Our story
How the Academy came to be
Every school begins as a conviction held by someone. Prairie Classical Christian Academy began with an employer's conviction that children can be taught to write well, to reason clearly, and to love what their families have built.
A need, seen at close range
Terrence R. Wall spent four decades building businesses in Wisconsin, and for four decades he read the letters and weighed the reasoning of the young people who came to work for him. Too many arrived, degrees in hand, unable to set down a clear paragraph or carry an argument from premise to conclusion.
He did not conclude that the young people were at fault. He concluded that education could do better - that a school built deliberately, on a proven model, could send its graduates into the world able to really read, really write and really do mathematics. The conviction was long in forming, and it began well before any of those letters crossed his desk.
A year missed, and three classrooms
His own schooling was interrupted twice over. Public school closures during his childhood moved him from school to school. Then, when he was seven, doctors found a narrowed aorta, and he underwent open-heart surgery. He spent three and a half months in the hospital and a further three months recovering at home. He missed the year's schoolwork entirely, and had to retake the first grade.
That is why the Wall family's gift to American Family Children's Hospital established and furnished three classrooms, in which qualified teachers hold regular lessons for children in long hospital stays, so that a child who is ill for a season does not also fall behind.
An education family
The conviction did not come from nowhere. The founder's father, John Wall, took over Democratic Printing Co. in 1968 and rescued a business that was failing. The opportunity then came to acquire it himself, and he grew it from five million dollars in sales to two hundred million, made it the largest supplier to schools and libraries in the nation, and renamed it DEMCO, Inc. - headquartered in Madison, with a substantial plant in DeForest.
He was president of the National Libraries Association and of the National Direct Mailers Association. He was the first ever to place an 800 number on every page of a catalog, and among the first to move to 800-number ordering; later, with his son's advice and help, he moved the company to the internet, where it now takes most of its orders.
The family's ties to the classroom run just as deep. Helen Wall, who taught honors English and reading through a full career in the classroom, set the family's standard for what a child's sentence ought to be.
An education childhood
The founder grew up inside that work. There were annual company camp-outs, and a father who consulted him on business decisions from high school onward. On family trips his father would call in at the local library to ask how they were doing, what was changing, what they needed.
At his own high school library, he asked the librarian whether he might watch the first space shuttle launch on the television at the back. She told him to wait - then wheeled the television out into the library, so that every student could watch.
A habit of innovation
He made his own additions early. At his high school he founded the first student-created course the school had offered, Music History, which is still taught there today.
He later taught real estate development for a number of years at the Graaskamp Real Estate Center at the Wisconsin School of Business, ranked first in the country, and there created the first Sustainable Development course in the world, also still taught today.
The family habit
A long habit of innovation and fresh approaches in education.
The founding of the Academy is where it continues.
The letter
In the practical sense, the Academy began with a letter. The founder wrote to Hillsdale College, proposing to found an academy on its model. The college invited him to its campus, and he met its leadership.
The Academy has now applied to become a Hillsdale College member academy, and intends to adopt its curriculum, its teacher training and its standards whole. What opens in Sun Prairie is not an experiment; it is founded deliberately on a proven model.
A campus, secured
In October 2025 the founder purchased a former insurance company headquarters in Sun Prairie - three substantial buildings on a single campus. Space in Building 100 is being renovated and dedicated to the Academy, with room for the school to grow into far more of it as grades are added, and grounds outside for playgrounds.
The T. Wall Foundation donates the use of the campus - buildings and land worth roughly twenty-five million dollars - so that the Academy will carry no debt and pay no rent. Few schools begin their first day so unencumbered.
The people
The founding team is small and deliberate. Terrence R. Wall, Founder, is joined in the Founding Group by Eric McLeod, attorney, Husch Blackwell, and by Hope Myers, who is spending a year in training at the college's academy 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 curriculum college. The school's leadership will be appointed through that process - the same standard, held from the first appointment.
The Wall Family Business Center
Wisconsin is home to tens of thousands of family businesses, and for years their owners have put the same questions to the founder. How does a family transition a business from one generation to the next? How do children come to love the enterprise rather than resent it? The Center formalizes the answers - speakers and working sessions for owners and parents, and elective courses for students in finance, real estate, entrepreneurship, marketing, operations and the transition itself.
Classical education done properly - children who really read, really write and really do mathematics - joined to preparation for the stewardship of what their families have built.
That is the story so far. The next chapters belong to the families who enroll.