Riverstone Academy: How Colorado’s Public Christian School Opened and Closed

Riverstone Academy lasted one school year, but its short run exposed how a religious school could enter Colorado’s public system through gaps in state law and cautious decisions by local and state officials. The school closed, its legal challenge faded, and lawmakers restricted the route used to create it. Yet the questions it raised about public money and religious education remain in play.

The school opened in Pueblo County less than three months after the U.S. Supreme Court deadlocked in May 2025 on an Oklahoma case that could have changed whether religious charter schools may receive public funding. The 4-4 decision left the existing prohibition in place. Soon afterward, Colorado lawyer Brad Miller helped an education group he represented set up Riverstone, according to emails. The school enrolled 30 students in kindergarten through fifth grade and taught a religious curriculum with what its website described as “a Christian foundation.”

Riverstone became a test of the same basic dispute the Supreme Court had left unresolved: whether public education funds can support a school organized around religious teaching. Its supporters framed the issue as access for families who want a Christian education but cannot afford private tuition. Critics saw a public school using taxpayer funds to teach religious doctrine, with local decisions made behind closed doors.

A rapid opening, followed by a costly year

Riverstone began in a low, white cinderblock building in an industrial part of Pueblo County. Its leader was pastor Quin Friberg, who had previously said on a Christian talk show that “we’d be far better off without public education,” according to Colorado Public Radio.

The school’s authorization sparked three lawsuits, a $20,000 settlement with a student’s family, and the resignation of a local school board member involved in its approval. The settlement was reported by Chalkbeat; the board member’s resignation was covered here. Those disputes added to the broader argument over religious freedom, school choice and what the public is entitled to know about schools receiving public funds.

Riverstone closed after its first school year, following passage of a state law that tightened rules for its unusual authorizer. The school’s closure came as lawmakers restricted the authorizer’s powers. A religious liberty lawsuit Miller helped initiate, which Alliance Defending Freedom did not join, also ended without a resolution, as the case’s filing and its eventual withdrawal showed.

The legal stakes had been visible from the start. On April 30, 2025, Miller attended oral arguments at the Supreme Court in the Oklahoma case as a guest of attorneys from Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group. After the justices split evenly, emails show that he worked with a client to pursue a new route for testing the funding question in Colorado.

Local structures created an opening

Riverstone’s authorizer was Education reEnvisioned Board of Cooperative Educational Services, known as ERBOCES. Colorado has 21 such public education cooperatives, which generally provide services such as special education to school districts. ERBOCES instead used its authority to approve a new school. The path was unusual, and state law left room for disagreement about what the co-op could authorize.

ERBOCES was led by Ken Witt, a conservative education figure who had previously been covered by Colorado Public Radio. Miller served as its lawyer. The co-op’s unelected board authorized Riverstone in a five-minute meeting. Witt did not respond to requests for comment.

The local school board, Pueblo County School District 70, also approved Riverstone without publicly disclosing that it would be a Christian academy. Miller represented the district as well as ERBOCES. A few weeks before the board’s June 2025 vote, he had raised the idea in an email marked “PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL,” according to the document.

Miller described his role as legal counsel, not as the person who created the school. “I provide answers as to whether something is legal, what the risks are, if it’s questionable, and I’m not the creator of these sorts of … I’m just a lawyer,” he said.

Riverstone also needed a school code from the Colorado Department of Education to operate as a state-recognized public school. A Chalkbeat investigation found that nearly two dozen state employees discussed the application. After days of debate and a meeting with an assistant attorney general, the department granted the code. Officials were concerned that refusing it could expose the state to a lawsuit.

Politics and public access shaped the response

Pueblo County had long been a Democratic stronghold, but its politics were shifting. Forging Pueblo, a group co-founded by Friberg in 2018, worked to elect conservative candidates to city councils, county commissions and school boards. Its membership included local churches and individuals seeking to bring a Christian worldview into public institutions.

Former Democratic state lawmaker Daneya Esgar said the group focused on local boards and commissions before seeking larger political offices. “They’ve actually been very smart about it,” she said. “They didn’t just start off with going after all the ‘big’ political seats. They’ve been stacking boards and commissions for a few years with their people.” Esgar also pointed to the decline of local media, saying residents had “no idea what’s happening with their government.”

Parents Hannah McDowell and Chris Sutton, whose children attend or attended District 70 schools, said the board and Miller had tested public access and transparency rules over time. “They incrementally tested those boundaries … and found that even with some pushback, they were successfully getting what they wanted,” McDowell said. She viewed that pattern as part of what made Pueblo a viable place to launch Riverstone. Friberg did not respond to requests for comment.

Ronda Rein, District 70’s former superintendent, opposed the school’s approval. She worried that disclosing its religious character could cost her job because Miller had marked his email confidential. Still, she contacted state officials in July 2025 in the hope they would scrutinize the application. During a three-minute call, she learned that department officials already knew Riverstone would be religious and planned to issue its school code.

Rein said she felt the district and state were both “in a rock and a hard spot” and believed the school could not be stopped. Looking back, she said district officials had been complicit by keeping the school’s religious nature from the public, but also felt they had been misled: “I felt like we were all bamboozled. Brad Miller is a very good puppeteer of his boards.”

Miller disputed that characterization. “I don’t know what she intended by that characterization, and I’ve heard it recited in other media, but I’ve never voted on a school board action, and I don’t think I’ve got the power to influence the way people suspect I might,” he said.

The argument outlasts the school

A judge later ruled that concealing Riverstone’s religious identity during the approval process violated state law, according to Chalkbeat. The episode prompted lawmakers to restrict the co-op route that had enabled the school. That makes a repeat of Riverstone’s launch less straightforward, but it doesn’t settle the national dispute. Another Oklahoma charter school case remains in the courts, while a federal tax credit scholarship program has renewed interest in how public policy may support private education. Chalkbeat has reported on the scholarship program.

For McDowell, Riverstone reinforced the case for keeping public schools secular. She supports children reading religious texts and exploring different traditions, but said public schools shouldn’t teach one faith as the truth.

Pastor Bryan Kelsen, whose church housed Riverstone for four months after safety problems forced it from its first building, sees a more complicated balance. He believes families seeking Christian education should have access to a tuition-free option, provided families who prefer secular education have a comparable choice. But public money brings public control, he said: “When you take the money, you give up the ability to make the decisions because he who holds the purse strings is also the one who is deciding how that money gets spent.”

Rein, who is both a Christian and a conservative, argues that religious instruction belongs outside publicly funded schools. “I feel like if we open up this Pandora’s box, then we are opening it up to fund all religions, and I think that that really gets sticky,” she said.

Kelsen remains a supporter of District 70, where some of his children graduated. Riverstone did, however, prompt his growing church to consider building a school. He said the church is more interested in Christian education now than it was before the academy opened, though he would probably not seek public funding for a church school.

That may be Riverstone’s lasting effect: it made a theoretical national dispute concrete for one Colorado community, then showed how quickly an experimental school can force decisions about transparency, public authority and religious teaching. The school is gone, but the pressure to define those boundaries continues.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Ann at [email protected].