Seating in Colorado BCD is used for our meals. 

Your school finds the perfect building. The location works, the board is excited, and the opportunity seems ideal. But can you afford it? Finance it? Are your enrollment trends strong enough? What should you have done two years ago to prepare?

Facility readiness begins long before the right property becomes available.

This interactive workshop helps charter school leaders assess the organizational foundations that shape their facility and financing options. Explore six interconnected areas of readiness: governance, enrollment, academics, finance, operations, and facility planning.

Using real-world scenarios and a Facility + Capital Readiness Assessment, evaluate whether your school is Emerging, Developing, or Ready in each area.

Identify strengths, gaps, and risks, then begin developing a 6–12-month readiness plan with priorities, questions for your board and leadership team, and practical next steps to prepare for future opportunities.

New rules. Increased scrutiny. Real funding risks. Colorado charter schools offering homeschool enrichment and online learning face significant changes following SB26-023 and the State Board of Education’s final rules for part-time homeschool programs, effective in 2027–28. Explore new eligibility requirements, funding restrictions, geographic limitations, authorization processes, and the latest CDE guidance.

Through real-world partnership agreements and CDE audit examples, examine what makes instruction fundable, where programs face compliance risks, and how contracts with nonprofit operators and partner schools can protect both funding and accountability. The session will also address growing legislative scrutiny of online school funding and its potential implications.

Put your knowledge to the test in an interactive “Fund It or Flag It?” polling exercise, then work with peers to strengthen sample partnership clauses. Leave with a practical checklist to help your school prepare for the new requirements.

Few relationships shape a charter school's success as much as the one between its board chair and executive director. When it works, it strengthens governance, stabilizes leadership, and builds trust. When it doesn't, the dysfunction can ripple throughout the school community.

Designed for board chairs and school leaders—ideally attending as pairs—this highly interactive session tackles three common challenges:

Communication: Distinguishing private Chair–ED conversations from full board discussions.
Evaluation: Building fair, evidence-based ED evaluation and contract-renewal processes that meet Colorado's legal requirements.
Board meetings: Planning agendas focused on governance and meaningful decisions rather than staff reporting.

Through realistic scenarios and hands-on exercises, participants will explore a six-part partnership framework and five ready-to-use tools, including an evaluation calendar. Leave with a concrete 30-day action plan to strengthen your leadership partnership.
 

Recognizing warning signs of gun violence and knowing how to respond are critical components of school safety. This interactive training from the Colorado Department of Law introduces educators to Colorado's Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) law and other preventive measures.

Designed for teachers, administrators, counselors, and school threat assessment teams, the session covers:

Recognizing warning signs: Identify risk factors for gun violence and understand how to work with school threat assessment teams.
Understanding ERPOs: Learn the basics of Colorado's law, including step-by-step guidance, best practices, and practical tips for the petition process.
Addressing specific risks: Examine limited circumstances involving teen dating violence when firearm access increases risk.

Through scenarios, case studies, and practical tools, gain knowledge to support appropriate preventive responses. Participants will also receive information about additional virtual training opportunities for school staff.

The relationship between an executive director and business manager can make or break a charter school. When the partnership is strong, trust, communication, and shared leadership help keep school operations running smoothly. When it becomes strained, the consequences can ripple throughout the organization.

Drawing on real-world experiences and lessons learned at Prospect Ridge Academy, two school leaders will explore the challenges and opportunities within this critical partnership. They will examine how differences in priorities, communication styles, and expectations can affect decision-making, financial oversight, and day-to-day operations.

Gain insights into what makes this relationship work, where potential pitfalls lie, and how executive directors and business managers can build a stronger, more collaborative partnership that supports their school's long-term success.

Schools are filled with important work—academics, SEL, behavior systems, counseling, professional development, and student support. But even well-designed initiatives can fall short when implemented in isolation. The individual pieces may be strong. The system connecting them is where the work begins to break down.

In this interactive workshop, examine how to move beyond disconnected initiatives by exploring three questions:

What are people actually experiencing? Look beyond programs and policies to understand students' and staff members' daily experiences.
What is underneath what we're seeing? Identify the structures, routines, expectations, and adult practices contributing to challenges.
What can we change within our school's reality? Find opportunities to strengthen alignment without adding another initiative.

Through a practical systems-mapping exercise, examine a challenge from your own school and identify a focused next step for creating more consistent, sustainable impact.

What began as a $7.5 million school expansion grew to exceed $10 million, with construction delays pushing back occupancy and forcing students into temporary learning spaces. For Challenge to Excellence Charter School (C2E), keeping a K–8 school running while managing a major construction project has brought some hard-earned lessons.

Executive Director and Principal Liz Dougan and School Development Manager Katie Novak share a candid account of what happened, what they learned, and what they would do differently.

Hear how C2E navigated financing shortfalls, tighter cash flow, and unexpected delays, with critical support from more than $800,000 in Great Schools Colorado grants. Explore lessons in contingency planning, coordinating with project partners, preparing temporary learning spaces, and communicating changing timelines to families and staff.

Through an interactive expansion scenario, consider how your school would respond to unexpected costs and delays, and identify planning strategies for future facilities projects.

