Glimpse into your child's school experience during our Academic Partnering Night. Meet with your child's teachers to better understand their progress and ways you can support their learning at home. Refreshments and interpretation are available. Check with your school for additional details. We can't wait to see you!
Download the TalkingPoints App today and get connected with your child's teacher.
TalkingPoints is an easy and safe app for families to communicate in their home languages with their child’s teachers for free.
RMP schools are using this platform to communicate with families about their child’s education and progress.
Learn more about TalkingPoints.
Students can start as early as pre-K and go through 8th grade all within a few miles of each other and in the same neighborhood. Rocky Mountain Prep Berkeley is pre-K through fifth grade and RMP Sunnyside is a sixth through eighth school. This also creates a strong and consistent experience for siblings and families.
At RMP, we lead with rigor and love, shaping your child's experience in a number of ways:
- Nurture children's natural curiosity
- Develop a love for learning that will last a lifetime
- Small class sizes and personalized attention for every child
- Dedicated teachers that ensure students thrive
Seats are available, so find a school near you and enroll today in a Rocky Mountain School.
At the start of the 2022-23 school year, I noticed a garden area in the front of the school that could use a little beautifying. The primary reason it stuck out to me was that it didn’t match the amazing staff and work going on inside the building.
Figuring that it could use an artist’s touch, I enlisted the help of Berkeley’s art teacher, Ms. Stroman, who joyfully embraced the challenge. Thus, the RMP Kindness Rock Project began.
Ms. Stroman created a curriculum featuring environmental artists, which would include students in all aspects of the design and execution. Staff, parents, and students bonded through gardening as they cleared weeds and cleaned up the area. After the fifth grade ideated the overall design, students in all grades brought rocks from home, which they carefully designed and added to the space.
Over Thanksgiving, Ms. Stroman dedicated her free time to laying the final touches, implementing a wow factor for everyone to return to after break. I personally witnessed students finding and showing off their rock to their families with pride. Ms. Stroman ignited a passion for art across grades, poured herself into her school, and created a safe space within her classroom.
At a time where teachers are resigning at alarming amounts, RMP continues to shine through adversity and elevate the learning experience through embodiment of the PEAK Values: Perseverance, Excellence, Adventure, and Kindness. As a parent, the opportunity to partner with a teacher and see a project far surpass expectations is an amazing thing.
We encourage you to come admire the beautiful project and messages Ms. Stroman and our students have created — spreading kindness and hope not only to each other, but the surrounding community.
In May of 2020, Jenna Wright found out that her son Jackson’s school was closing.
“I freaked out,” she said. “The first round of SchoolChoice was over, and we didn’t have a school.”
Jenna applied to nine schools in the North Denver- area during Round 2 of DPS SchoolChoice. Rocky Mountain Prep (RMP) Berkeley was on that list, and while Jenna had seen it driving by, she had never been inside. Within 24 hours, Jackson was accepted at RMP Berkeley, and Jenna received a call from the school’s operations coordinator, to whom Jenna asked many questions.
“She was super attentive and helpful,” Jenna said. “She spent so much time with me answering all of my questions, and she never rushed to get me off the phone.”
Over the summer, Jenna began speaking with Ana de Vries, RMP Berkeley’s Principal, and pre-K teacher Jamison Williams over the phone. After those conversations, they were sold on RMP Berkeley.
Two years later, Jackson is now in Ms. McLaren’s kindergarten class, and Jenna said they’re lucky to have worked with such amazing teachers.
“Ms. McLaren is caring and gentle,” she said. “She spends really good time with her students, and they’re learning a ton.”
When RMP Berkeley’s charter contract with Denver Public Schools (DPS) was up for renewal this year, Jenna took action by emailing the Board of Education about why her school deserved to continue serving the community. Thanks to the RMP community and the DPS Board, RMP Berkeley’s charter was renewed for two years with the possibility of an automatic two-year extension in 2024.
“[RMP] Berkeley is a public school, but it has a private school feel,” Jenna said. “The classes are smaller, the teachers genuinely care, and I feel like my child is getting a quality education.”
Looking back at the summer of 2020, Jenna felt like she made the right decision. “I wasn’t interested in going anywhere else. I really feel like RMP is our home.”
Learn more about joining the Rocky Mountain Prep community on our Enrollment page.
In 2017, RMP leadership agreed to serve as a turnaround provider for Cesar Chavez Academy Denver (CCAD). CCAD had been struggling academically, receiving a red rating on the Denver Public Schools’ annual “report card”, known as the School Performance Framework (SPF) for a number of years. In a heroic feat of academic mastery from our students, RMP Berkeley moved from red (Accredited on Probation - the lowest measure) to green (Meets Expectations - the second-highest) on the SPF in just one year!
We are excited to reflect on and celebrate our top three learnings from RMP Berkeley’s first year:
To achieve this exciting milestone, RMP Berkeley staff have taken an “all hands on deck” approach to building community around RMP’s unique rigorous and loving educational model. Prior to RMP Berkeley’s August 2018 launch, staff engaged in door-to-door conversations, coffee hours, community meetings, and collaboration with CCAD leadership, building strong and lasting relationships that built the foundation for RMP Berkeley to thrive.
