Centennial private school to open next fall after $3.6M buy

Scott Anderson thinks today’s youth should look to the past to prepare for the future.

The 67-year-old retired aerospace entrepreneur bought a vacant office building at 7241 S. Fulton St. in Centennial earlier this month for $3.6 million from commercial contractor DCPS. Come fall, he will open the Excalibur Classical Academy inside, teaching children Aristotle and Socrates and encouraging open debate among pupils.

Part of the inspiration was his nephew, a recent college graduate with a software engineering degree, who struggled to find a job thanks to recent advances in artificial intelligence.

“What is the right education for the next generation in this new world of artificial intelligence? And I did some research, and it came back to, I think, studying the classics and what is truth, understanding truth and teaching a kid how to think,” Anderson said.

Anderson was a co-founder of SEAKR Engineering, a space electronics manufacturer. It had 540 employees when it was acquired by Raytheon in 2021.

At Excalibur, he plans to start small, enrolling students in kindergarten through third grade initially, then adding one grade of 10 to 20 children a year. The 26-year-old building he just bought is a bit under 12,000 square feet, enough to hold only the elementary school grades.

Tuition will start at $9,500 in year one, rising to $15,000 by year three, Anderson said, although he hopes to be able to provide thousands of dollars in assistance for students by then.

The long-term vision is to one day have a full-fledged K-12 program. While not affiliated with any denomination, the school will emphasize that the U.S. was founded on “Christian principles” and focus on the literature of the founding fathers and the work that inspired them.

“Every child is welcome in our school, but just know that when we start our day with a prayer, it is because we’re not going to be just country only. It’s God and country. And make sure that people know that, acknowledge that this is the foundation of our history, of our nation,” said the school’s headmaster, Priscilla Rahn.

Rahn, a 25-year teaching veteran of Denver Public Schools, said she’s leaving the district to pursue an educational model she thinks will better serve children and teachers, too. One example is Junto, a weekly event on Fridays where all the teachers at the school will analyze the same text together through the Socratic method, arguing and discussing the literature.

“We have kids in private schools who do great. They go to the Ivy Leagues, they end up coming out and being very, very successful. What was it about their education track that’s really different from what we’re doing in a mass system which was never intended in our nation’s founding. It’s not the government’s role to educate children,” she said.

But getting the school off the ground won’t come cheap.

Anderson said he expects to put an additional $2 million of improvements into the building. That includes tearing down walls to create classrooms and adding a playground and recreational field outside. To break even, the school needs tuition to be $15,000 per student, with 18 students per class.

Anderson is not charging the school rent. When searching for a building, he wanted to stay close to his home in the southern suburbs, looking for properties located equidistant to each of his five school-age grandchildren in hopes they may eventually enroll. Kentwood Commercial’s Bobby Bolyard and Todd Snyder represented Anderson in the deal.