Stargate School

Stargate School, also called Stargate Charter School, is a charter school for gifted and talented children in Thornton, Colorado, in the Adams 12 Five Star Schools District in Adams County, Colorado, in the United States. It was founded in 1994, and teaches children from kindergarten to tenth grade. The name Stargate combines "Star" from the name of the school district with the initials of "gifted and talented education". In 2013 the school had 649 students, of which 69% were white, 17% Asian, 8% Hispanic or Latino, and 1% black or African-American; 3% were classed as "low-income".HistoryThe school opened on August 29, 1994. The former school building at 3951 Cottonwood Lakes Boulevard in Thornton opened for the 2003–2004 school year and was later expanded to include a gymnasium and extra classrooms. During the 2013-2014 school year, the Stargate School board approved expansion of the K-8 school to include a high school. The new school building finished construction for the 2016-2017 school year. The school is the largest charter school in the state of Colorado.Assessment and recognitionIn both 2012 and 2013 Stargate School received an A+ rating from ColoradoSchoolGrades.com and was the highest-ranked of about 500 middle schools. The school was among the 178 recipients of the John J. Irwin School of Excellence Award in 2013.FinancesIn November 2014 Standard and Poor's changed its rating of Stargate School's bond debt from "stable" to "negative", citing the school's "weak operations" and "insufficient annual debt service coverage" as reasons; however it maintained unchanged at BBB its issuer credit rating for the bonds.