Each day since opening, Berekely’s faculty and admin alike have poured their hearts into making every student feel welcomed and loved, while simultaneously challenging them to do their best. This important combination is what makes the RMP experience unique, and has led to RMP Berkeley’s tremendous progress over the past year. The foundation built in RMP Berkeley’s first year of operation also had an incredibly positive impact on adult culture, with an overall staff retention of 81%, including retaining 100% of RMP Berkeley’s front office and administrative teams.
RMP Berkeley’s amazing, innovative educators make waves every day by bringing love, compassion, and a deep belief that each of our students can and will succeed in the classroom. All RMP Berkeley teachers all have unique, yet equally effective ways of guiding their students toward academic growth and achievement. It is because of their powerful methods that RMP Berkeley is green on the SPF!
We are so proud of RMP Berkeley’s amazing growth thus far, and yet we know there is still work to be done on behalf of our students. This year, we are eager to refocus on our ELA curriculum and help our students continue to develop a deep love of reading.
With a continued emphasis on building community and pushing our students to hold themselves and their peers to high bars, we are confident we can continue to improve and build on our exciting successes from this past year!
We recently sat down with Toni Weed, mother of Sebastian and Amos, two RMP Berkeley students, to talk about her experience transferring her son Sebastian (aka Bash) to 3rd grade at Rocky Mountain Prep.
Toni shared that what drew her to RMP was making connections with the staff. “Initially I was unhappy in my neighborhood school and I wanted to come back to Cesar Chavez Academy because it was a better environment... As soon as we came in [to RMP] we saw Ms. Rosy and met Coach [our Assistant Principal of Operations] and we just loved it.” Ms. Rosy, our current Operations Manager at RMP Berkeley also worked at the front desk at CCA. Toni exclaimed, “We were so happy right away.”
Toni has seen tremendous growth from both Amos and Bash at RMP. “The progress I’ve seen my children make, not only emotionally, mentally, but the biggest of all is academically. I struggled with my little one (Amos) and teaching him at home and he made a lot of improvements,” Toni shared. “It totally motivated me to just try harder at home, and Sebastian, I always saw how amazing he was and others did not recognize that and it made me feel sad and RMP recognizing that, I know this is like our second family.”
She described RMP as, “a loving, structured, high-quality place for my children to be.” All of our teachers go through extensive training during the professional development days that happen every Friday throughout the year at our schools. Additionally, Toni shared, “I feel so safe with them here. I love that I can talk to any of the teachers, even the ones that don’t have my kids as students. I love how much they care about all of the students because my kids go to school with these people, they’re important to me too and yeah there is just a family culture here and I really love how a lot of the teachers have volunteered and worked with non-profits. I think that shows how sincere they are about change and helping the community.”
Toni is very satisfied with her decision to transfer her son Bash to RMP. “My goal as a mom is to see my son thrive academically because that eventually will lead to a successful future/career.” Transferring students to different schools can be a nerve-wracking process but RMP provides strong support from the teachers and administrative staff to ensure smooth and helpful transitions.
If Toni were to share with other families why Rocky Mountain Prep is so special to her she would tell them, “I am going to let them know that we have four principals and our teachers really get their coaching and development time. They get observed, which in turn gets them feedback. No kid gets left behind.”
At Rocky Mountain Prep we believe all students deserve access to a great public education that helps them reach their full potential. We're so grateful Toni, Bash, and Amos are a part of the Rocky Mountain Prep family. If you want to learn more or be contacted by a member of our team visit rockymountainprep.org/enroll.
Kara Barten’s 1st grade 2019 class at RMP Berkeley was full of brilliant poets! Last year, the class studied Langston Hughes’ poem April Rain Song during April’s National Poetry Month and then constructed their own beautiful versions.
Ms. Barten shared, “My students and I love nature and being outside. This was a pretty great access point for them when reading poetry. We read a few works about the seasons and the environment. This poem by Langston Hughes, April Rain Song, uses conventions that they are familiar with such as repetition and the use of sensory words which help the reader understand the poem and visualize it. For this assignment, we read April Rain Song and discussed how these two conventions enhance the lines of the poem. The students were then asked to create a poem of their own about the sun, using sensory words and sentence stems. I love poetry and I think that my genuine excitement translates to them in the classroom. They are always very invested and eager to create when we practice our poetry skills. They were very proud of their work for this assignment and asked if I could laminate them so they could keep them forever. So sweet!”
April Rain Song by Langston Hughes
"Sunshine" by Jasmine
"The Sun is Great" by Eduardo
"April Sun" by Aberiella
"Sun" by Adrian
"Let the Sun Sine" by Jake
"Sun" by Josh
Happy National Poetry Month, Rocky Mountain Prep! We are celebrating the month of April by sharing some awesome poems that were written by some of Sam Becker’s RMP Berkeley students. Mr. Becker and his students read a poem by Mary Oliver, which inspired his poetry assignment for his class. His class used poetry month as a creative opportunity to practice phonemic and phonological syllable awareness! Check out their poems and artwork below!
“Cheetah” by Ruben (3rd grade)
“The Deer” by Lucia (3rd grade)
“The Night Fox” by Alex H. (5th grade)
“The Llama” by Daniel (3rd grade)
“Wild Bunny” by Jeremy (3rd grade)
