Chesterton Academy receives accreditation

Diocese of Knoxville’s newest school recognized by state, nationally

By Bill Brewer

Chesterton Academy of St. Margaret Clitherow has earned not one or two but five high marks in recent months that spell continued growth and success for the Diocese of Knoxville’s newest school.

Zach Summers of Chesterton Academy outlined the “gems” received by the Knoxville school that are prompting rising enrollment and plans for expansion. They include:

• Official recognition by Bishop Mark Beckman as a diocesan school
• Accreditation by the National Council for Private School Accreditation (NCPSA)
• Accreditation by the Chesterton Schools Network
• Eligibility for the Tennessee Education Freedom Scholarship Program as a Category III private school
• Recognition in the Cardinal Newman Society’s The Newman Guide, which recommends top Catholic colleges and universities as well as primary schools.

Mr. Summers, founding headmaster of Chesterton Academy, explained that since Bishop Beckman recognized Chesterton in 2025 as a Catholic school within the diocese, the 3-year-old school is now accredited and meets state and national education guidelines.

Bishop Beckman visited the school on March 25 and celebrated Mass with the students, faculty, and parents before spending time with the students.

The NCPSA is recognized by the Tennessee Department of Education as an accrediting agency for Category III private schools within the state. NCPSA officials visited Chesterton in February as part of its accreditation review.

“We believe in accountability and external recognition of the quality work we are doing,” Mr. Summers said. “The site visit by NCPSA, as wonderful as it is, is only the tip of the iceberg. It’s one-tenth of the process. It’s looking at all of our documents and gathering all the artifacts. They were here for two days, and we received our official announcement two days before our feast day, St. Margaret Clitherow (March 26).”

“And the next day we were recognized by the Department of Education, which bumped us up from a Category V to a Category III school, which allowed us to be recognized by the state as a voucher school. Then, the very next day we already had an existing student apply their voucher to our school. And an incoming student applied their voucher to our school as well,” Mr. Summers added.

Tennessee legislators have approved expanding the Tennessee Education Freedom Scholarship Program, increasing the number of students who can receive the annual vouchers from 30,000 to 35,000. Each approved student receives $7,500 from the state to attend the private school of their choice.

And now, Chesterton Academy is one of the participating private schools, along with the 10 other Catholic schools in the Diocese of Knoxville: Notre Dame High School, St. Jude, and Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Chattanooga; St. John Neumann in Farragut; St. Mary in Oak Ridge; St. Dominic in Kingsport; St. Mary in Johnson City; and Knoxville Catholic High School, Sacred Heart Cathedral School, and St. Joseph in Knoxville.

“We already have several students who have applied their vouchers toward our school and are fully enrolled next year, either re-enrolled or newly enrolled. We have received everything that is set up for that,” Mr. Summers said. “We have four to five students presently waiting to finish their enrollment until they receive their vouchers.”

Mr. Summers is anticipating an increase in Chesterton enrollment for the 2026-27 academic year.

“There are a lot of effects that are going to occur from the various statuses that we have received this semester, things that put us on the national map more than previously,” he noted.

“The Newman Guide is a guide you want to be in as a Catholic college or university. They not only check for academic rigor but spiritual and character rigor and character formation, integrity of the school’s policies and guidelines to make sure they are forming Catholic students and not overly appeasing the world. In short, to make sure they come out the other end of the college still Catholic and stronger,” he said.

“Recently, The Newman Guide extended this to Catholic grade schools—K-8 and high school—and so as of right now over the last two years, of 5,800 Catholic grade schools, only 44 have received that status of being a Newman-recommended school in The Newman Guide. The Newman Society reached out to us a few months ago as the youngest and newest accredited Chesterton Academy. We have been working with them, and as of the end of our school year, May 22, we will be a Newman Guide high school.”

Mr. Summers pointed out there is only one other Chesterton school in The Newman Guide, and it is a flagship Chesterton school, Chesterton Academy of the Holy Family in the Diocese of Joliet, Ill. The only other Tennessee secondary-high school in The Newman Guide is St. Cecilia Academy, which is a Diocese of Nashville school.

And, according to Mr. Summers, Chesterton’s recognition in The Newman Guide is especially important for families moving to East Tennessee from other parts of the country. He said Catholic families commonly consult The Newman Guide and The Society of G.K. Chesterton when making school choices.

Mr. Summers said the Chesterton Academy is blessed by the “gems” it has received in the last year, and he attributes them to one main reason.

“That’s easy. That is the Lord’s providence. As Gamaliel said in the New Testament regarding the Apostles as they started to preach the Gospel and were arrested; they brought, I believe, Sts. Peter and Paul before the Sanhedrin, and he (Gamaliel) said, ‘If it is of God, it will last. If it is of man, it will perish.’ It is not us. We simply participate in the Lord’s will. But He is really what drives it,” Mr. Summers said.

“I think the school still being here after three years, and after five years of formation, is proof in the pudding of that,” he added.

The Chesterton Academy’s inception was in spring semester 2020, just as COVID-19 was spreading across the country.

Prior to his starting Chesterton Academy, Mr. Summers was a Latin teacher at Lakeway Christian Academy in White Pine.

