A Ponte Vedra Beach parent wants to bring an AI-powered private school to St. Johns County. She needs six more families to make it happen. Liz Quail, a former tutoring-business owner, told the St. Johns Citizen that 19 families have committed to founding a local campus of Alpha School. The network compresses core academics into two hours of daily AI-driven instruction. Alpha requires 25 founding families before it will search for property and set tuition, Quail said.

She is hosting an informational gathering Thursday, Oct. 29, from 6 to 7 p.m. at the Ponte Vedra Inn & Club. Quail emphasized it is a grassroots parent event, not an official Alpha School function.

The group is targeting a fall 2027 opening. No campus location has been finalized, and grade offerings would depend partly on the founding families, according to Quail.

How the model works

Alpha School was founded in Austin, Texas, in 2014. It operates campuses in New York, the San Francisco Bay Area, Austin and South Florida, according to the St. Johns Citizen. Co-founder MacKenzie Price, a Stanford-educated entrepreneur, leads the network alongside billionaire software investor Joe Liemandt, the New York Post reported in January.

Students spend roughly two hours each morning on personalized learning software, working at their own pace. The school employs adults called "guides" rather than traditional teachers. The New York Post reported that many guides lack professional education training and come from careers in coaching or tech, earning salaries of roughly $150,000.

Afternoons shift to workshops in entrepreneurship, financial literacy, public speaking and other practical skills. There is no homework.

"I feel like education is stuck in the industrial revolution model," Quail told the St. Johns Citizen. On tuition, Quail said preliminary discussions suggested local annual tuition could start around $40,000, though nothing has been set. Alpha lists tuition of $50,000 in Palm Beach Gardens and $55,000 in Boca Raton, according to the St. Johns Citizen. The Miami Herald reported in July that Alpha's Miami Beach campus charges $65,000. Quail acknowledged the cost would put the school beyond many families' reach but said she hopes tuition will fall as the model expands.

Alpha claims its students score in the top 1% to 2% on MAP testing, a nationwide measure of growth in reading and math, the New York Post reported. The school has not shared student scores on state standardized tests. A review published by the National Education Policy Center in February called those performance claims "potentially misleading," citing critics who challenged Alpha's statistical methodology. Pennsylvania rejected an Alpha charter school proposal over concerns about its performance data, according to the same review.

Families interested in the Thursday gathering can contact Quail at [email protected].