schools, and D38 families effectively choose (LP even runs student-led tours for the deciders). Palmer Ridge edges LP in the US News rankings and Niche grades; LP counters with deeper history, the bigger trophy case, and — its partisans insist — more school soul per square foot. Our honest read: you’re picking between two of the best public high schools in the Pikes Peak region, and the right answer is the one whose culture fits your kid. We’ll give Palmer Ridge the same full-spotlight treatment soon, and you can referee.

Flavor file

Notable alumni include NBA forward Pat Garrity, CU Buffs star Josh Scott, MLS goalkeeper Bobby Burling, and actor Derek Theler. The school’s motto is “Expect the Best”; its colors mean every October the building is, conveniently, already decorated for Halloween. And in legal trivia, LP was the subject of Corder v. Lewis Palmer, a 2009 federal appeals case about a valedictorian’s graduation speech that still shows up in First Amendment casebooks.

Sources & further reading

The Independent’s own coverage: our companion profiles of Palmer Ridge, Monument Academy, and The Classical Academy.

Enrollment, scores & rankings: NCES Common Core of Data (2024–25); Colorado Department of Education SchoolView and performance frameworks; US News Best High Schools (2025); Niche (2026); GreatSchools; SchoolDigger.

Athletics: CHSAA results, via the Colorado Springs Gazette and Colorado Preps.

School site: lewispalmer.org/o/lphs.

Statistics reflect the most recent year published per source. Spotted an error or have a Lewis-Palmer story we should know? Email [email protected].

Next in the series: Palmer Ridge High School.