Is Gateway a school
for my student?
A straight answer for families searching for a school that fits a bright student who also needs support.
Bright and neurodivergent, at the same time.
Gateway Academy is Arizona’s non-profit private day school for bright, neurodivergent students in grades 6 through 12. Most families qualify for Arizona ESA funding through an autism diagnosis or a current IEP, and tuition is $0 out-of-pocket for those who qualify.
If you have been told your student is capable but not a fit, or supported but not challenged, that gap is the reason this school exists.Read what families say →
Two things at once.
Academically bright
Students take the same core subjects they would take anywhere. Work is differentiated to the student, pacing follows mastery, and 100% of Gateway students earn college credit in grades 8 through 12 through ASU Accelerate. Across Arizona, about 25% of students do.
Neurodivergent
Counseling, social skills, executive functioning, pragmatic language, and sensory strategies are integrated into every day rather than pulled out of it. Therapy dogs Apollo and Athena are on campus every day.
Sound familiar?
Families usually arrive describing some version of the same student.
- Reads years above grade level but melts down over a worksheet
- Aces the test and loses the homework
- Has been asked to leave, or quietly encouraged out of, a school that couldn't support them
- Is bored in a program built around support, and unsupported in a program built around rigor
- Wants friends and hasn't been taught how to make them
If none of that sounds like your student, Gateway may not be the right school, and admissions will tell you so directly.
How others describe Gateway.
Outside directories, autism organizations, and other schools often describe Gateway as the only school in Arizona serving a purely twice-exceptional population. Some use older clinical labels to do it.
Gateway describes its own students as bright and neurodivergent, because that is what they are and it is how students here describe themselves. If you found this page using different words, you are still in the right place.
Questions families ask
The only way to know is to visit!
Walk the campus while school is in session. Bring your student. Tours run year-round and admissions are rolling.