Every charter school has dedicated people spending hours pulling reports, tracking special education deadlines, identifying students at risk of leaving, and matching students with teachers. Much of that work involves sorting through spreadsheets, student information systems, and inboxes. That's the grunt work AI should be handling so staff can focus on students.

In this hands-on session, explore AI strategies that have improved student support, advising, placement, retention, and special education compliance. Then conduct a quick time audit of your school's workflows, sorting tasks into three categories:

AI should handle it.
AI should assist a person.
The work should remain human.

Examine equity and privacy considerations before using student data, and learn to distinguish real solutions from impressive demos. Leave with a practical, one-semester plan to test an AI-supported improvement at your school.

Even well-designed change initiatives can stall when leaders misunderstand the reasons behind resistance. Concerns about autonomy, competence, security, and connection often play a role, but individual motivations are more complex.

This session introduces Primary Human Goods, a research-informed framework that identifies 11 fundamental needs influencing human motivation and well-being, including knowledge, agency, relationships, community, creativity, and inner peace. Rather than treating resistance as an obstacle to overcome, learn to recognize what individuals or teams may fear losing and tailor change conversations accordingly.

Through a case example, examine how specific human goods influence resistance in a real-world scenario. Then use a practical priority inventory to identify which needs matter most to members of your own team.

Leave with a coaching tool for navigating resistance and leading more responsive, human-centered conversations when implementing changes in school policy or practice.

Successful change requires more than a compelling vision. It takes shared beliefs, clear expectations, and systems that turn ideas into consistent practice.

In this interactive workshop, learn a four-pillar framework for leading complex organizational change:

Vision: Establish an aspirational destination.
Beliefs: Ground mindsets and practices in research.
Stakeholder actions: Define what success looks like at every organizational level.
Implementation: Align systems, professional development, coaching, and progress monitoring with the vision.

Examine real-world examples of curriculum and instructional coaching overhauls, then join a working group focused on curriculum migration, instructional coaching, AI integration, or a challenge specific to your school.

Through guided prototyping and peer feedback, begin drafting a framework for your own change initiative. Leave with a concrete starting point and a roadmap for building alignment, engaging stakeholders, and sustaining meaningful change.

Effective MTSS requires more than having interventions in place. It takes a cohesive, data-driven system that connects Tier 1 core instruction, Tier 2 targeted interventions, and Tier 3 individualized supports to meet the needs of diverse learners.

This practical workshop explores strategies to build and sustain an MTSS framework that supports academic, behavioral, and social-emotional growth. Participants will examine how to:

Use data effectively: Identify student needs, select appropriate interventions, monitor progress, and make timely adjustments.
Strengthen collaboration: Set clear roles, maintain consistent referral processes, and communicate effectively among educators, specialists, and families.
Build sustainable systems: Support intervention fidelity, collaborative problem-solving, and strong connections to Tier 1 instruction.

Leave with actionable strategies to strengthen your school's MTSS framework, improve intervention practices, and expand equitable access to student support.
 

AI can be a powerful tool for student problem-solving—but responsible use should be built into the learning process, not added as an afterthought.

Developed through collaboration among CSTA Responsible AI Fellows working across three very different communities—a Colorado district, a rural Hawaiian public school, and a Title I Mississippi school— this session introduces a five-stage design-thinking framework: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test.

See how students research real community problems, use AI as an optional—not required—tool to prototype solutions, and test those prototypes with the people directly affected. Explore how the framework keeps responsible AI use central to project-based learning and adapts to anything from a one-week activity to a semester-long unit.

Leave with the free framework, a responsible-AI starter checklist, and a list of free and discounted classroom AI credit programs you can put to use right away.
 

Our Exhibit Hall is your gateway to the partners who here to serve and deliver impact alongside your efforts for students. Come visit, find a new partner, or reconnect with those you already work with. 

Our first general session keynote of the conference welcomes all our participants and gets us started in our two days. 

Leadership challenges become especially complicated when they involve the people at the top of a charter school. When allegations of misconduct arise involving board members or administrative leaders, questions of authority, accountability, and legal representation can quickly become difficult to navigate.

This session examines the distinct responsibilities of charter school boards and administrative leaders, including who has authority over which decisions and what happens when their interests no longer align.

Explore the legal and practical challenges that arise when misconduct allegations involve school leadership, including:

The board's role in oversight and decision-making.
When and how outside legal counsel becomes involved.
Whom the school's attorney actually represents.
How to navigate situations where board and leadership interests diverge.

Gain a clearer understanding of how to protect your school's governance, integrity, and mission when trouble reaches the top.

What happens when a growing charter school buys a building too early, sells it, and ends up operating out of a church? For CILA, these unexpected turns became part of a years-long journey to finding its forever home.

Hear how CILA navigated real estate challenges, financial pressures, and temporary facilities while staying focused on its mission and expanding from K–5 to K–8.

Discover how strategic partnerships with Blueprint Colorado and Civic Builders turned that vision into reality by providing critical support with site acquisition, financing, development expertise, and project management.

Through CILA's story, explore lessons in overcoming facility obstacles, planning for growth, and building partnerships that make ambitious projects possible. It's a story of perseverance, unexpected setbacks, and the power of finding the right partners to create a lasting home for students and community.

