A decision whether the charter Two Rivers Community School (TRCS) will be able to continue busing students from the neighboring Garfield Re-2 School District now rests with a judge.
Re-2 Superintendent Kirk Banghart in October 2025 sent a letter to Roaring Fork District Re-1 Superintendent Anna Cole requesting an end to TRCS’s practice of busing students from New Castle, Silt and Rifle to the Glenwood Springs-based school.
TRCS, which serves students kindergarten through eighth grade from both districts, was founded in 2014 as a charter school under the Colorado Charter School Institute, but in 2022 came under the umbrella of the Roaring Fork School District Re-1.
“Charter schools like TRCS are not required to provide transportation, but if they do, they are required to comply with any applicable state rules or regulations,” Banghart wrote in the Oct. 15 letter. The letter cites a state statute that requires a district to obtain consent from a neighboring district before a school can provide inter-district transportation.
Charter schools are not exempt from that rule, and such consent has not been given, Banghart wrote.
Because TRCS operates independently of Re-1, including its student transportation services, Cole deferred to TRCS Head of School Jamie Nims and the school’s board of directors.
After initial discussions between Nims and Banghart to try to reach an agreement — including proposals that TRCS pay a fee to the district and/or reduce its routes — were unsuccessful, TRCS and a group of parents filed a lawsuit on Nov. 18 in Garfield County District Court seeking a declaratory judgment.
The suit argues that charter schools are not bound by the same regulations as school districts when it comes to inter-district busing.
“In part to support its unique educational design, Two Rivers maintains its own school buses and employs its own qualified drivers for its buses,” the lawsuit states. “From its inception, Two Rivers has used its own transportation capacity to support access of students whose parents wish to enroll them in Two Rivers and wish or need to access daily bus transportation.”
Nims said the parents of students who ride the bus deserve to know sooner than later whether busing can continue, and the court filing was the quickest way to get there.
“We feel confident enough in our position that we weren’t going to be willing to pay a fee per student to transport our own students to school,” Nims said in a follow-up interview with The Sopris Sun. Since the district also threatened legal action if a resolution could not be reached, TRCS decided to go straight to the courts, Nims said.
“I think our families have a right to know whether or not they’re going to potentially lose busing, and we have a right to operate without being harassed by a neighboring school district that’s repeatedly and publicly telling everybody that we’re violating the law, which we totally disagree with,” Nims said.
Re-2 has since filed for the case to be dismissed, saying TRCS does not have grounds to sue based on what the district views as a violation of the law. A ruling on that motion is pending, and in the meantime Re-2 is not commenting further on its legal position.
“Now that Two Rivers Community School has chosen to file a lawsuit rather than continue the negotiations initiated by Superintendent Banghart with Mr. Nims, our counsel will present our arguments to advocate for the district through court filings,” the district said in a written statement issued in response to several questions posed by The Sopris Sun.
TRCS serves 400 students per its charter agreement, about 40% of whom come from within the Re-2 boundaries and the rest primarily from the Glenwood Springs portion of Re-1. Around 125 students from the Re-2 area are registered to ride the bus, but actual daily ridership is about 75, Nims said.
Since Re-2 called attention to the issue, numerous TRCS parents who live within the district have commented at school board meetings about their decision to send their students to the charter school, and said student transportation is important.
Reasons for choosing TRCS range from its unique learning model and multi-age classrooms to regular Spanish-language and bilingual instruction, and the fact that TRCS has classes five days a week, compared to Re-2’s four-day school week.
“A huge part of our model is getting the kids out of this building to places throughout the Roaring Fork Valley and beyond for what we call field studies,” Nims said. “We try to get the kids connected to professionals in industries that are either directly or closely aligned with things that they study through the state standards.”
Having the ability to bus students also helps serve the school’s lower-income students, which is about 30% of the student population based on free and reduced lunch eligibility, Nims said. That point is also addressed in the lawsuit.