New Hillsdale-affiliated school to launch in Alaska, offering classical education to the ‘homeschool state’ 

A classical, Christian school is opening Wednesday in Anchorage, Alaska, as the third classical school in the state, marking a growing national trend of school choice for parents.

“The public schools are struggling in the city, losing kids and losing a lot of kids to homeschooling,” the school’s headmaster Sarah Spaulding told Heartlander News in an interview. “Homeschooling is huge up here in Alaska, not only in Anchorage but also in more rural areas. So, there’s a lot of choices here, and what I have found is that parents like to have choices, and parents are really resonating with Thomas More Classical School.”

Approximately 16% of Alaskan students are homeschooled, according to a Johns Hopkins education study, ;marking the largest homeschool state percentage in the country, Newsweek reports. Only roughly 5% of K-12 students in Alaska attend private schools, according to another study. Anchorage represents nearly 40% of the entire population of Alaska.

Thomas More Classical School is opening in the building of Unite Church, with approximately 70 kids from about 35 families this fall for kindergarten through sixth grade – and plans to add a grade level each year, Spaulding said. Tuition for kindergarteners is $6,500 and $7,500 for grades first through sixth, according to the website.

Hillsdale College support 

The classical school is partnering with Hillsdale College K-12 Education, a project of the Christian, liberal arts college in southern Michigan. Hillsdale’s K-12 Education program represents 26 member schools and 11 candidate member schools, one of which is Thomas More Classical School. Candidate member schools partner with the program in the years prior to launching and typically become an official member school after the first year of operation.

Spaulding brings nearly 30 years in private education. She homeschooled her own children and aided in the launch of two private schools in Ohio, one of which she served as principal. She moved to Alaska with her husband last year to prepare to launch the new school, but the couple had their eye on the state for several years.

“We had visited Alaska in 2021. We didn’t know anybody here. We had brought my mother up for her 70^th birthday, and did a choose your own adventure trip,” she said. “My husband pulled me aside. We were in a lovely, lovely place called Seward, Alaska, and he said, ‘I think God’s calling us to Alaska.’ I said, ‘Okay.’ That was in 2021.”

Spaulding resigned from Columbus Classical Academy in October 2024, saying she felt it was time to move to Alaska. She didn’t yet have plans for what work she may do. A few weeks later, the board of Thomas More Classical School contacted her.

Why Classical education?

Classical education returns to “tried and true methods” of teaching, Spaulding explained, adding that the structure teaches students how to learn, engage and analyze in a postmodern world.

“The idea that kids can and should know bodies of information – that’s very classical,” she said, noting how ancient instructors began with the basics of grammar as fundamentals to build upon. “We need it more than ever to have actual lexicons of words in our minds, actual contextual knowledge in our minds, so that when we’re confronted with the digital postmodern age, we can actually assess what is true and what is false, and what is right and what is wrong, and what is good and what’s bad.”

Thomas More Classical School intends to license the Hillsdale College K-12 Curriculum and offer the college’s American Classical Education curriculum – a core part of the new school’s mission, according to its website.

“Our mission is to form students in truth, goodness and beauty by cultivating their hearts and minds through a content-rich classical Christian education,” Spaulding said.

She outlined three pillars to fulfill that mission: Christian culture, classical curriculum and traditional teaching methods.

“We adhere to the tenets of the Nicene Creed as an institution,” Spaulding said. “So we’re setting up a culture that honors God and teaches students how to be virtuous because we believe virtues are eternal and that they don’t change with the shifting sands of cultural tides.”

The teachers, all of whom were hired locally, will teach the Hillsdale curriculum through a “human to human” method with the students oriented to face the front of the classroom and learn from the teacher, not from a tablet or computer, Spaulding explained.

“We will use technology as a tool to display things and such, but the teaching, the delivery of the material is human to human, and that’s a particular distinction in our system of schools that we set up,” she said. “And then you’ll find that it’s multisensory, so we’re going to see it, say it, hear it, write it.”

Naming the school

The school is named after St. Thomas More, the Lord Chancellor of England in the 16^th century, who refused to grant King Henry VIII’s request for a divorce or the king’s declaration of himself as head of the newly founded Church of England. More was eventually executed in 1535 and is recognized in the Catholic and Anglican churches as a saint.

“Thomas More held to what he believed without bringing anyone in to help him or even to take the load of his conscience for him. And the king beheaded him,” Spaulding said. “So, I think the board chose the name because he’s someone worth emulating and thinking about when we think about our conscience and the things that we hold dear.

“He died saying he would honor God first before the king, and I think that’s something that is worth wrestling with, especially in our postmodern time when sometimes we honor ourselves even before we honor God.”