Doubling graduation rates and significantly increasing postsecondary matriculation takes more than academic interventions. It requires a culture of high expectations, strong relationships, and individualized support for each student.

Hear how one school achieved these results by using continuous data review to identify barriers, target resources, and monitor student progress. Explore the strategies behind its approach, including:

Keeping students on track: Individualized graduation plans, credit audits, and progress monitoring.
Expanding opportunities: More relevant course offerings and pathways connected to students' future goals.
Coordinating interventions: Attendance monitoring, home visits, family outreach, credit recovery, and cross-team collaboration.
Strengthening postsecondary readiness: College and career exploration, application support, FAFSA assistance, and college visits.

Learn how these efforts supported students with disabilities and historically underserved groups, and gain practical examples for strengthening graduation outcomes and postsecondary transitions at your school.

School leaders regularly face decisions involving competing needs, incomplete information, and strong emotions. Supporting an employee while addressing performance concerns, responding to parents, or balancing team autonomy with accountability rarely offers clear-cut answers.

Drawing on his experience as a charter school CEO and his book, Leading in the Gray, Dr. Chad A. Miller explores three practical leadership practices:

Separate facts from assumptions: Recognize how pressure, emotions, and interpretations influence decisions.
Balance care with accountability: Preserve relationships while setting expectations and following through.
Develop judgment in others: Delegate responsibility and build team ownership without taking over.

Through personal stories, guided reflection, and small-group scenarios, practice navigating difficult decisions and communicating them effectively. Leave with a reusable decision-making worksheet and one concrete action to strengthen trust and move your team from management to leadership.

Culture is one of the most discussed yet least understood forces in schools. Leaders recognize its importance, but understanding how it forms—and how to change it intentionally—requires looking beneath the surface.

This session introduces a practical equation: Inputs + Cognition × Interaction = Organizational Culture. Examine how leadership decisions and messages, individual staff interpretations, and everyday interactions combine to create shared beliefs and expectations.

Explore how these dynamics influence staff satisfaction and retention, then use the research-based Competing Values Framework and a condensed Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument to:

Identify your school's dominant culture type.
Compare current conditions with your desired culture.
Recognize gaps and opportunities for leadership intervention.
Connect cultural patterns to staff experiences and retention.

Leave with a diagnostic worksheet you can use with your leadership team to assess organizational culture and prioritize meaningful change.
 

A parent shares an audio clip that sounds like your executive director making offensive remarks. Within an hour, it spreads online, and reporters call. How would your school respond?

In 2024, an AI-generated voice recording targeted a Maryland principal, showing how quickly fabricated content can threaten a school's reputation and community trust.

Led by cybersecurity executive Paul Herbka, CISSP, this interactive session puts participants on a crisis communications team responding to a simulated deepfake incident.

Through a live exercise, you'll:

Examine the real-world Pikesville High School case.
Respond to evolving scenarios involving families, social media, and reporters.
Evaluate communication decisions as new information emerges.
Explore how AI can accelerate message drafting and support multilingual family communication with human oversight.

Leave with a practical 24-hour crisis response playbook for protecting trust when misinformation spreads.

Could Colorado's Building Excellent Schools Today (BEST) Grant Program help fund your school's next facilities project? Understanding eligibility, matching requirements, and funding priorities is essential before applying.

This session provides charter school leaders with a practical overview of the BEST program, including:

Funding priorities: Understand eligible capital projects and how health, safety, security, technology, and other needs factor into grant decisions.
Eligibility + matching funds: Learn how facility ownership, years of operation, authorizer relationships, and school demographics affect eligibility and required matching contributions.
Facility planning: Explore assessments, master planning, professional support, and coordination with CDE and your authorizer.
Application preparation: Review successful project characteristics and the grant application timeline.

Leave better equipped to evaluate whether BEST funding fits your school's needs, anticipate financial commitments, and take informed steps toward a competitive application.

Strong reading results don't happen by accident. They take more than a great curriculum—they require coherent instruction, effective leadership, and systems that support teachers every day. Rocky Mountain Prep (RMP) Creekside, recognized as a Bright Spot school by The 74 for its third-grade reading results, offers a real-world example.

Go behind the scenes to see how RMP Creekside translates early literacy research into everyday classroom practices and schoolwide systems. Explore the essential components of research-aligned literacy instruction and the leadership moves that set high expectations, support teachers, and sustain strong implementation.

Through school artifacts and concrete examples, examine the tools and processes that guide teacher planning, data analysis, and instructional improvement. Leave with practical strategies and a clearer roadmap for strengthening early literacy across your school.

PLCs, classroom observations, student performance, and professional development shouldn't operate as separate initiatives. When connected, they create a powerful system to improve instruction and support educators.

This interactive session introduces an AI-powered playbook that connects these practices. Explore how rubric-based PLCs and observation tools aligned to school improvement goals can drive classroom practice. Learn how AI can cross-reference PLC evidence, observation findings, and student performance data, including MAP Growth, to identify patterns and prioritize professional learning.

Discover PD 1-2-3, a tiered approach that provides differentiated support for every student-facing role. Examine how instructional leaders can facilitate PLCs, deliver actionable feedback, and expand administrator capacity.

