On the morning of Aug. 1, the founders of John Adams Academy (JAA) cut a gold ribbon outside their new school in Sterling Ranch and raised a flag on a 50-foot pole. One speaker after another called the building finished. Board vice chair Kim Gilmartin thanked the crowd for “standing here inside this completed school,” and Kurt Connolly, the developer’s representative, said the school had gone up “in under 12 months.”
Behind the speakers, the classrooms held no desks and no chairs, exposed wires hung from walls, and the entire second floor was closed to visitors. In the files of the Douglas County building department, the school had failed every final inspection it had taken.
The county has flunked JAA on its four most recent “final” inspections, covering the building, its heating and cooling, and its energy compliance. And while the county granted JAA a temporary occupancy permit for its opening event, it was restricted to the first floor, and it expired on Sunday, Aug. 2. Under state rule, the school cannot legally put a child inside until that changes, and as of Aug. 4, the school didn’t qualify for even the temporary permit that is the law’s bare minimum.
The school plans to open to students in 20 days.
It also built its first year budget on money it doesn’t yet have. The board-approved budget assumes an enrollment of about 410 students. The state, as of now, is paying for 275.
John Adams Academy is a tuition-free public charter school, funded with state money but run outside the local district, planning to teach kindergarten through 12th grade in Sterling Ranch. It follows a trademarked classical model, American Classical Leadership Education, shared with a charter network based in Roseville, California, and is the network’s first campus outside Northern California.
School-choice conservatives praise it, and critics call it religious and right-wing, a charge its founders reject. A Colorado Times Recorder review last year found the lessons drew on Christian-influenced texts, including “The 5,000 Year Leap,” and that teacher training came from Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian school in Michigan.
A budget built on students who aren’t enrolled
On June 18, weeks before the doors were set to open, John Adams Academy’s board adopted its first-year budget, $5.6 million, most of it from state money that follows each child to whatever school the child attends. That money only arrives if the seats fill, and to cover the budget, the school needs about 410 students, the same number it told its authorizer, the Colorado Charter School Institute (CSI), it needed to stay afloat.
But CSI funds the students it expects to actually enroll, not the seats a school hopes to fill. At 275, John Adams Academy will draw about $1.5 million less than its budget counts on, close to a quarter of the whole amount.
In the enrollment it verified to CSI at the end of June, John Adams Academy had confirmed 281 students in its records, 264 in its full-time kindergarten-through-eighth-grade classes and 17 in the part-time homeschool program. The homeschool students count as roughly half a pupil each for funding, so the verified rolls translated to fewer than 275 of the full-time-equivalent students the state pays for.
Kindergarten led with 41 verified students, followed by 32 in first grade, 29 in second, 29 in third, 27 in fourth, 35 in fifth, 30 in sixth, and 30 in seventh, which reached its 30-seat cap. Eighth grade had 11. The school had not yet enrolled a single high schooler, the grades its budget counts on it to add. In its application to CSI indicated, JAA’s plan showed 75 students for kindergarten and first grade, 50 students for grades 2-5, and 30 each for grades 6 & 7.
In a state survey of Colorado charter developers, about 80% said they hit their enrollment targets when their school opened. Among schools that miss, John Adams Academy’s gap isn’t the widest, but measured against its own spending plan, it stands out.
CSI’s benchmark states that a school’s funded pupil count, the number of students the state actually pays for, should land within 10% of what its budget assumes. John Adams Academy is about a third below, more than three times outside the range its own authorizer uses to judge financial health.
Asked how the school would balance a budget built for 410 students on funding for 275, John Adams Academy Headmaster Sarah Kiesewetter didn’t give a number. She said the school was “on track” and called the June budget “preliminary,” built on “conservative assumptions.” Academica did not respond to a request for comment.
Colorado counts each charter’s actual enrollment in October and adjusts its funding to match, so the number could still move in either direction.
The building hasn’t passed inspection
Douglas County inspectors first failed the John Adams Academy building on July 28. They came back July 30 and failed it again, noting the earlier “correction items are incomplete.” County records show the building still lacked sign-offs from the fire, electrical, and plumbing departments, and its emergency evacuation signs pointed people the wrong way.
Even a temporary occupancy permit, the law’s bare minimum, requires that a building “has passed the appropriate inspections, including fire inspections, that indicate there are no life safety issues.” John Adams Academy’s fire, electrical, and plumbing sign-offs are still outstanding.
The county’s report closes with one more correction item, about the elevator. At the ribbon-cutting, Connolly told the crowd the second floor was closed because an elevator key had failed. The county’s July 28 report describes an open inspection matter, not a stuck key.
Douglas County spokesperson Caroline Frizell said the certificate of occupancy is pending with the county and that ‘the building cannot be occupied without one.’ The county said its building and mechanical inspections are not yet approved, and that electrical and plumbing inspections are handled by the state.
