Dear Families and Friends of Holy Family Classical School,

It is my great privilege to announce that Holy Family Classical School has received the recommendation of the OCCSA Accreditation Team for full accreditation through 2030. This completes the journey of Holy Family Classical School becoming the first fully accredited classical, Catholic school in the state of Oklahoma, a process that has been ongoing. When the team visited in May of 2024 and granted a 1-year term of accreditation, their final report included a list of 28 areas that we had not yet met the standards. I’m very proud to share that thanks to the tireless efforts of the entire community of teachers, staff, parents, students, and volunteers, we have fulfilled or partially fulfilled 25 of those 28 standards after this visit.

In my years in education, I’ve been on several accreditation teams, and received feedback from many other accreditation teams. What the faculty and staff experienced was unique in all of my years – the accreditation team decided that they didn’t need the second day of their scheduled visit, and their final presentation to the faculty consisted of them spending fifteen minutes speaking glowingly of what they saw, reiterating the deep Catholic identity and the love that our faculty has for their students, while also mentioning that the “academics in the high school are some of the best I’ve seen” and that what they’ve seen is Holy Family going from receiving initial accreditation for only a single year to being on track to become the model for classical, Catholic education not just in Oklahoma, but across the country.

As hard as everyone has labored over these past seven months, an achievement like this is only possible because of everything that was already in place to allow us to focus on these specific areas. In classical education, we are always cognizant of the fact that we stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us, those who have worked to build the kind of foundation that allows us to do what we do now. We owe a debt of gratitude to St. Katharine Drexel, who helped found the school over 125 years ago, to the early pioneers of Catholic education in Tulsa, to all those involved in sustaining the school since that time, and to everyone who invested themselves in the project of making the conversion of the school to the classical model. We’re blessed to have many families who have supported the school over these last several years in the process of building what we have today. While there were many areas that were in need of improvement in May, and there remains much work to be done to get us to where we want to be, none of this would be possible without the still greater efforts of those who trusted the call of the Lord, putting out into the deep to establish the first classical, Catholic school in Oklahoma.

While we should be proud of everything that’s been accomplished, I want to be clear that we’re aware that there is much still to be done. We established as goals for this year stabilization, building out processes and procedures, strategic planning, expanding our physical formation program, and establishing a new learning support department to help us better meet the needs of all students. We’ve made excellent progress on those goals and have already started towards one of next year’s goals, furthering our classical, Catholic education through a music program focused on beauty and our rich heritage of music as a Church, with the hiring of our new music director, Mrs. Maria Snow. We also plan to continue to improve support to our teachers through ongoing development focused on pedagogy and instruction to ensure an academic vitality that recognizes each student as created in the image and likeness of God as we work to provide an intellectually vigorous formation to help them to rise to their God-given potential. I look forward to speaking further about all that we’ve accomplished this year and on what we have in store at a State of the School Address, scheduled for the evening of Thursday, January 30th.

Know of our prayers for all of you during this Advent season, and please to continue to pray for all of us and for the success of the mission of Holy Family Classical School in forming Christian disciples through a classical, Catholic education centered on Christ, who is the source of all truth, goodness, beauty, and unity.

St. Nicholas of Myra, pray for us. St. Katharine Drexel, pray for us.

Blessings in Christ,

Everett Buyarski