Skyview Academy

This school’s strength is with the basic elementary school academics. They do a solid job moving kids along with math, writing, and reading. The science and social studies aspects of the elementary school program are unimaginative. The school requires fourth and fifth graders to read some rather uninspiring novels, which turned off our kid from reading for quite some time. They have much teacher turnover at the elementary school level and some very talented educators have recently left the school. There has been three elementary school principals in the last three years. That’s probably not an indication of anything good.
The upper school (grades 6 – 12) is not as good. Middle school students have few choices for classes and no honors or advanced options. Few of the classes are challenging for kids who are above the mean in their academic performance. The science program at the middle school appears to involve a lot more talking about science by the teacher than students actually doing science.
The administration has tended to react slowly, if at all, to bullying and has, in our experience, had to be forcefully pushed to act even slowly. Kids at the middle school level are focused much more on material items and the small ways that they can distinguish their clothing and other personal adornnments from one another (it’s a uniform school) than they are on the joy of learning. That’s not a criticism of them, as trying to fit in with peers is normal for that age group, but the school’s administration does not seem to notice that most of the middle school kids seem to be utterly bored by school most of the time.
The culture of the school seems to be highly geared toward parents and families who are wealthy or think they are; the more money you give, the more your voice is heard. The board of directors and administrators mostly share «happy talk» when they communicate with parents; problems and challenges are not discussed with parents and the board pretty much refuses to respond to parent efforts to communicate concerns (that is, unless the parent is an «insider.»). Parent requests or questions about how or why the school is run in the way that it is, or about practices in the classroom and by administrators, are not welcomed.
This year, the apparent tendency to divide parents who have from parents who don’t have has been manifested in a limousine service sponsored by the school. In years past, contributions at an annual fund raising event called «The Big Event» were seemingly used by the board and administrators to keep track of who gives what.
The school was sued for promoting evangelical Christianity on campus; the case settled in a manner quite favorable to the plaintiffs. Diversity is there, but there is definitely an undercurrent of the school trying to be a charter K-​12 version of the big religious high school in HIghlands Ranch.
All in all, the school has a strength in elementary math, writing, and reading and its weakness is an elitist culture and a remote, unfriendly administration that is not particularly responsive either to the children’s needs or to parents.