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How Rural Colorado Parents Created A ‘No Politics’ Public School In Just One Year
The Federalist ^ | September 13, 2021 | Joy Pullman

Posted on 09/13/2021 8:59:34 AM PDT by Kaslin

These highly skilled parents came together to not just solve their own kids' education needs but offer a high-quality education to families in their glorious Colorado mountain town.


Merit Academy of Woodland Park, Colorado, opened on Aug. 23 in a buoyant ceremony featuring American flags and a teenage rider riding a dun horse while waving the school flag.

The new public school went from idea to reality in just one year, opening K-8 with plans to grow into high school. As a classical school, it 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 wanted that weren’t available through the Woodland Park School District, which like many in the nation has become computer-centered over the last several years.

“Our mentors said, ‘You’re crazy, you can’t get this done in a year.’ We said, ‘Oh yeah, watch us,'” said Merit Academy founding board member John Dill, a retired Air Force Space Command lieutenant colonel who now works as a U.S. military contractor.

It surely has much to do with the school’s founding board. Its five members also include the wife of a couple who have started five rock-climbing gyms, a therapist father of five who treats PTSD, the wife in a couple of software developers who have also started their own companies, and the wife of a married pair of former Air Force judge assistant generals (JAGs) who now work in other legal posts.

Dill and his wife are so committed to the concept of a great public school accessible to all in their community that they stopped homeschooling their twin eighth-grade daughters for it. So did others on their board, some hired as Merit teachers, and some who have enrolled their kids. The school offers Friday classes and other programming to homeschoolers as part-time students.

Homeschooling was working perfectly well for his family, Dill said, they just felt they could do more than take care of their own education needs — they could also help others. As patriots, they needed to.

“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.”


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; US: Colorado
KEYWORDS: charterschools; classicaleducation; colorado; coloradosprings; coreknowledge; education; k12; publicschools; schoolchoice; tellercounty
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To: jagusafr

Yes, the difference between the JAG and the JAGC. I kinda saw that too.


21 posted on 09/13/2021 11:27:29 AM PDT by jimfree (My 18 y/o granddaughter continues to have more quality exec experience than Joe Biden.)
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To: Kaslin
As a classical school, it 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.

So an actual education.

Disgrace that such a thing is news.

22 posted on 09/13/2021 3:34:15 PM PDT by Republican Wildcat
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To: BRL

They will have to use homeschool textbooks if they are truly serious. Public school textbooks are awful, as are most history books these days. I was trying to find some good books about the first ladies for my granddaughter, and I couldn’t believe the garbage that is out there. You have to go back several decades to find good history books for kids. Yes, I know about the Rush Revere books, but those are the exception.


23 posted on 09/13/2021 7:24:17 PM PDT by Pining_4_TX (You know you're old when all your dates are with doctors. )
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To: BRL
Or cowbirds will come along after finding the cozy nest.
24 posted on 09/14/2021 3:58:48 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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