Leave with a PLC effectiveness rubric, role-aligned observation tools, a process for connecting data to instructional improvement, and a customizable AI prompt for developing a focused professional learning plan.

Putting strong teachers on a Building Leadership Team doesn't automatically create leaders. At Roosevelt Charter Academy, we discovered that difficult conversations, peer accountability, staff negativity, and schoolwide problems still landed on administrators' desks.

So we stopped focusing on having a leadership team and started intentionally teaching leadership behavior.

This interactive session shares the structures, mistakes, uncomfortable conversations, and practical tools Roosevelt used to move teacher leaders from representatives and messengers to leaders who take action. Explore the difference between leadership and friendship, practice responding to authentic staff scenarios, and examine ways to distribute ownership and accountability.

Leave with adaptable tools, including a leadership behavior scorecard, accountability roundtable structure, redirection language, and realistic leadership scenarios. Gain a framework for transferring schoolwide responsibilities from administrators to teacher leaders who own problems, people, and progress.

Keeping up with the latest student mental health research can be challenging for busy school leaders and educators. This session makes emerging findings accessible, relevant, and practical for charter schools.

Drawing on recent research from national organizations such as the American Psychological Association (APA), National Association of School Psychologists (NASP), and American School Counselor Association (ASCA), as well as peer-reviewed publications, explore emerging trends in student mental health and school-based supports.

Examine what the evidence reveals about effective approaches, challenge common misconceptions about mental health and social-emotional supports, and consider how research can inform school practices. Gain practical insights and strategies that can be adapted to different charter school models, student populations, and available resources.

Meal service is in the Colorado Foyer; seating is in Colorado BCD.

The purchasing and contracting decisions schools make before opening their doors can have lasting consequences for their budgets and daily operations. For new and growing charter schools, avoiding common procurement mistakes early can prevent costly challenges down the road.

In this interactive workshop, the BuyQ team draws on its procurement experience to examine five common purchasing pitfalls through real-world micro-case studies.

In small groups, participants will analyze procurement scenarios, identify risks, and discuss how purchasing decisions affect financial sustainability and operational effectiveness. Groups will then share their findings and lessons learned, allowing attendees to learn from one another.

Gain practical insights into making more informed purchasing and contracting decisions as your school prepares to open or expand.

Board meetings alone don’t drive strategy. Much of the real work happens between meetings. Well-designed board committees can provide the structure, focus, and accountability needed to turn a strategic plan from a document into meaningful action.

In this practical, case-based session, discover how Excel Academy Charter School redesigned and aligned its board committees to advance its strategic vision. Explore how to:

Align priorities: Translate strategic goals into committee responsibilities and monthly objectives.
Drive progress: Create space for deeper discussion, focused work, and ongoing accountability.
Expand engagement: Involve community members beyond the governing board to add new expertise, strengthen ownership, and develop future board leaders.

Leave with practical tools to evaluate your committee structure, strengthen alignment with strategic priorities, and ensure meaningful progress between board meetings.

Student behavior rarely fits neatly into a discipline or mental health category. Effective responses require schools to balance accountability, student support, and safety while bringing different perspectives together.

Drawing on best practices in school discipline, behavioral health, restorative approaches, and student support, this workshop examines how administrators, educators, mental health professionals, and families can collaborate. Explore how to distinguish behaviors requiring disciplinary action from those that may also signal a need for additional mental health, behavioral, or environmental supports.

Featuring voices from diverse charter school models and communities, panelists will share real-world examples of how to navigate student behavior, discipline, mental health needs, and school safety. Consider how different approaches can be adapted to your school's philosophy, student population, and available resources.

Leave with practical strategies for strengthening collaboration and creating a safe, supportive learning environment.

Securing facility financing is a significant step in a charter school's growth. This interactive session offers an inside look at how financing teams assess a school's strengths, opportunities, and risks when considering a capital project.

Through a live credit committee simulation, evaluate a hypothetical but realistic charter school financing opportunity using information credit decision-makers review, including financial performance, enrollment trends, academic outcomes, governance, and facility plans. Weigh the school's strengths and weaknesses, then vote on whether to move forward with financing.

Watch a panel of industry professionals, including investors, underwriters, and credit analysts, debate key issues, challenge assumptions, and consider risks and mitigating factors before reaching a decision.

Compare your judgment with theirs and gain a deeper understanding of the factors influencing financing and rating outcomes, how market participants assess risk, and what makes a school financeable.

Your school's homepage has just seconds to make an impression. Can prospective families quickly identify what makes your school different, which grades you serve, and how to schedule a tour or apply?

This hands-on workshop examines the essential elements of an enrollment-focused homepage, from compelling headlines and authentic photography to clear navigation and calls to action.

Using real school websites and a practical five-second test, explore how to:
Build trust: Showcase testimonials, achievements, and authentic school experiences.

Communicate what sets you apart: Highlight distinctive programs, curriculum, and school strengths.
Encourage action: Make it easy to find enrollment inquiries, tours, and applications.
Design for mobile: Prioritize readable content, intuitive navigation, and accessible buttons.

Learn how to organize homepage content, write for skimmers, and create a stronger first impression that helps turn website visitors into prospective families.

