Second Chicagoland Chesterton Academy location secured in Downer's Grove

Independent Catholic high school opens in Downers Grove with no-frills, classical approach

Imagine a new high school opening without laptops, iPads or tablets. There's no gym, football team or cheerleaders. Students wear uniforms, attend daily Mass and study Latin and Gregorian chant.

The new Chesterton Academy of the Holy Family in Downers Grove also promises to offer rigorous academics steeped in the classic traditions of Plato, Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.

Students already have lined up for the Aug. 24 opening in the basement of the First Presbyterian Church, said Sean Tierney, a Western Springs cardiologist and one of the school's founders.

"We have 30 applications now in different phases of the enrollment process" for freshmen through seniors, Tierney said. "We're prepared to start with a little as 10 students and hoping 20 is probably the average we're looking to get."

Students will order books rather than digital devices that become obsolete in a couple of years, he said. In four years, graduates will have built a library of classic authors including Chaucer, Homer, Dostoevsky, Twain and Shakespeare.

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