News & Media

The Classical Charter School Association [CCSA] Board proudly announced the formation of a School of Rhetoric [SOR] Expansion Committee a couple of weeks ago. A classical education progresses through three levels of advancement:  School of Grammar (K-4), School of Logic (5-8), and the School of Rhetoric (9-12).  Each level uniquely corresponds to the predisposed developmental readiness of that age group.  Classical School’s School of Grammar opened in 1999, the School of Logic was added in 2000, and now we seek to complete our program with the establishment of a School of Rhetoric. The Board is committed to conducting the work of the SOR Expansion Committee in such a way that it beautifully exemplifies the core virtues that we teach our students: integrity, cooperation, respect, responsibility, perseverance, stewardship, compassion, courage, and citizenship.

The CCSA Board believes that providing timely updates about the details of the work of the Expansion Committee in a manner that is accessible to all interested persons will pave the road to our success.  It is our intention to provide a minimum of two updates a month.  Those updates will be published on the Classical School website and hard copies of the updates will be available to pick up in the Classical School office.  Further, interested persons may subscribe to the website to receive notification of a newly posted update.  Please see instructions at the bottom of this article if you are interested in receiving notification of those updates.

Transparency is also an important part of good communication.  It is our firm belief that transparency will allow us to gain the confidence and trust of our stakeholders and increase the momentum and enthusiasm for our expansion efforts.   Therefore, words will be carefully chosen to: (1) communicate our plan to teachers, staff, parents, and the community at large; (2) to represent our school community in contract negotiations with the Appleton Area School District; (3) to invite teachers, staff, and parents to renew their support of Classical School; and (4) to invite the community at large to support the expansion of our existing program, as they too will benefit from the good and virtuous citizens classical education produces.

SOR Expansion Committee Update #1

The first task of the CCSA Board was to amend the language of our existing contract to allow for establishment of a School of Rhetoric.  The amended contract was submitted to the Appleton Area School District [AASD] Charter Steering Committee in November.  The CCSA Board President, Anne Tretinyak, and Dean Fischer met informally with some members of the Charter Steering Committee on December 3, 2014, to answer questions about the proposed contract amendments and to get their feedback.  The next step is a presentation of our amended contract to Programs & Service Committee on January 29, 2015.  If approved, we will have the opportunity to present to the AASD Board.  Assuming the proposed contract is approved by the school district, the AASD Board must determine whether or not the district is in a position to provide the space and funding needed to allow us to expand.  The majority of the parents who participated in the survey last spring indicated that they preferred a school within a school model with North High School as their preferred co-location site/ partner school.  The results of the survey were given to AASD.  To date, we have not received any feedback on the feasibility of co-location.

 When will we open our School of Rhetoric?

This question is of particular importance to our families with 8^th grade students.  We would encourage those families to register your students for school next fall at an existing high school and follow our expansion updates closely.  We are working hard to expertly craft a curriculum for the School of Rhetoric to insure that instruction continues to be content rich and the students are intellectually engaged and appropriately challenged.  Simply put, we are working hard to be in a position to quickly pass through doors as they open for us.  Please do not hesitate to call or email with any questions or concerns you may have about our expansion efforts.  All questions asked will be answered to the best of our ability and addressed in the following SOR Expansion Committee update for the benefit of the community at large.

Keep up with Expansion!  Subscribe to the Classical School Website “Latest News”

Subscribing to the Latest News on the Classical School Website will help you keep up with what’s happening at Classical School and with the School of Rhetoric Expansion process. After you complete the subscription process, you will receive an email each time the Latest News is updated. The process to subscribe is simple:

Step 1:  On the Classical School website homepage, scroll down until you can see the bottom of the Latest News section and click on “Go To News & Media Page”

Step 2: Near the top of the News & Media page, enter your email address in the subscribe field and click the “Subscribe” button.

Step 3:  A pop-up window will open; confirm the text in the provided box.

Step 4:  You will receive an email at the address you entered in Step 2. Click on the link in the email to confirm your subscription. A browser tab will open confirming your email subscription.