“The map of schools that are in the network of the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education continues to be ever more populated, but we still have large areas in the United States with no schools deeply dedicated to the Catholic tradition. (See here for a commentary on Catholic schools that are not so dedicated to the tradition.) For those parents in isolated places, however, there is an option.
The Oxrose Academy is an online institution that opened in 2011. It was started under the name Rolling Acres School; the name change took place in 2021. Oxrose now runs from preschool to twelfth grade. The curriculum is “classical, liberal arts, great books, and Thomistic,” the website says. All teachers are Catholics “in good standing,” and everyone submits to “the teaching of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church,” though the school remains independent of any ecclesial authority.
Founders Kenneth and Alecia Rolling started the school as a place for philosophically-minded kids to study metaphysics, natural law, and revealed theology. By its second year, Oxrose served 20 students, most of them drawn from the homeschool world. Today, Oxrose has a full curriculum of humanities (“Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas are the tutors”), sciences, theology, and the arts, and it serves 160 students, most of the growth happening in the last three years.”
