At the same time the Colorado Charter Schools Act was going through the legislative process, the Dennison option school in Lakewood was straining at the limits of its site capacity providing a K-8 program. In response to the need to expand Dennison's program through high school, a group of parents proposed a combined junior and senior high school that would relocate the 7th and 8th grades from Dennison and add the high school at a rate of one grade level per year. Naming themselves the Initiating Committee, they submitted an application to the Jefferson County School Board to operate as an educational option school with a request to be considered for a charter school if the educational option request was denied on December 17, 1993.