New York City parents who have grown tired of forking over $60,000-plus a year to pay for their kids to attend uber-woke private schools are now signing up for a new school that promises to keep politics out of the classroom. 

The Alpha School — which rejects traditional lesson plans in favor of a “life-skill” forward curriculum — relies on artificial intelligence and “personalized learning” to zip students through “core” academic studies in just two hours each morning. Afternoons are dedicated to workshops that “teach real-world skills and fuel individual passions.”

Alpha Schools are already up and running in Austin and Miami. This fall, they’re opening up a location in the Big Apple. Applications are already pouring in. 

“I’ve had a lot of conversations with parents in New York City who are frustrated with both the politics of the school and the politics that are implied for the parents to have,” the incoming head of school for the New York City location, Ben Gordon-Sniffen, tells The New York Sun. At the Alpha school, though, the teachers — who go by the title “guides” — teach kids how to think critically and engage in constructive discourse, he says. 

As part of their “Both Sides” program, students are expected to be able to explain both sides of a given argument using “ arguments, counterarguments, and rebuttals,” Mr. Gordon-Sniffen says. “So we’re teaching that type of thinking without connecting it with any specific doctrine. A lot of parents have really connected with that.” 

One such parent? A New York City mother who is pulling her daughter out of “one of the best private schools in NYC, that costs about $100,000” but boasts academic standards that are “ridiculously low,” she tells the Sun. 

She — along with a whole host of NYC parents — is fed up with schools that she says “prioritize politics over academics.” She offers as an example: “children have many lessons on ‘how people can choose their gender’ before there’s ever a lesson on what a chromosome is.”

What excites her about the Alpha school, though, is its focus on “merit, learning, and understanding both sides of the political spectrum over political propaganda,” she tells the Sun. 

Frustration with NYC’s elite private schools — many of which are expected to offer the best education in the country — has been mounting for years. A former New York dad went viral in 2021 for sending a scathing letter to an elite all-girls private school, the Brearley School, for trying to “brainwash” their students with woke ideology.

Brearley, whose alumni include the daughters of Chelsea Clinton, Tina Fey, Drew Barrymore, and Steve Martin, seemingly overhauled its focus on racial justice amid the George Floyd-era civil uprisings. The school’s online course catalog post-2020 was quickly beefed up with words like “antiracism” and “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Prospective parents were required to sign an “anti-racism” pledge which asked them to describe their “commitment to creating an anti-racist and inclusive school community.”

Andrew Gutmann, in his 1,700 word letter, railed against the all-girls school for its “cowardly and appalling lack of leadership” and for “appeasing an anti-intellectual, illiberal mob.” Mr. Gutmann denounced Brearley for “viewing every element of education, every aspect of history, and every facet of society through the lens of skin color and race.” 

The letter went viral just a few days after the headmaster of the Dalton School resigned when parents expressed outrage over the school’s “anti-racism” curriculum. An anonymous group of Dalton parents issued a letter raising issue with the school’s “obsessive focus on race and identity” which included “‘racist cop’ reenactments in science, ‘de-centering whiteness’ in art class, learning about white supremacy and sexuality in health class.” 

Four years later, parents are still voicing the same concerns. This past November, comedian Jerry Seinfeld lambasted NYC’s Ethical Culture Fieldston School — which his children once attended — for allowing “distressed” students to take a day off school following the presidential election. The email, which was sent by the administration to all parents, was titled “Election Day Support” and described the election as a potentially “high-stakes and emotional time” for students. The sprawling Riverdale-based school runs parents $65,000 a year. 

“There are zero schools in NYC that are not dramatically left-leaning,” the incoming Alpha School mother tells the Sun. “There’s no place for educators who aren’t extremely left-leaning to work, nor parents to send their children.