Despite Opposition, Merit Academy Charter School’s Enrollment Increases
Even though a new wave of people has started embracing school choice, charter schools tend to have trouble getting approved by school districts. Merit Academy in Woodland Park was forced to jump through several hoops before it was chartered into the district.
But now the school is entering its third year this fall and its founders are pleased with the results. In fact, the school has become the talk of the town with some pleased with its existence and others seeing it as taking away resources from the district’s other schools.
As previously reported by The Maverick Observer, the Merit Academy was approved as a charter for the ’22-’23 school year after its application was denied by a previous school board. This fall, the Merit Academy will be starting its second school year sharing the Woodland Park Middle School building.
Despite being accepted by several members of the community, others still seem to think the charter school is being favored over others in the district. However, the new charter school has felt the same opposition that others in the state have also seen over the last several years.
Nonetheless, the school keeps growing in enrollment. It also keeps adding more programs to offer to its students. In its first year, the school also hosted two lectures by Thomas Krannawitter, one on the Declaration of Independence and the other on the problem of slavery in the founding of America.
Merit Academy Grows in Enrollment and Grades Offered
Woodland Park’s Merit Academy started its first year inside a rented building with only elementary and middle school grade levels offered. According to two of the school’s founders, Jason Ledlie and Gwynne Pekron, the school has grown in numbers and it has added a grade level each year.
“When we opened year one, we opened as a K-8 school,” said Ledlie, founder, and Vice President of the Board of Directors at Merit Academy. “The plan was that over four years we would build out to a K-12 school. In year two of operation, this year we were K-9 and we will be K-10 next year. We are working that trajectory over the next three years to be K-12.”
For the ’24-’25 school year they will also be adding pre-kindergarten to their lineup. They plan to be pre-K-11 that year and then pre-K-12 the following year.
This year, the school grew from two classes per grade from kindergarten through third grade, and next year they will have two classes per grade from kindergarten to eighth grade. “We started off year one and we had 187 full-time students and 70 home-school, part-time students in our programs,” said Pekron, founder and Head Master at Merit Academy. “This year we had 270 full-time and around 60 homeschooled. And then next year we are projecting to have somewhere between 370 and 380 full-time and then around 40 homeschoolers. We will eventually cap out. Our goal is to cap out at about 45 to 50 students per grade.”
Merit Adds Classes and Extra-Curricular Activities
For the ’22-’23 school year, Merit added math and English college courses for their full-time and homeschooled students. Next year, the charter school plans on adding more English and history college-level courses.
During the ’23-’24 school year they will also be adding Career Tech Education (CTE) to their curriculum. Students will have the chance to study construction and other trades. They will also be adding classes related to the livestock and agriculture industry.
One major new addition this year was to add Civil Air Patrol (CAP) to their curriculum. Ledlie said that CAP is popular in the Front Range due to the high presence of Air Force bases in the state. There are several CAP chapters in the Front Range, but heading west the group in Woodland Park is the last one until Utah.
This year, the school had 42 cadets with students traveling to Woodland Park from as far as Lake George and Fairplay over an hour west of the city. The local CAP chapter is school-integrated where students ages 12 to 18 participate in CAP as a part of their classes every Friday.
Recently, the cadets helped clean and polish the Dickson memorial statue at the city’s Memorial Park as a community service project. Some of the cadets also helped work security during the Air Force Academy’s graduation.
Every Friday, students at Merit have exploratory courses that include activities that students can choose from. “Students select from several options for the two-hour long blocks on Fridays that are very hands-on and oriented towards not just interest or careers, but they can give the students an idea or taste of something,” Pekron explained. “So we are always looking to expand those opportunities. We have jazz band, ukulele guitar, karate, CAP, theater, construction, and animal range sciences.”
Pekron said that the exploratory classes also grow with interest. Last year the band program was so popular that they added it to their Monday thru Thursday curriculum as an option.
The school also offers after-school activities like two choirs and a pep band that started this year. They also have an air rifle shooting club that trains students how to target shoot at the Olympic level.
Students at Merit Academy also have the choice to participate in sports at Woodland Park High School like football, swimming, track, and soccer. The school also wants to add a rugby team that could be coming next spring.
According to the school’s Head Master Pekron, they are always looking to grow and add more classes. She said that so far she thinks the school’s initial mission of keeping students in the district and attracting people to the Woodland Park area has been successful.
“We were looking over our enrollment for this year and 60 percent are in-district students who have gone to both schools in the district and Merit,” Pekron says. “And the other 40 percent are coming from outside the district whether they are local and they were commuting and are now coming back home, or they were homeschooled, or they actually live outside of the district and are choosing to go to Merit.”
