School Spotlight: Parnassus Preparatory School
This week’s school spotlight shines on Parnassus in Maple Grove, a charter school has been around for less than a decade.
In that span of time Parnassus has quickly attracted more students.
“It’s very encouraging to see how much we’ve grown in the last eight years in terms of our student population,” said teacher James Dechert. “I’m very proud that we have a diverse student population on campus.”
The K-12 prep school is tuition-free and enrollment has ballooned to 1,100.
Unique curriculum
The curriculum at Parnassus is split into different levels depending on age groups.
Parnassus encourages critical thinking and there is an emphasis on the classical trivium, which makes the school unique.
“We are instructing students in the classics in three different levels,” Dechert said. “In the school of grammar, school of logic and school of rhetoric.”
Senior Pranav Rupireddy believes Parnassus has given him a solid foundation for college and beyond.
“I’ve grown a lot in my communication ability and my reading and writing ability,” Rupireddy said. “Building the core fundamentals. How do you structure arguments, how do you write sentences? How do you speak, how do you critically think about things?”
Rupireddy likes the school’s focus on classical learning and gives the teachers at Parnassus high marks.
“Extremely supportive and an extremely high level,” Rupireddy said. “They’re just so organized, they have such a high level of depth in what they do.”
College ready
Bottom line is that most Parnassus students are college ready when they graduate.
“Many of our school of rhetoric students are taking advanced classes,” Dechert said. “College in the school courses, PSEO, so they’ve already accomplished many of their college credits.”
That should give them a jump start on dealing with college demands and result in good grades.
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