At a young charter school, the operational demands never stop. Emails, meetings, facility issues, compliance deadlines, and athletic logistics can leave school leaders constantly reacting instead of planning. What if an AI executive assistant could help change that?

Drawing on real experience at Ascent Classical Academy of Grand Junction, this session demonstrates how a custom AI assistant helps manage daily operations, including:

Triaging emails and managing the master calendar
Producing daily briefings and weekly operations dashboards
Tracking meeting action items and identifying emerging risks
Drafting parent and staff communications

Through a case study, live tool and prompt demonstrations, and interactive Q&A, explore what works, where AI falls short, and which safeguards matter most. Leave with a practical 30-day implementation plan and a checklist of privacy and accuracy guardrails.

What does your school's math culture communicate about who can succeed in mathematics? From classroom norms to teacher and student interactions, both explicit and implicit messages shape students' beliefs, confidence, and engagement.

In this interactive session, explore how to create intentional math cultures that are equitable, engaging, and empowering. Participants will:

Reflect: Share personal math experiences and consider how they influence current teaching and leadership practices.
Examine: Use the Math Culture Wheel and classroom video analysis to identify the beliefs, behaviors, and practices shaping math culture.
Plan: Assess strengths and opportunities for change, then draft classroom or schoolwide norms that support a more positive math culture.

Leave with practical ideas for involving students in co-creating norms and strategies for modeling and reinforcing those expectations throughout the school year.

What really happens inside an AI chatbot—and why do bias, hallucinations, and data risks occur? Find out by stepping inside the AI “black box” in this engaging, interactive workshop.

Through lighthearted scripts and audience roleplay, volunteers will bring an AI chatbot's inner workings to life, creating memorable “Aha!” moments about how these tools operate and where risks come from. Build on that understanding with a look at AI model training and how AI generates text, images, and videos.

Armed with a practical, tool-agnostic safety lens, learn to evaluate the AI tools your school uses today critically—and those it may consider tomorrow. Then put your learning into action by drafting starter elements for new AI guidelines or strengthening existing documents to make them more actionable.

Leave better equipped to evaluate tools and guide responsible AI use.
 

The most visible CMAS mathematics metrics—SPF ratings, achievement and growth scores, and percentages meeting expectations—carry high stakes for school leaders but offer limited guidance for identifying instructional priorities.

In this interactive workshop, look beneath the headline results to understand what grades 3–8 CMAS Mathematics assessments actually measure and how that information can support instructional planning. Examine connections among CMAS sub-claims, evidence statements, released assessment items, and the Standards for Mathematical Practice. Pay particular attention to mathematical reasoning, modeling, and precision—areas that represent 40% of available assessment points but are often underemphasized in classroom instruction.

Using released CMAS items and your own school context, consider how to provide students with more consistent opportunities to reason, model, explain, and critique mathematical thinking. Leave with an outline for strengthening instructional priorities and professional learning in the coming school year.

Finding qualified special education providers is difficult. Building a sustainable system that supports students, meets compliance requirements, and fits a charter school's budget can be even harder.

Through a case study of the Minga Special Education Group (MSEG) model, examine an alternative to traditional agency staffing and district buy-back arrangements. Learn how integrated, multidisciplinary teams and fractional staffing can help schools coordinate services, share specialized expertise, and strengthen internal leadership capacity.

The session explores:

Staffing + sustainability: Aligning specialized providers with student needs and available resources.
Leadership + compliance: Building systems for IEP scheduling, service documentation, evaluation timelines, and oversight.
Long-term capacity: Using a three-phase approach to assessment, staffing, and sustainability, including potential charter collaborative and Administrative Unit pathways.

Participants will use a readiness checklist and 90-day planning framework to identify priorities and next steps for their schools.
 

School investigations can have significant consequences for students, employees, and the broader school community. Conducting them fairly and thoroughly is essential to maintaining trust, ensuring compliance, and reducing organizational risk.

This session provides practical guidance for conducting investigations that can withstand internal review, external scrutiny, and legal challenges. Drawing on real-world K–12 examples and best practices, participants will explore how to:

• Assess complaints and determine appropriate next steps.
• Gather, evaluate, and document evidence.
• Conduct effective interviews and make credibility determinations.
• Prepare clear, defensible investigation reports.
• Maintain neutrality and procedural integrity throughout the process.

Designed for administrators, HR professionals, Title IX coordinators, and other school leaders, this session offers tools to strengthen investigative practices and build confidence in the process.

Charter school leaders face more improvement priorities than their teams can realistically pursue at once. And the evidence rarely points in one direction. How do you decide what matters most—and what to make room for?

This interactive workshop puts you inside a realistic charter school decision. Working with a fictional school's data, including achievement, attendance, student work, family feedback, and implementation, you'll weigh competing evidence and identify a priority worth pursuing.

Then comes the challenge: With just six hours of shared staff capacity to reallocate, decide what to advance, protect, or pause. When new data arrives six weeks later, determine whether to stay the course or adjust.

Apply the same process to your own school and leave with a completed decision sheet, a practical approach to monitoring progress, and a concrete next step for focusing staff effort.

Join us for a special session featuring Educational Experts on maximizing impacts throughout charter schools and public education. 

