BROOMFIELD, Colo. – As school districts across the country scale back or eliminate gifted and talented programs, amid budget pressures and shifting priorities, Prospect Ridge Academy has had the fortunate opportunity to bolster its robust gifted and talented programming with the hiring of Lauren King, who will serve as an additional K-12 Gifted and Talented Coordinator for the Miners beginning with the 2026-27 school year.
King comes to PRA after spending 14 years with Denver Public Schools, including seven years as a GT Specialist at the K-8 level.
“We are thrilled about Lauren King joining the PRA team. She brings a great deal of experience as a prior GT Coordinator in Denver Public Schools, where she managed the identification process, provided programming for students and collaborated with teachers to develop their capacity to support advanced learners in daily classroom instruction,” said PRA K-8 Principal, Amy Bruce. “The depth of her experience and knowledge in the GT field, combined with her skillset in collaboration, professional development and relationship building, is going to be a huge asset for PRA.”
No one is more excited to bring King into the fold than Heidi Huey, who became PRA’s first full-time GT Coordinator and has served in that role since 2017.
When Huey began nine years ago, PRA’s gifted and talent program served a total of 130 students who were either identified as gifted and talented or in the process of completing the paperwork. That number has since ballooned to 430 kids – 29% of PRA’s K-12 population (1,484 students) – during the 2025-26 school year.
For comparison, the national average for public schools is 6% of the student body enrolled in gifted and talented programs.
“One of the questions I get a lot is, ‘Why do we have more GT students at PRA than regular public schools?’ And the big reason is because we’re a charter school. We have families that are choosing alternative educational options for their children,” Huey said. “And, honestly, all of our populations are increasing. We have more second language learners, and students on 504 and IEP plans, than we’ve ever had before. I think it speaks volumes to the work PRA is doing that people want to send their children here no matter their kids’ needs.”
PRA’s gift and talented programming currently includes: Advanced Learning Plans (ALP), which are performance based and student created with the assistance of GT Coordinators; weekly enrichment opportunities (3rd-8th grade) in the Gifted and Talented Learning Lab; as well as bi-weekly lunch discussion groups at the elementary, middle school and high school levels where the curriculum fluctuates between teacher created and student driven investigations.
Outside the classroom, PRA also offers a variety of athletics, performing arts and clubs – Robotics, Model UN and Science Olympiad to name a few – that satiate the needs of gifted and talented students.
The addition of King for 2026-27 and beyond not only aids Huey in supporting PRA’s immense and rapidly growing GT population; but it also opens the door for new, unique programming that can continue to fulfill the needs of classroom teachers and their GT students.
“My hope is for us to build the GT program and for the kids to understand the purpose of it. We want it to be a meaningful program that's beneficial to the kids and something they look forward to,” Huey said. “We should be providing them opportunities, and facilitating those opportunities, for the in-depth discussions that they want to go into. Also, we want to find things that maybe are just not taught in the typical classroom. We’ll try to add even more hands-on, out-of-the-box learning experiences.”