About and mission
Why this school exists
Prairie Classical Christian Academy exists to teach Christian, classical, and constitutional values to our children. In the founder's own words: they learn to really read and write and do math.
What “classical” means for a parent
A classical education is the old, ordered way of teaching - the tradition that formed most of the writers, scientists and statesmen children still study. It proceeds in three stages, each with a plain meaning. In the early years, children gather the raw material: phonics, number facts, poems, dates, the names of things. Educators call this the grammar stage; a parent would call it committing the facts to memory, thoroughly.
As children grow, they learn to put those facts in order - to ask why, to detect a weak argument, to work a problem from first principles. This is the logic stage: the years in which a child who has been given real material begins to reason with it. Last comes rhetoric - the art of speaking and writing so that others listen. Not performance for its own sake, but the ability to state a true thing clearly and defend it.
None of this is exotic. It is reading whole books rather than excerpts, mastering mathematics rather than surveying it, and writing every day. It asks more of children than is now customary, and children rise to it.
The founding
The Academy was founded by Terrence R. Wall through The T. Wall Foundation, which owns the campus buildings and donates their use to the school. The Foundation established the Academy, and the work of founding it is now carried by the Founding Group, with a headmaster to be appointed ahead of opening. The arrangement is deliberate - the buildings are secured for the long term, and the school is free to be a school.
The arrangement
The Foundation secures the buildings for the long term.
The school is free to be a school.
The Founding Group
The Academy is in its founding stage, and its work is carried by a Founding Group rather than a board. The Group will seat three to five members. Terrence R. Wall, Founder, is joined by Eric McLeod, attorney, Husch Blackwell, with the remaining seats being filled.
Hope Myers is a member of the Founding Group. She is spending a year in training at the college's academy, learning the curriculum from within, and will lead the school's conversations with families. She arrives in July 2027 to prepare for opening.
A headmaster search begins in September 2026, with candidates interviewed and vetted by the college. The school's leadership will be appointed through that process, a full year before the doors open - time to appoint teachers, establish the culture and open well rather than quickly.
What we hold to
- Truth is real, and children can be taught to find it. Reading, writing and mathematics are taught to mastery, not to exposure.
- Faith belongs in the school day. Christian formation is woven through the whole of it.
- Citizenship is learned from the sources. Students read the country's founding documents for themselves.
- Families come first. The school serves parents raising children, among them the particular families who will one day place a business in their children's hands.
Follow the Academy
The school opens in September 2028. Until then, the work of preparing it - the building, the curriculum and the founding year - is shared as it happens.