New Cheyenne charter school to open for upcoming school year, to teach "traditional learning"

Jan. 8—CHEYENNE — Parents of Laramie County School District 1 students will soon have a new option for their children, a school "rooted in thousands of years of Western civilization."

A new, tuition-free charter school will be available to Laramie County schoolchildren at the start of the 2024-25 school year: the Cheyenne Classical Academy. Several people in local government, school administrators and board members attended the official "groundbreaking" ceremony (held indoors due to the weather) for the new school Monday morning.

The school was initially scheduled to open last September, but issues with securing a proper building delayed the project by a year. The school will open in the former Cheyenne Alliance Church building on Ridge Road.

Officials like Wyoming Department of Education Chief of Staff Dicky Shanor, who spoke in lieu of the state Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder, said the school would provide better options for parents who want to give their children a more "traditional" education.

"The Cheyenne Classical Academy's mission ... is to train the minds and improve the hearts of young people through classical content, rich education, and liberal arts and sciences," Shanor said, "with instruction in the principles of moral character and civic virtues in an orderly and disciplined environment that emphasizes virtuous living, traditional learning and civic responsibility."

Explaining what a charter school is, Shanor said it is a public school intended to provide more options to parents who want their child to get a different education than what is provided by a standard public school.

"In addition to that, it's also an advantage to the local school district, because, then, it's shown across the country that the charter schools start to innovate, and they raise the bar for the public schools, as well," he continued. "So, there's a big benefit to what you all are doing here, not just for the children in the school, but for the community as a whole."

Cheyenne Classical Academy aims to give children an "American classical education" through a "well-rounded education in the liberal arts and sciences," according to materials about the school. The school's curriculum will include civics lessons that emphasize patriotism, a unique instruction style regarding mathematics and a requirement that all students study Latin.

The board is chaired by former Wyoming state lawmaker and Wyoming Family Alliance and Wyoming Family Foundation President Nathan Winters, who led the morning's events.

"This is a classical school, and it gives us the opportunity to explore one of the oldest forms of educating children — one of the most contested forms of educating children — but with a distinctly Wyoming heart," Winters said.

After a prayer led by Capital City Church Pastor Karl Pickard, former Wyoming Speaker of the House Bill McIlvain and local businessman Bruce Perryman, both emeritus board members, spoke about their time working on building charter schools across the state and elsewhere, and the work people did to secure grant funding and local support for the new school.

After their remarks, Winters and the other board members in attendance had a ceremonial "groundbreaking," where they shoveled a small patch of dirt inside a wheelbarrow. Then they were escorted into a back room, where they were given golden hammers to make the first holes in a wall, symbolizing the former church's transition into a school.

The school's curriculum is provided by Hillsdale College in Michigan. The college, according to reporting by the New York Times, is a school noted for its role in conservative activism.

The program has 23 official member schools in the U.S., including one in Casper, three in Colorado and one in western Idaho. While Hillsdale College's curriculum has a guiding role in all of the projects, there are different tiers for schools based on official approval for the school's program: member schools, candidate member schools and curriculum schools. Schools can license curriculum for free from Hillsdale College to be a curriculum school.

Cheyenne Classical Academy is currently a "candidate member school," and the headmaster of the school said that he hopes the school will be a certified member school in approximately three years.

"To be successful is to follow the curriculum and the content that they've prepared and are sharing with us," Headmaster B.J. Buchmann told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. "It's a high bar because, right now, we are a candidate school, and we would love to be a member school."

The school will initially by available for kindergarteners through fourth-graders, and Buchmann said they plan to gradually scale up to serve through grade 12.

Samir Knox is the Wyoming Tribune Eagle's criminal justice and public safety reporter. He can be reached by email at sknox@wyomingnews.com or by phone at 307-633-3152. Follow him on Twitter at @bySamirKnox.