Alpha School, the private network that says AI software can cover a child's core academics in two hours a day, is opening two Boston locations this fall. One of them fills a building another private school emptied on its way down.
The Jamaica Plain site at 3815 Washington St. was the Croft School until June, when Croft closed with more than $12 million in debt and founder Scott Given admitted misleading families, staff and investors about its finances, according to WBUR. Croft parents spent the summer scrambling for schools. Some of them are now Alpha's first Boston customers.
Nicky Bandera, whose rising fifth-grader was displaced by the Croft collapse, told WBUR the AI model drew her in even though she's never used AI herself. "Most kids are being prepared for a world that no longer exists now," she said. Another Croft parent, Katharine Robb, looked at the same option and went the other way, sending her kids to Dedham Country Day over concerns about screen time and how little research exists on AI as a primary teacher.
Jamaica Plain will charge $60,000 a year. The Beacon Hill location at 300 Cambridge St. charges $65,000, opening with 25 students and doubling to 50 next year. An Alpha spokesperson, Anna Davlantes, said both are nearly at capacity. For scale, Alpha's new Oklahoma schools charge $40,000, which drew statewide attention as nearly double that state's priciest private schools. Boston's prices run half again higher.
The network itself is smaller than the expansion suggests. Alpha told Boston School Committee members in April that roughly 500 students attend its schools nationwide, across what Davlantes said were 22 schools last year. That averages out to about two dozen students per school, and the company plans 27 new locations this year. We covered Alpha's Oklahoma opening, where adults called guides supervise but don't teach, and former employees have alleged the AI curriculum contains errors and that monitoring recordings from students' computers weren't securely stored. Alpha disputes those claims.
Approved once, then on its own
The Boston story adds a wrinkle the Oklahoma one didn't have: the approval process itself. Massachusetts law says a private school needs the local school committee's sign-off before opening, and the instruction has to be as thorough and efficient as the district's own. What happens after approval is nobody's job. The state education department leaves approval policy to each committee, and there's no ongoing reporting.
Boston's committee approved the Beacon Hill location in June. The Jamaica Plain site wasn't in the application and didn't come up in Alpha's presentation, according to WBUR. Committee member Franklin Peralta put the limits plainly: "We don't have any oversight of what they do next." Several members said during meetings that approving a school they'd never hear from again felt uncomfortable. Boston Public Schools didn't respond to WBUR's requests for comment.
So the fall arrives with a building that held one private school's collapse now holding another's experiment, at $60,000 a seat, answerable after opening day to nobody but its parents.
Sources
WBUR: AI-based private school will open two Boston locations, including former Croft space in Jamaica Plain
Oklahoma Watch: A $40,000-per-Year AI School With No Teachers Is Opening in Oklahoma