Join our Thursday Happy Hour to conclude Day 1 and reconnect with partners, colleagues, and friends. 

Seating in Colorado BCD is used for our meals. 

It’s 4:45 on Friday. A parent is furious. A teacher has sent a concerning email. A student discipline situation just escalated. And your instinct is to say, “I’ll deal with this Monday.”

Unfortunately, some problems don’t wait until Monday.

This fast-paced, scenario-based session tackles the legal and risk-management challenges charter school leaders face with little warning and incomplete information. Work through realistic “what would you do?” situations involving students, families, employees, records, discipline, disability, governance, and law enforcement.

For each scenario, consider:

What requires immediate action—and what can wait?
What should never be said or put in writing?
When should you involve legal counsel or other experts?

Skip the traditional legal lecture and gain a practical, repeatable framework for making thoughtful decisions under pressure—before a small problem becomes a very large one.

School safety goes beyond locks, drills, and emergency protocols. A school's climate, relationships, communication, and everyday operations all contribute to creating a safe learning environment.

Learn how CU Boulder's Safe Communities Safe Schools (SCSS) initiative helps schools develop data-informed safety plans tailored to their communities. Drawing on a model that has served nearly 200 schools, this interactive session explores how to:

Build a schoolwide team that includes staff, students, families, and community partners.
Use school climate surveys to identify needs and guide decisions.

Connect prevention and intervention through resources such as Safe2Tell and ongoing support.
Hear from New Vision Charter School Executive Director Marian Hejl about her school's experience with the program. You'll also learn how to access SCSS surveys and explore grant-funded partnership opportunities available to Colorado K–12 schools.
 

Charter school leaders are expected to navigate an increasingly complex mix of HR, payroll, benefits, compliance, and workforce challenges—all while keeping their focus on educating students.

This interactive workshop examines how fragmented administrative systems can create hidden costs, organizational risks, and unnecessary burdens. Using real-world charter school examples, explore how an integrated workforce management strategy can improve efficiency, consistency, and employee support.

Participants will learn to:

Identify operational risks: Recognize common HR, payroll, benefits, and compliance challenges and their financial implications.
Evaluate workforce management models: Compare fragmented and integrated approaches, including their advantages and trade-offs.
Support staff satisfaction and retention: Explore streamlined services, competitive benefits, and responsive employee support.
Strengthen leadership oversight: Assess workforce-related risks, compliance readiness, and operational effectiveness.

Leave with a framework for evaluating your school's workforce management approach and identifying opportunities to reduce administrative complexity.

Every charter school is responsible for serving students with disabilities, but few school leaders are trained to navigate the systems they're held accountable for. Drawing on perspectives from a career Director of Special Education and a Charter Executive Director, this session zooms out and back in—from federal IDEA requirements and Colorado's administrative unit structure to what happens in your building on Friday afternoon.

Compare insured and fee-for-service models side by side, examining staffing, funding, risk, and control. Explore how charter contracts shape responsibilities, along with practical considerations for enrollment, supervision, and IEP implementation.

Then tackle the challenges that arise when relationships with families or districts become strained. Learn field-tested approaches to de-escalating conflict and building trust. Leave with a model comparison tool, an IEP process and conflict reference, and practical insights for navigating special education leadership.

Families aren't just searching for schools anymore—they're asking AI for recommendations and answers. As discovery habits change, charter school websites must evolve from static information sources into more responsive enrollment tools.

This session examines what makes a website AI-ready and how schools can adapt their content, navigation, and engagement strategies to serve prospective families better. Explore how to structure information for AI-powered search while creating clear pathways that encourage inquiries and applications.

Learn how website chatbots and intelligent assistants can answer questions, capture inquiries, and support families throughout the enrollment process. Through practical examples, examine ways to:

Improve website content and AI visibility.
Simplify navigation and reduce enrollment barriers.
Connect website messaging, automation, and enrollment goals.
Support families with timely, personalized information.

Leave with actionable recommendations for improving your website's effectiveness as an enrollment and family engagement tool.
 

When a crisis hits a charter school, the board rarely has the luxury of time to figure out its role, decide who should be involved, or determine what happens next. The best time to prepare is before the board faces a difficult call or high-stakes decision.

Join Mark Weinberg and Mary Bradley, experienced governance and crisis-response experts from the National Charter Schools Institute, for a practical look at how boards can prepare for and effectively govern through challenging situations. Drawing on real-world experience, they'll share lessons on making sound decisions, communicating effectively, and avoiding common missteps under pressure.

Through two realistic crisis scenarios, participants will tackle critical questions:
What do we know?
What do we need to know?
Who should act?
And how can boards lead effectively when the stakes are high?

Mountain View Core Knowledge School has emerged as a top-rated middle school according to key student perception measures, including engagement, belonging, relationships, and student leadership. Behind those results is an intentional effort to strengthen school culture while remaining true to the school's founding principles.

Go behind the data to discover how Mountain View listened to students, challenged long-held assumptions, and evolved its practices while staying true to its identity.