He said Jeff Baker, who is now Father Jeff Baker, pastor of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church within the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, approached him first with the idea of starting a Catholic school in the Knoxville area.

“We wanted to see what a Catholic classical academy would look like in East Tennessee. The soil is actually very ripe for it in East Tennessee for this notion of Christian classical academies,” Mr. Summers pointed out.

He explored opening a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school so students could start their faith formation early.

“However, we became convinced the more we looked at the Chesterton schools model that four years gives a much quicker turnaround time in returning students to the community. Take them where they’re at at the end of their eighth-grade year, whether it’s public, private, Protestant, or Catholic. By the end, they all have the same formation,” he said.

“In many of these Chesterton communities, some of the students return as teachers, as parents, as volunteers. So, they are able to refresh the academy or go out and really till that soil,” he added.

After spending time researching Chesterton schools and how the network organizes its schools, Mr. Summers and Chesterton Academy of St. Margaret Clitherow organizers spent 18 months in training, building a community, holding town-hall meetings, fundraising, and putting together infrastructure.

“We opened our doors in the fall of 2023. We opened over on Rutledge Pike, where we spent our first year. After that first year, thanks be to God, we were able to move over to the west side, where all of our data told us this is the area where we needed to be. We just needed to get started where we were at first,” he said. “We just needed to start however imperfectly. The Lord will lead us the rest of the way.”

In the first two years Chesterton Academy has been at 217 Fox Road near Farragut, the school had nine students each year as it rolled out its high-school curriculum. At the beginning of the 2025-26 academic year, Chesterton had 18 students. It has since enrolled three transfer students.

“As we go into this next year, we already have 25 students fully enrolled. We have at least another five in the pipeline and we are shooting for 40 students before the start of the next school year,” Mr. Summers shared.

He observed that the current school building can accommodate up to 40 students without any modifications.

“With modifications, we can scale up to 50 in the present building. We have plans to add buildings to the back of our campus, which could get us up to 60 or 70 students,” he said.

The Chesterton Academy leases the building it is in and subleases it to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church for its Masses and church activities.

Mr. Summers said the Chesterton Schools Network caps enrollment in each school at 160 students. He acknowledged that the number is small compared with average enrollment at K-8 schools, which is 225-250.

“That puts us at roughly 40 students per grade in our high school. We don’t envision ourselves going anywhere near that for now. We would like to be able to focus on the quality of the culture and grow enough to be able to provide for a living wage for our faculty, for the quality of our building, and the educational materials,” he said.

As part of Chesterton Academy’s classical approach to education, digital technology, software, and apps as a part of classroom instruction are de-emphasized while hands-on learning and reasoning are emphasized, or as Mr. Summers called it, “the anagogical experience.”

“I always say if you know how to write a paper physically, you know how to type a paper. But if you know how to type a paper, you don’t know how to write a paper. (Students) look for the spell-check; they look for Grammarly to help them with everything. This process cuts down significantly on our expenses. We have chalkboards and pens and pencils. A lot of our expenses go toward quality books,” he explained.

For now, Mr. Summers said Chesterton’s goal is to focus on 80 to 100 students.

Chesterton students take 11 courses each year: theology, philosophy, literature, history, Latin or Greek, mathematics, science, art, music, drama, and dance.

Father Neil Blatchford, associate pastor of St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in Lenoir City, is the Chesterton Academy chaplain. Father Baker celebrates three Masses a week at the academy. Father Bill McNeeley, pastor of Holy Family Parish in Seymour, celebrates Mass there each Monday. Other Diocese of Knoxville priests also have taken part in the school.

An immediate goal of Chesterton is to have all four high-school grades rolled out completely with a full complement of students in each grade accompanied by full faculty staffing.

“We are moving from three full-time faculty members, including myself, and four part-timers, to five full-time faculty members and one part-timer next school year,” Mr. Summers said, noting that the Chesterton model includes providing ample planning time for teachers to go with their instruction time.

Chesterton faculty members are Mr. Summers; Jared Kimutis, who is deputy headmaster; Sonia Summers, who teaches fine arts; Mary Weaver, who teaches music; and Hannah Dee, who teaches math and science.

Long-term plans, according to the headmaster, are for Chesterton Academy to purchase its own campus that can accommodate up to 160 students.

“For now, we really want to focus on getting the quality of the culture off the ground. The quality of the culture is here; it is established. But it takes several years to make sure that is nurtured and strong and fostered. We would like to make sure that we don’t expand so rapidly that we don’t maintain that culture first. The network highly encourages that,” Mr. Summers said.

He underscored that Chesterton Academy is financially stable.

“We are a ministry. We are resting on eagle’s wings. No situation is perfect, but we are at a sustainable model, and we are constantly being met with excellent benefactors who wish to help us,” he said. “The more we see our enrollment increase over time, the more any little inconsistencies in the finances will solidly work themselves out.”

As The Chesterton Academy of St. Margaret Clitherow instills its three pillars of a classical Catholic education in its students—spirituality, character, and intellect—Mr. Summers noted that the school is a “niche” educational model and is not in competition with other Catholic schools.

“Classical education is not for everyone. But it is for some. We like to support our sister Catholic schools however we can,” Mr. Summers said.