I am honored to serve on the Classical Charter School Association Board, the not for profit corporation which has contracted with the Appleton Area School District to operate the Classical School.  We have accomplished many things as a relatively new school, including providing a rich and rigorous knowledge-based curriculum for our students in a teacher-led environment.  We are proud, and grateful to the Appleton Area School District that all of our students are under one roof, a goal for the school since inception.  However, we have many things we would still like to complete, including ongoing curricular improvements and providing for community development within our school.

My interest in the Classical School began when I purchased several of the E.D. Hirsch series of books, What your Nth Grader Needs to Know.  Soon after purchasing the Hirsch books, I was supplementing my daughter’s education with the curriculum set forth in the series.  I thought about home schooling using this curriculum.  Perhaps it was fate, but I heard that a group of parents was trying to start a school using the same curriculum.  I immediately retrieved the curriculum packet that the founding parents had on file at school libraries in the district.  After reviewing the packet, I was sold on the curriculum. The concept of cultural literacy has intrigued me since I first heard of the concept in the 1980s, long before I had children.  Frankly, I was concerned that my own cultural literacy was inadequate, despite the fact that I had attended a liberal arts college.  When I learned that the Core Knowledge curriculum was designed to insure that students would become culturally literate, and looked through the books and the sequence, I was thrilled that a school was being initiated in Appleton using the rich and fascinating curriculum.  I continue to be personally grateful to the pioneer founders of our school for their diligence, fortitude and perseverance in starting our school.

In a former life, I practiced law for ten years at Northwest Airlines, primarily in the corporate, finance and securities law areas.  I “retired” when our family moved to Appleton in 1994. Our children Julia and Will attended Classical School since its inception and my daughter is currently reaping the benefits of a classical education in her high school years.