In this interactive session, explore how to:

Look beyond symptoms: Use root cause analysis to understand student experiences and identify meaningful changes.
Move from student voice to influence: Create authentic opportunities for student leadership and ownership.
Extend learning beyond school walls: Leverage community partnerships to build real-world skills.
Balance tradition with innovation: Identify what to preserve and what needs to evolve.

Leave with actionable ideas for strengthening your school's culture through student insights and intentional leadership.

A new hire affects far more than staffing. From budgets and benefits to payroll, grant allocations, accounting, and financial reporting, every personnel decision creates a chain of financial and operational consequences.

Using practical Colorado charter school scenarios, this interactive session follows the employee lifecycle from budgeting and hiring through payroll, financial reporting, and offboarding. Examine where information must flow between HR, Finance, payroll, grants, and school leadership—and how breakdowns can lead to errors, compliance issues, and unnecessary rework.

Learn how to:

Connect staffing decisions to budgets: Account for compensation, benefits, vacancies, and funding sources.
Strengthen critical handoffs: Keep employee information, payroll, grant allocations, and accounting aligned.
Improve financial reporting: Understand staffing-related budget variances and their implications for financial statements and MD&A reporting.

Leave with a practical framework for clarifying responsibilities, strengthening communication, and improving decision-making without adding unnecessary bureaucracy.
 

What happens when a school field trip becomes a catalyst for student advocacy?

In spring 2026, Crestone Charter School built its middle school curriculum around an experiential-learning trip to Chaco Culture National Historical Park. Students spent months studying the site's history, science, mathematics, architecture, and cultural significance before experiencing it firsthand.

When students learned of a federal proposal to revoke environmental protections surrounding Chaco, their learning became civic action. Students researched the issue, created artwork, and submitted a collective public comment advocating for continued protections. The National Parks Conservation Association took notice, incorporating their advocacy into broader national efforts.

This case study examines how interdisciplinary learning, firsthand experiences, student choice, research, and creative expression can connect classroom learning to authentic civic participation—without predetermining what students should think or say.
 

Our Exhibit Hall is your gateway to the partners who here to serve and deliver impact alongside your efforts for students. Come visit, find a new partner, or reconnect with those you already work with. 

Our third general session and the start of day two, this keynote focuses on preparing us to take all our learning back into our schools.

Schools have invested significant resources in improving reading instruction, yet writing often receives less attention. But writing isn't just an ELA skill. Students use it to explain mathematical reasoning, construct scientific explanations, build arguments, and demonstrate understanding across subjects. Strengthening writing instruction can also strengthen literacy and learning.

In this interactive session, explore why writing is “reading’s missing half” and learn to examine student work through six interconnected dimensions:

Critical thinking and text structure
Syntax and vocabulary
Transcription and writing craft

Apply this framework to sample student writing, identify instructional needs, and consider targeted strategies within existing ELA and content-area instruction. Discover how explicit, responsive writing instruction can improve access for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Leave with practical tools to strengthen Tier 1 instruction and make the most of your school's existing literacy investments.


 

A safe school is more than a secure building. It is also a place where students feel seen, heard, respected, and connected to trusted adults. Effective school safety requires balancing physical security with a culture of psychological safety

Drawing on 31 years in education, including 18 years in school leadership and safety, the presenter shares lessons shaped by real-world experiences, tragedies, and school shootings.
Examine two essential components of school safety:

Psychological safety: Welcoming environments, trusted relationships, reporting tools, emergency drills, and threat management programs that connect students with support.
Physical safety: Secure entrances, visitor management, emergency alerts, cameras, campus security, and partnerships with law enforcement.

Through discussion and reflection, consider how these elements work together, assess their presence in your school, and identify opportunities to strengthen your overall approach to safety.
 

HR systems often evolve in response to immediate needs, leaving charter school leaders uncertain about where their greatest risks and opportunities lie. This interactive workshop offers a structured way to assess what's working, identify gaps, and prioritize improvements.

In this 60-minute working session, complete a guided People Audit covering key stages of the employee lifecycle, including recruitment, hiring, onboarding, retention, performance management, employee relations, compliance, and HR operations.

Using a practical impact framework, distinguish urgent compliance concerns from longer-term opportunities for improvement. Drawing on charter school HR examples and peer discussions, you'll identify priorities and develop a realistic 90-day action plan tailored to your school's needs.

Leave with a completed People Audit, prioritization framework, planning tool, and concrete next steps for strengthening the systems that support your employees, students, and families.

Celebrations, recognition, and team-building activities can strengthen school culture, but lasting change depends on something deeper: the systems that shape everyday experiences and behaviors.

This interactive workshop introduces 11 cultural systems that influence employee experience and organizational performance, including communication, trust, accountability, recognition, professional growth, collaboration, conflict, and leadership behaviors.

Using real charter school examples and a Culture Systems Assessment, examine whether your school's challenges reflect isolated problems or symptoms of missing or ineffective systems.
Participants will:

Assess organizational strengths and identify gaps across the 11 systems.
Define desired behaviors and outcomes.
Examine what leaders must consistently model, reinforce, and reward.
Identify one priority action to take within 30 days.

Leave with a practical framework for moving beyond culture-building activities to intentionally designing systems that support clarity, trust, engagement, and organizational consistency.
 

