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Who we are

Overview & History

Aspen View Academy (AVA) is a public, Pre-K-8th grade Douglas County School District charter school.  We are tuition-free, and serve the parents, children, community and residents of Castle Rock and south Douglas County. Aspen View Academy received formal charter approval from the DCSD Board of Education on August 7, 2012 and a 5-year charter renewal in 2016.

 

Aspen View Academy started as a core group of founding parents in the Summer of 2011 that broke ground for this beautiful building on October 21, 2012. The AVA community is grateful to the generous partnership of Douglas County School District for granting this land for this charter public school. AVA’s strong financial position today was helped substantially by this favorable partnership. The founding board had a vision to develop a new charter school in Castle Rock to serve the needs of the community by offering choice to parents seeking an alternative to their neighborhood school through the use of Core Knowledge backed by a solid and complete character education program.

 

We follow the Core Knowledge Sequence which has proven to be so successful in other schools, adding an emphasis on mathematics, technology, and language arts within a balanced learning environment.

 

Core Values

  • Wisdom: choosing the best long-term outcomes and reverse-engineering the means to produce them
  • Excellence: to excel at that which matters most by continuously finding ways to take it to the next level
  • Innovation: wise change that leads to excellence
 

Holistic Student Outcomes

Aspen View Academy’s focus on the whole student is a major distinctive that sets our program apart from other charter schools and district-led neighborhood schools.

What students actually experience is the single most important aspect of any school. Students are growing, developing, and changing every day. The school experience is crucial to their formation, not only as young scholars but also as whole persons.

 

AVA’s thoughtful mission and vision uphold a balanced approach to education that considers students as whole-persons. This commitment is fleshed out intentionally in AVA’s well-rounded program. Specifically, this balanced, whole-student approach is reverse-engineered to deliver the following student outcomes:

  • Heart: capturing students’ hearts by cultivating a positive environment, building relational capacity, engaging students through active participation in the learning process, and intentionally designing what students will value as a result of each unit and lesson.
  • Head: appreciating great content together, teaching students to pursue truth in every field of study, instructing for understanding, growing well-rounded, culturally literate young scholars, and protecting what students will know as a result of their studies at AVA by delivering a guaranteed and viable curriculum.
  • Hands: individually coaching the development of important skills, gauging students’ level of understanding throughout the lesson, adjusting instruction in response to students’ current skill-level, and providing differentiated intervention to support each student’s growth.
  • Habits: shaping healthy interpersonal (character) an intrapersonal (leadership) patterns of thought and action that predict long-term success in life, empowering students as self-governing young leaders, and cultivating an environment that expects R.E.S.P.E.C.T.