Classical Strides in Colorado
The state of Colorado boasts a number of classical schools. In Colorado Springs, the Chesterton Academy of Our Lady of Walsingham opened its doors in August, the newest member of the Minneapolis-based [G.K.] Chesterton Schools Network. Three of the 34 Chesterton schools are operating in Colorado — two are located in the Denver area — and these offer a "substantive classical education" that includes authentic Catholic teaching.
Walsingham's Headmaster, Mark Langley, has a long history of involvement in classical education. A graduate of the first classical Catholic school in the U.S., Trivium School, founded in Lancaster, Massachusetts in 1978, Langley is a force in classical education renewal. In an interview with Education Reporter, he said: "There is a compelling need to return to this type of education, the study of Latin and Greek, the Great Books of the Western World, and the writings of the great authors."
Many classical education advocates, Christian and otherwise, agree with him, as dozens of schools have copied the Trivium's classical model. Theology, math, science, daily Mass, and a mandatory chorale program to perpetuate Catholic sacred music round out Walsingham's curriculum.
In 2003, Langley was invited to start a school in Cleveland, Ohio. He answered the call and founded The Lyceum, where he served as headmaster and subsequently academic dean for 17 years. The Lyceum became a model for the design of the first Chesterton Academy Network, of which Our Lady of Walsingham is a member school.
Langley is passionate about his students and intertwines classical education with his faith. "The value of a genuine Catholic liberal education is seen in the interior beauty of those who have devoted a relatively small part of their lives to the formation of their souls in beauty, goodness, and truth," he said. "No matter how few there are who undertake such a pursuit, they are the leaven that the world needs."
Walsingham parents are proud of how quickly their school got off the ground. "God truly worked a miracle to make this school a reality in just one year," said Jenny Vostatek, parent, founding member and vice chair of the new academy's board. "From finding the headmaster and location to hosting a successful, in-person fundraising gala that netted over $150,000, the Lord has definitely blessed this school. We can't wait to showcase the talents of our incredible faculty and students throughout the year within our community."
Ultimately, Walsingham hopes to increase its enrollment to 75 students, which Headmaster Langley believes is the ideal size. "We are trying to run a school with a familial environment," he explained. "A lot of classical educators make the mistake of trying to operate their secondary schools as if they were classical liberal arts colleges, but teaching has to be proportionate to students' minds." For example, while the high school student is simply not ready to read Aristotle's Metaphysics, he is, nonetheless ready for Euclid's Elements." In other words, Langley believes high school students must be challenged with excellent and substantive academics without the expectation that they will think and behave like adults." His success so far bears out this belief.
Rural Town Goes Classical
West of Colorado Springs on U.S. Highway 24, as it climbs the pass through the front range of the Rocky Mountains, lies the town of Woodland Park. On August 23, the town opened Merit Academy, a new classical charter school that, like Walsingham, went from concept to reality in just one year.
As reported in The Federalist, 9-13-21, the classical K-8 school, which plans to grow into a high school, "offers a low-screen, high-relationship environment and a focus on creative and critical thinking through careful attention to classic works and traditional approaches to math and science." These are things parents say they want that weren't available through the Woodland Park Public School District (WPSD).
Merit Academy's founding board member, John Dill, is a retired Air Force Space Command lieutenant colonel who now works as a military contractor.
Dill and his wife stopped homeschooling their twin daughters to help start the school, which also offers outreach to homeschoolers as part-time students. Dill told The Federalist's Joy Pulliam that, while homeschooling was working for his family, "they just felt they could do more than take care of their own education needs — they could also help others."
"I'm a rural kid from the mountains of Maine looking at the rural kids in the mountains of Colorado and saying, ‘This isn't right, they need to be educated too,'" Dill said. "If our nation is ever to get better, we need better schools."
The board's classical school model was rejected by the WPSD, which uses an online platform called Summit that many parents shunned even before the COVID-19 lockdowns. Pulliam writes that Summit "has been dogged with privacy, politicization, and screen-time concerns" among parents across the country.
After the WPSD denied the Merit's application in December 2020, the board contacted a Colorado school-choice lawyer, who informed them of a little-known Colorado law that authorizes boards of cooperative educational services, or BOCES, to contract out education services. He advised that a BOCES could work for them like an independent charter school authorizer, variations of which are allowed in 45 states. Eventually, the Woodland Park BOCES was approved and the project moved forward.
In its first year, Merit Academy has 186 students, with 65 more on a waiting list. The small-town parents and entrepreneurs who made the school a reality are praying they will find the resources to expand as their classical program grows.
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