Inside the plans for Elon Musk’s new private pre-school in Texas, which just got a permit to open
Elon Musk’s pre-K Montessori school in Texas can now open its doors.
The school, which has been in the works since last year, received its initial permit from the Texas Child Care Regulatory Commission on Thursday, according to the agency, paving the way for Elon Musk to begin building ambitious STEM-focused education plans that could eventually entail… Many K-12 charter schools and even an in-state college.
The Montessori school — dubbed “Ad Astra” (Latin for “to the stars”) in reference to Musk’s plans for interplanetary travel — is located about 40 minutes from Austin, in Bastrop County, where many of Musk’s companies operate. “. The charter school in Bastrop may eventually enroll up to 54 students in upper and lower elementary grades, with a dedicated faculty and a comprehensive mission to provide an educational facility “dedicated to STEM education at the highest levels,” according to documents Musk-funded nonprofit reviewed. by luck.
Ad Astra’s first students in Bastrop are between three and six years old and will attend a pre-kindergarten school that focuses on exploration and on tasks such as coloring, making posters and studying maps and globes.
The school faced some initial application missteps and inspection delays, but after passing inspection earlier this month, Ad Astra received its initial state permit on Nov. 14 and is now considered a licensed child care program, according to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. , which regulates child care centers in the country. Ad Astra Preschool can enroll nearly two dozen children, according to the agency, though it expects only 16 initially, according to application documents the school submitted to the state and obtained by luck Via a Freedom of Information Act request.
The Bastrop Ad Astra is Musk’s second major attempt to push education. The former Ad Astra School was created about a decade ago when Musk asked his son’s then-fourth-grade teacher to create a school for his children and the children of SpaceX employees. The school opened in 2014, but after Musk’s children graduated, Ad Astra and its faculty switched to a remote-only charter school called “Astra Nova” in 2020, according to an interview the co-founder gave in 2021. Ad Astra sold the mobile home and furniture SpaceX’s workforce and intellectual property, it said Nonprofit filings. In 2018, a new school called “discoveryI started working on the SpaceX campus, which is run by a company called Xplor Education that also runs a Montessori school in Hawaii.
This time, Musk’s school plans look even more grand. Musk’s foundation has committed nearly $100 million through a nonprofit called the Ad Astra is the latest offshoot in a wide array of companies and projects linked to Musk, the world’s richest person, who was recently appointed by President-elect Donald Trump to oversee a new Department of Government Efficiency.
Work and play
For now, Musk is starting small — in a long, white-terrace farmhouse off a busy farm-to-market road in Bastrop County, Texas — just a block from where some of Musk’s corporate facilities are located and where X’s new headquarters is located. ( The social media site formerly known as Twitter, which Musk acquired for $44 billion in 2022).
Ad Astra Pre-K will be led by Xplor Education CEO Greg Marek, per the state’s preschool request, and three more faculty members have been hired, effective this summer. Its approach to learning will be centered around exploration, with young children learning how to button things, color and draw, group, build words, and study globes and maps. Outside, there is a basketball court, and younger children will be able to play with tricycles and balls, according to documents. The curriculum itself—which includes periods of “work” and “play” and has children learn to sweep up, apologize to others, and learn how to “resolve conflict”—was inspired by the work of Alfred Adler and Rudolf Dreikurs, two psychologists and educators, “to teach young people to become responsible, respectful, and resourceful members of the Our community,” according to Ad Astra’s permit application. As a Montessori school, the school will also likely emphasize self-directed learning, hands-on experiences, and cooperative play. It is unclear whether any of Musk’s six younger children, who are under five years old and are said to live at Musk’s compound in nearby Austin, are there. Wall Street Journal– He will attend.
In practice, Ad Astra will likely look somewhat similar to Hala Kahiki Montessori in Lāna’i, the Hawaiian school also operated by Xplor Education. Some of the Ad Astra application questions are almost identical to those for Hala Kahiki, and the Ad Astra application appears to incorrectly refer to the school as Hala Kahiki in at least one instance, when it states that students will work with local elders and professionals “to learn about the community “The island.”
It’s not clear how much parents will pay for their children to attend Bastrop ad Astra. Tuition at Hala Kahiki Montessori School is $968 per month, according to the school’s website.
In Foundation The school could also include remote learners according to the document, which in one case misspelled Bastrop as BASTOP.
Musk’s name is nowhere on the application materials themselves, although the Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s fingerprints are all over the new school project. The X Foundation, which is funded by Musk’s foundation, owns the property on which the school is located, and describes plans for the project in filings. The initial status application for Ad Astra was submitted by Jared Birchall, Musk’s financial advisor and longtime confidant. Xplor Education, which is behind “Discovery Preschool” near the SpaceX campus in Hawthorne, California, has listed job ads for the new Bastrop school and has a “Coming Soon” page for Ad Astra on its website.
Musk and Birchall did not respond to a request for comment. When I arrived via luckMarek said he was not authorized to speak to reporters and declined to comment.
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