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 […]
Tag: Lewis-Palmer D38
Posted inSchools
The State Released 2026 Test Scores. Where D38 Finished Among Its Peers.
The state released its 2026 test results on Aug. 19. Adjusted for who each school teaches, the two schools at the extremes of D38 are not the ones the raw table names.
Posted inSchools
D38’s Board Sets June Deadlines on Pay and Retention
Lewis-Palmer’s school board adopted seventeen dated goals for 2026-27, two of which give it until June 2027 to find continuing revenue for employee compensation and to lift staff retention to the average of surrounding districts. The board also raised secondary meal prices, admitted a farm to its homeschool program, and pulled a $38,500 school-security design off the consent agenda.
Posted inSchools
School Starts Aug. 12 in D38, Aug. 11 at Monument Academy
Lewis-Palmer School District 38 opens to most students on Aug. 12, eighth graders on Aug. 13, and Monument Academy starts its youngest children on Aug. 11. Start dates, bell schedules, bus fees, meal prices and back-to-school events for 2026-27.
Posted inSchools
Safety Does Not Set Teacher Pay in El Paso County
Lewis-Palmer D38 and Cheyenne Mountain report almost the same rate of school behavior incidents. Cheyenne Mountain pays its teachers $8,484 more. What separates them is not safety but the size of the override their voters approved.
Posted inLocal News
Who We Are, by the Numbers: A Demographic Portrait of the Tri-Lakes
Median age 44.4, median household income of $160,525, 89 percent homeowners and a veteran share more than double the state rate. What the federal and state data say about who lives in the Tri-Lakes.
Posted inSchools
Four Million Dollars, Frozen
Lewis-Palmer D38’s voters approved a $4 million override in 1999 and have rejected every operating override since — seven of them. Inflation did the rest. In 2023 the district turned over 27.6% of its teachers, and the reason they gave most often was pay.
Posted inSchools
School Spotlight: Lewis-Palmer Middle School, the Bridge Every Ranger and Bear Crosses
School Spotlight is a Monument Independent series profiling the schools that serve Tri-Lakes families. Having walked through the four high schools, we drop down a level to the building almost every D38 student passes through on the way there: Lewis-Palmer Middle School, a compact two-year school in Woodmoor where the district’s future Rangers and Bears […]
Posted inSchools
A Quiet Downgrade: How D38 Lost Its “Distinction”
In 2025 Lewis-Palmer D38 was the only one of its high-performing neighbors to lose Colorado’s top rating. Not opt-outs, not apartments — a slow slide in student growth, and what a decade of data and the national research say actually explains it.
Posted inSchools
School Spotlight: Palmer Ridge High School, the Bears on the Hill
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 started at the beginning, with Lewis-Palmer. Now the school D38 built to relieve it: Palmer Ridge High School, the newer campus on Monument […]