American Indian Academy will close at the end of the school year

The American Indian Academy of Denver will close at the end of the school year. The charter school could not draw enough students to sustain its programming. 

Last fall, families rallied to save the school, hoping to draw students with its curriculum focused on teaching indigenous values in a 21st-century format. 

Parents said the school provided a sense of community and that students were able to learn Native languages such as Lakota. 

Denver Public Schools is now focused on helping students transition to new schools. 

"We're accessing each one of them, supporting the families to see how we can help them enroll, and we're also exploring how to develop a program so in the absence of a school if we have a program that we can institute district-wide, I think that's a win-win for our community," said DPS superintendent Alex Marrero. 

The American Indian Academy's founders said that the school faced a "tremendously negative" impact from the COVID-19 pandemic. It affected the school's ability to maintain a stable footing during a phrase critical to the school's survival.