To the Families of the Village School of Louisville

It’s time to step up and take an active role in your Village. Unlike public schools, where education is left to administrators and bureaucrats, or homeschooling, where the burden falls solely on parents, we have a unique opportunity—one that is rare in the American experience.

At The Village School, we don’t just hand off responsibility; we engage. We have the power to shape our children’s education through collective intelligence—the natural version of AI. It’s the same force that guides starlings as they murmurate, locusts as they swarm, and plants as they share resources underground. It’s what happens when humans build strong families, communities, and organizations.

But collective intelligence only works when we take collective action. We’ve already hired great teachers and administrators and provided them with resources, but we have not yet fully stepped into our role as an active, engaged community. This is our collective shortcoming, and if we don’t act, we risk losing something even greater—our sense of belonging, our shared purpose, and the future of our children’s education.

My family joined VSL three years ago. It hasn’t been perfect—we are all unlearning old models of education and figuring out how to embrace this new responsibility. But we are adapting. We are learning. And now, it’s time to own this responsibility together.

In 1775, Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense about how an individual’s needs will always outgrow their capabilities—but how a village, acting collectively, can meet them all. That’s the challenge before us. The solution isn’t waiting for better administrators or more polished processes. The solution is us. We have the time, the energy, the expertise, and the connections to make this school thrive. So let’s act! Let’s organize, contribute, and build something lasting. Our children deserve it—and so do the generations that will follow them. Who’s ready to step up? Please respond to this email if you're interested in volunteering in any way.