Charter schools rarely lack student data. The challenge is turning that data into timely, coordinated action so students don't fall through the cracks between identification, intervention, and follow-through.

Learn how GALS Denver partnered with data engineer Lucy Volland to create “Every GAL Thrives,” an internally developed MTSS workflow using Google Sheets, Zapier, and document automation instead of a costly commercial platform.

Go inside the system to see how GALS:

Uses objective indicators to identify students needing Tier 2 support.
Organizes six-week intervention cycles with clear staff responsibilities and progress monitoring.
Automates family-facing intervention plans while keeping student voice and relationships central.
Tracks intervention effectiveness and determines when support needs to change.

Leave with a replicable framework for building an affordable, equitable MTSS process that connects existing data, staff, and tools to meaningful student support.

Every Colorado charter leader is expected to have answers about AI. Boards want policies, families want guardrails, and staff want clarity. But the safest, highest-leverage place to start with AI isn't the classroom. It's your desk.

This show-don't-tell session focuses on practical ways school leaders can use AI to save time without compromising privacy or handing important decisions to technology. Watch three live demonstrations:

AI policy in minutes: Draft a board-ready policy using Colorado guidance, then create staff FAQs and family communications.
The buried inbox: Turn an overflowing inbox into prioritized decisions, delegations, and drafts.
Board meetings: Transform agendas, action items, and meeting transcripts into draft minutes.

Learn essential safeguards, including protecting student data and keeping humans responsible for decisions. Leave with the School Leader's AI Playbook and a personalized 90-Day Game Plan with three actionable priorities.

 

Colorado’s new charter school bond legislation (SB26-145) creates important opportunities for charter schools seeking facilities funding. Under the new law, school districts considering capital construction ballot measures must solicit proposals from charter schools and notify them whether the proposed bond measure will include their facilities needs.

Following a brief overview of the legislation and its requirements, this session will focus on practical steps schools can take to prepare for future district bond opportunities, including:

Planning: Developing and maintaining a long-term facilities project list.
Understanding the process: Navigating district bond planning and timelines.
Building relationships: Strengthening partnerships with school districts.

Learn how proactive planning can help position your school to take advantage of these new opportunities.

Good compliance doesn't always mean good governance. Even well-intentioned charter school boards can fall into patterns that undermine leadership alignment, effectiveness, and long-term success. How can boards recognize these pitfalls before they become bigger problems?

Through reflection and discussion, explore six common governance traps, from prioritizing compliance over alignment to inconsistent board development and blurred leadership roles. Learn how the Aligned Influence model clarifies responsibilities between the board and Head of School, including:

Board responsibilities: Direct, Protect, and Enable
Executive responsibilities: Lead, Manage, and Accomplish
Governance structures: Board and staff committees, leadership roles, and policy distinctions

Examine the real costs of misalignment, including leadership turnover, authorizer risk, and mission drift. Leave with practical steps to assess alignment, strengthen board development, and build more effective governance practices.

A compelling school story earns a family's attention. What happens next determines whether that interest becomes enrollment. Before investing in more marketing, schools should examine the systems that turn inquiries into enrolled students—and keep current families returning.

This facilitated working session focuses on three operational priorities:

Retention: Identify families at risk of leaving, establish re-enrollment outreach priorities, and assign responsibility.
Enrollment pipeline: Map the journey from initial inquiry through attendance, establish ownership and response standards, and identify where prospective families disengage.
Follow-up and capacity: Develop a written follow-up schedule and assess whether current staffing can support it.

Through structured small-group exercises, apply these frameworks to your school's enrollment challenges, with consideration for different school sizes and markets.
Leave with a completed enrollment operating picture, practical worksheets, and a prioritized 30-day action list.
 

What happens after a school collects the data? Assessment platforms, spreadsheets, and intervention programs provide information, but turning that information into coordinated action requires more than technology.

At Lotus School for Excellence, about 80% of middle school students performed below grade level in mathematics. Rather than adopting another program, leaders focused on diagnosing needs, building intervention capacity, and establishing consistent routines.

Follow the school's evolution from Google Sheets to an interconnected system of targeted interventions, progress monitoring, data meetings, student goal-setting, and adult accountability. Examine leadership decisions along the way, including how to prioritize students when resources are limited and when to adapt plans based on new evidence.

You'll also see how this work informed the development of Symphonize. Leave with a framework for identifying gaps between collecting data and taking coordinated action in your own school.
 

HOLD for Presenter: Maureen Hilborn, New Summit Charter

Understanding Colorado Shines standards is key to strengthening early childhood programs and supporting professional growth. This interactive session provides practical guidance for navigating Level 2 and Provisional Level 3 requirements and applying them to continuous quality improvement.

The session combines early childhood policy and advocacy updates with an overview of Colorado's quality rating and improvement framework. Through guided demonstrations, peer discussions, and individual reflection, participants will review core standards, share experiences across early childhood settings, and identify improvement opportunities.

Dedicated action-planning time will help participants develop SMART(E) goals using provided templates. Designed to accommodate diverse community contexts, resources, and learning styles, this collaborative session offers practical strategies for navigating Colorado Shines and identifying meaningful next steps for your program.
 

Meal service is in the Colorado Foyer; seating is in Colorado BCD.