Bob Luddy made his fortune manufacturing commercial kitchen ventilation systems and HVAC equipment, which is not exactly the typical background for a man striving to reinvent the American education system.
But Luddy prefers that outsider’s perspective.
“What I knew going into this is what everybody knows, which is that there’s been many challenges within the public school system going back 20 to 30 years, if not longer,” Luddy said.
As an old-school businessman with Libertarian leanings and a penchant for classical Greek logic, Luddy found himself seeking to improve the public school system in North Carolina in the late 1990s. He started off with a charter school, Franklin Academy, which soon became the largest charter school in the state, with a waiting list of four students for every one spot.
“But government cannot stop regulating, so it’s not easy to run a charter because you have both federal and state mandates,” Luddy said. “Over time, public administrators will try to put more and more rules on them.”
That left private school as the only remaining option to achieve his vision, though he was well aware the very term “private school” calls to mind enclaves of the rich and elite. If Luddy was to make his model work for the people who needed it most, he needed to come up with a different option.
Enter Thales Academy.
Founded in 2007, the collection of private schools — which will soon open a Greenville location at the Hartness Urban Community — approaches education with a classic mindset and a modern approach to affordability.
“We always knew we wanted to have an educational, civic component to Hartness,” said Sean Hartness, founder of the Hartness Development. “The goal is to have families that are able to move in or live nearby and literally walk to school safely and have that community there.”
Restoring a community-minded notion of education is also key to Thales.
Aiming to “embody traditional American values” with a curriculum that focuses on critical thinking and a classical education model, Luddy sees Thales as a course correction for an education system that has, in his mind, been either hamstrung by regulations or rendered inaccessible by costs.
Pricing is crucial, Luddy said, otherwise, what’s the point?
If you want to send your kid to Thales, you’ll spend $5,500 a year.
“We keep costs down in several ways,” Luddy said. “One is not having a lot of administration. If you look at a typical public school, they have as many employees not teaching as they do teaching. That’s a horrendous cost.”
At Thales, there is one school administrator, one assistant administrator and then teachers. That’s it. The teachers run their classrooms, Luddy said, which allows for more autonomy depending upon the needs of each specific class.
“Very light administration keeps costs as low as possible,” he said.
Another gripe Luddy has with the public school system is the focus on accreditation — that is, requiring teachers to meet certain standards in order to be eligible to teach in each state. In South Carolina, for example, prospective teachers must have at least a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university, pass the Praxis assessments, complete a background check and complete an approved South Carolina teacher preparation program.
“On the surface, accreditation sounds OK,” Luddy said. “But I believe if accreditation solved the problem of delivering a quality education, we wouldn’t be talking about all these other school choice options. Essentially, accreditation as I see it as a system of licensing that has not proven to be effective and which is, I believe, a very arcane methodology primarily driven by government’s addiction to trying to control everything to the detriment of the outcome.”
In other words, Thales Academy hires teachers based upon their expertise and their teaching ability, rather than a specific checklist of items.
“If you hold a master’s degree in math but aren’t a good math teacher, what is that degree worth to the children?” he said.
The school buildings are another cost-saving measure. Once Luddy landed upon a design that worked, he didn’t fuss with it, so each Thales Academy building looks essentially identical.
“We build the same building every time,” Luddy said. “They’re cost effective, safe and beautiful, and we don’t do a new set just for its own sake. We make technical improvements but that’s all.”
As for the groundbreaking on the new Thales School building at Hartness, that has yet to be determined, Luddy said, but those interested in finding out about enrollment can do so at ThalesAcademy.org.
