Stand Together features the Chesterton Schools Network
Stand Together has long been a supporter of educational freedom and innovation and they recently featured the Chesterton Schools Network on their website:
Could parents really start a school in 18 months? This model says yes.
The Chesterton Schools Network empowers parents to be creators of educational possibility.
Across the country, many parents are coming together around a shared realization: High school options don’t reflect the education — or character building — that they want for their children. Some want a classical curriculum that empowers students to think, not just memorize. Others need an education that brings their faith into every subject. Many seek something affordable that doesn’t sacrifice rigor.
Students at Chesterton Schools experience a classical, integrated education.
Instead of waiting for an alternative, these parents are starting one. With the support of the Chesterton Schools Network’s classes and planning tools, parents can quickly start classical, integrated high schools that works for them and their children.
This parent-led approach recently won CSN the $1 million Yass Prize — viewed as the “Pulitzer Prize of Education Innovation” — signaling national recognition for a model that treats parents as creators of education, not just consumers.
At a time when parents are seeking greater agency, alignment, and meaning in their children’s education, CSN offers the support and structure to envision something that works for them.
Parents as creators
“Parents have an innate desire to be involved in their students’ education,” said Emily de Rotstein, executive director of CSN. “We’re seeing an increasingly entrepreneurial spirit among parents — but they don’t want to go it alone.”
That tension — between a desire for something different and the capacity to create it — is where CSN’s model shines.
Brandon Vogt, a parent, CSN board member, and founder of the Chesterton Academy of Orlando, was immediately taken with the CSN model and its students.
“It was clear they were smart, virtuous, well-read, great-souled — everything I want my own children to become,” he said, recalling his first interaction with Chesterton students. “I thought, ‘Whatever model of education produced students like that, that’s what we need in Orlando.’”
While Vogt’s family was part of a vibrant Catholic homeschooling community, he was dissatisfied with the available high school options.
“We didn’t find a school that equally featured the three pillars we were looking for: classical, Catholic, and affordable,” Vogt recalled. “Other schools had one of the three, but not all of them. Along with several other local homeschool families, we collectively sensed this model is what we needed, not only for our own kids but for many others in our community.”
Here at Chesterton Academy of Annapolis, we are proud to be part of this nationwide movement of parents, students, and educators.
Our community is coming together to build an environment where students are formed intellectually, spiritually, and in character. And they are supported by a network of families and benefactors who believe in the mission of forming of the whole person.