The homeschool plan isn’t filling the seats
On May 19, CSI approved Amendment No. 1, adding a part-time homeschool program for kindergarten through eighth grade, capped at 108 students. The state pays for these students at about half the rate of a full-time child, so even a full program is a small revenue stream.
By mid-July, the program had 17 students, not the nearly 100 the headmaster had told the board in May were interested. And those numbers don’t come close to filling the roughly 135 empty full-time seats, or the $1.5 million hole they leave in the budget.
And the 2026 law that sets the school’s funding also, for the first time, limits who these programs can serve. A charter authorized by the state institute, rather than by a local district, can now enroll only homeschoolers who live in the district where its building sits. For John Adams Academy, that means only homeschoolers who live in Douglas County.
John Adams Academy is not the first CSI school to add a homeschool amendment while its enrollment ran short. Colorado Skies Academy added a homeschool and transportation amendment in the spring of 2025 and folded 16 days before its doors were set to open. CSI blamed ‘unanticipated financial developments’ for the abrupt closure
The plan for coming up short
If projected enrollment is 80% or less of the target, the school’s contract with CSI requires it to file a “minimum enrollment for viability” plan, a smaller budget and a written explanation. John Adams Academy filed one on May 29, with 221 students registered at the time, roughly half its target.
In it, the school told CSI it would “maintain their projected enrollment at 410 scholars,” then conceded in the same document that it had built a balanced budget “for 350 students in the event that we don’t meet our projected numbers.”
The filing said the school had “reduced the number of full-time exempt faculty to keep costs down,” even though CSI staff had warned in 2025 that its “salary assumptions” were already “a little low.”
Seven weeks after the school filed that viability plan, the Institute had still marked it “acceptance pending.” A second filing, an enrollment verification due July 17, arrived July 19, two days late.
Asked about the filings, CSI said in a written statement that the school submitted them all “by the required deadlines.” According to a public records request, its own compliance tracker shows otherwise.
CSI’s statement said it hasn’t issued a notice of breach, granted any waiver, or placed the school on an additional planning year. If actual enrollment falls below what the school needs to be financially viable, the contract says, “the School’s charter may be revoked.”
John Adams Academy oversight
Brenda Dickhoner sits on the board of the Colorado Charter School Institute, the state body that approved the school, tracks its contract, and can shut the school down if it falls short. She’s also secretary of the John Adams Academy board. That puts her on both sides of the same relationship, the regulator and the school it regulates.
And Dickhoner is chief executive of Ready Colorado, a conservative education advocacy group, where John Adams Academy founder Ellie Reynolds sits on the board, and founder Kim Gilmartin leads one of its initiatives. Dickhoner stepped aside from CSI’s board’s 2025 vote to approve the school but has stayed on both boards since. Asked how the school manages that overlap, and whether Dickhoner would recuse from any CSI decision involving it, Kiesewetter didn’t answer.
The overlap isn’t only on the board. Cortney Crouch owns Minerva Choice Advising, a one-person company she registered to a Golden home in 2023, and CSI’s file on John Adams Academy identifies her as the school’s enrollment consultant. On June 18, the board elected Crouch its treasurer and placed her on its finance committee, the group that reviews the budget.
Days later, Crouch was the school’s point of contact with CSI’s finance director on the funded count, the enrollment number that sets how much state money the school receives. So Crouch recruited those students, then she helped settle the count with CSI, and now she sits on the board seat that reviews the budget those same enrollment numbers support.
In March, Crouch recommended, and the board hired, Hoelting and Company as the school’s independent auditor. The firm has financial ties to Crouch on both sides. It reviews the books of a school whose authorizer file lists her company as its enrollment consultant, and it prepares the tax return for Golden View Classical Academy, another CSI-authorized charter school, where she is chief financial officer.
CSI’s own guidance tells its schools that a board member with a private interest in a school matter “must disclose such interest.” John Adam’s Academy’s board minutes show no such disclosure statement by Crouch.
Crouch didn’t respond to questions about who pays Minerva Choice Advising and how much, whether she disclosed her interest to the board and would recuse from votes touching her firm, and what she wanted readers to understand about her roles.
Back on Butte Creek Street
CSI said in a written statement that the campus was “on schedule” for its occupancy permit by July 31, based, it noted, “on the information provided by the school.” That day has come and gone. Then, Connolly told the crowd only that the school had passed its health inspection but still owed the health department a license and “a big check by Monday.”
The founders cut the gold ribbon and raised the flag, and the speakers called the work done, all while Douglas County Commissioner Kevin Van Winkle warned the audience that school choice still faced “detractors” and needed “constant vigilance.” Commissioner George Teal also attended. Out in the parking lot sat a shipping container and a portable toilet.
