By AMY BOUNDS | boundsa@dailycamera.com | Boulder Daily Camera
December 18, 2018 at 7:45 p.m.
Twin Peaks Charter student enrollment
2013: 1,044
2014: 1028
2015: 982
2016: 941
2017: 896
2018: 758
Twin Peaks Charter Academy, the St. Vrain Valley School District’s first charter school, is reaffirming its classical education roots in a bid to reverse declining enrollment.
After adding a high school in 2011, the Longmont school’s enrollment topped out at 1,044 students in 2013. Enrollment declines started the next year, with Twin Peaks losing a total of 286 students over the next five years.
This fall, enrollment was down to 758 students, with most of the loss happening at the elementary level. Elementary enrollment is down to 378 students — the lowest since at least 2009.
Twin Peaks Director Joe Mehsling, who’s in his third year at the school and previously worked as the principal at St. Vrain’s Altona Middle School, said he found a charter school that had become a “neighborhood school lite.”
Without the resources of a school district, he said, charter schools need to offer something different to attract students.
“We weren’t fulfilling our niche,” he said. “A classical school is a very unique niche we can fill in Longmont.”
While the school promised a classical education, he said, it wasn’t delivering. Academics also were suffering, as seen by a drop is test scores.
The school lost a wave of families unhappy that Twin Peaks wasn’t providing the education they signed up for, he said.
Then, he said, after the school increased its academic rigor and toughened discipline last school year, more families left over the summer because that wasn’t what they wanted.
“We were doing what we said we were going to do,” he said.
To re-establish Twin Peaks as a classical school, he said, he visited other classical charter schools and is modeling Twin Peaks largely on two in Fort Collins: Ridgeview Classical Schools and Liberty Common School.
The main changes were adding a preschool last year and Latin this year, as well as delivering on the promises in the original 1997 charter, including teaching phonics for reading, cursive handwriting and algorithmic based math.
He said the K-8 Core Knowledge curriculum, with its emphasis on learning facts and knowledge, fits well with the classical school model.
Latin, he added, is a cornerstone of classical schools.
Twin Peaks starts exposing students to Latin in the early elementary grades. Fourth- and fifth-graders have a Latin class that focuses on vocabulary and grammar, while sixth- and seventh- graders will take Latin 1 and Latin 2.
The middle school Latin classes will be a graduation requirement starting with this year’s third-graders. Still to be decided is if high schoolers will take Latin or another foreign language.
Unlike St. Vrain’s neighborhood schools, Mehsling said, Twin Peaks also won’t use one-to-one technology devices with students.
He said he was uncomfortable when the district began rolling out its one-to-one iPad initiative at Altona, fearing that “computers and screens were taking the place of teachers and books.”
He said he is seeing renewed interest in the school as its classical education identity is becoming established.
Open enrollment for kindergarten for the next school year is strong, he said, with the possibility that the school will need to start a wait list after the holiday break if all of the 100 spots are filled.
About 20 to 30 students also are interested in enrolling in the middle and high school next year. Generally, about half of the eighth-graders continue on to the high school, opening up spots for new students.
“We’re attracting families,” Mehsling said. “I have high hopes and expectations that our enrollment will rebound.”
Amy Bounds: 303-473-1341, boundsa@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/boundsa
Caption: Latin instructor Walker Bailey helps fifth-grader Lucien Cooper during class Tuesday at Twin Peaks Charter Academy.
Caption: Fifth-grader Idgie Mott works on an assignment Tuesday in Latin class at Twin Peaks Charter Academy.