Stargate School

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Stargate School is a charter school for gifted and talented education that was founded in 1994 in the Adams County, Colorado Five Star School District. The name Stargate as used in association with this school come from using the Star from the District name and appending the letters GATE from the words Gifted And Talented Education.

The school started from humble beginnings and has been in a number of rented buildings. It currently has its own campus which was expanded for the Fall, 2007 school year. The expansion includes a gymnasium and a middle-school wing.

History:

Stargate School was started in 1994 by Nancy Hall and Doug Morrow in part as a response to the cut in gifted education funding within District 12. The first day of school for approximately 125 students was August 29th, 1994. Volunteers, led mostly by parents whose children would be attending the new charter school, contributed hundreds of hours of effort in making this new school successful. Stargate school was first housed in the Eastlake, CO campus building that was over 90 years old at the time. It moved to a shopping center location later. Finally, Stargate school broke ground for a building late in 2002. The current school building is located in Thornton, CO just north of 128th Ave North and Colorado Blvd. The building opened for the 2003-2004 school year. The building has since been expanded and the new gymnasium and extra classrooms have been completed in time for the 2007-2008 school year.

Admission:

Admission requirements include standardized testing to qualify students for admission. Students must have standardized testing which shows they have an IQ of at least 125. The qualification process also includes parent, teacher, and possibly self nomination forms to help identify qualifying students for Stargate admission.

For those students that do qualify for admission, there has traditionally been a waiting list for seats in the classes. The waiting list is sorted by factors including:

  • Whether the applicant has a sibling currently enrolled
  • Whether the applicant is a child of a qualified Stargate employee
  • Whether the applicant lives within the School District

The waiting list has traditionally been sorted within these priority groups by the date of application submission. The admission policy changed starting with the admissions process for the 2008-2009 school year, with the current waiting lists being grandfathered in under the new program. Under the new program, after the current waiting lists have been exhausted, a lottery system will be used to offer open seats to the pool of students on the waiting list. It is not currently clear whether a waiting list for one year will be given priority over students applying for the next grade in the coming year. For example, if a student was on the wait list for kindergarten in Fall 2008 and another student applied for first grade for the Fall 2009 year, it is not yet clear if the lottery would apply equally to both students for first grade or if the student who applied the year previous would have priority.

Philosophy:

Stargate School is dedicated to providing quality education to identified intellectually gifted students.

Controversy:

Arguments against Stargate or schools like Stargate are varied. Some feel that taking advanced students out of the schools of residence will disadvantage regular students and create (or enforce) a class system. Arguments of this type cite the intellectual, financial, and parental involvement benefits that are lost to the regular schools when students of this caliber are removed from the schools. Arguments for Stargate, and schools like Stargate often cite the individual needs of students who tend to learn at a pace that is advanced compared to most of the other students in regular classrooms. Such students often are held back from pursuing accelerated learning when teachers generally focus on the majority of students and must give special attention to those who are stuggling to keep up. Often gifted students are not given the opportunities or attention required to meet their individual needs. Advocates state that the benefit to the individual gifted students is worth the general benefit lost to the regular school. The financial aspect of the question comes down to Stargate getting the same funding from the state per student that the district gets for those same students.