Alpha School's Manhattan Campus: A $65,000 Education That Isn't Actually a School

Behind the Promise of a Premium Education

In the fall of 2025, top executives from Alpha School gathered wealthy New York City parents at a series of information sessions in Lower Manhattan to pitch them on the company's new campus. The events, some hosted by cofounder MacKenzie Price and principal Joe Liemandt, were designed to show how Alpha was "redefining school" through AI-powered learning models. The goal: persuade families to abandon the city's traditional education system and join what Alpha initially called "the most forward-thinking private school in New York."

According to the company's current website, the "school day" runs from 8:15 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., with tuition set at $65,000 per year—though founding families received discounts. As Price told the Free Press in May, "Alpha is a product as a school that is catering to a certain demographic," and "it is a premium, expensive private school."

But the Maiden Lane campus isn't actually a school. In late summer 2025, months before many of the info sessions, the New York State Education Department declined Alpha's request to incorporate as an independent school, citing that the proposed instruction was primarily online and lacked sufficient supervision or competent teachers. The department wrote: "Generally, [the NYSED] does not recognize online schools as proposed."

About a week later, in a post on X, Alpha invited parents to attend an info session for the Maiden Lane location, calling it the "Alpha Anywhere Center." This is part of the company's homeschooling product line, which starts at around $10,000 per year. Though not explicitly stated, families who enrolled their children would be required to file formal documentation to register as homeschoolers.

Regulatory Gaps and Legal Loopholes

After WIRED began reaching out to Alpha employees in April, the company resubmitted its application for incorporation as a school. That application is currently pending with the NYSED. Under state law, even if Alpha receives approval from the agency, it must still demonstrate to New York City public school authorities that its instruction is at least "substantially equivalent" to that of city schools. This challenge comes at a time when New York's top education official has described AI as an "invasive technology," and when parents and teachers are calling for stricter controls on AI use in student coursework.

"Our New York location is a homeschooling learning center, not a school, and every parent whose child participates in that program knows it," Alpha wrote in a statement to WIRED. "Alpha Schools operates in full compliance with all applicable laws."

As reported previously by WIRED, Alpha employs "guides" who oversee students in the classroom. These adults don't teach academics themselves; they are meant to motivate students to complete lessons in personalized learning software. The company pairs this app-as-instructor approach with a competitive reward system, where students can earn hundreds of dollars for test scores or lesson completion. In Brownsville, Texas, sources told WIRED that students who failed to meet their goals were barred from certain rooms and excluded from field trips, toys, or off-campus lunches.

WIRED spoke with multiple sources involved in building out new Alpha campuses across the country. Those familiar with the New York campus said they had concerns about how up-front the company was with prospective parents regarding the fact that their children would not be attending a traditional school. "A lot of these parents are just drinking the Kool-Aid," one person said. "Their kid comes home with a new Nintendo Switch, an AI robot, an iPad, so their kid's happy, so they're happy to see it."

After WIRED reached out to parents who enrolled their children at Alpha, a group replied with a joint statement saying they were aware that the New York City campus is not a school but rather a "homeschooling support center." They added that they "are grateful for the positive impact the Alpha Anywhere Center has had on our children and wholeheartedly recommend it to families seeking an innovative, caring, and inspiring educational community for their children's homeschooling program." The statement had 13 named signatories and 22 who "wanted to express their support for this letter while keeping their child's educational experience private." Other families WIRED reached out to did not respond.

Building a School Without Proper Safeguards

Under New York State Education Department rules, homeschool parents may arrange group instruction for specific subjects, but not the majority of the program. Ralph Rodriguez, a staff attorney for the Home School Legal Defense Association, told WIRED that New York has among the strictest regulations in the country. "We ask our parent members to have an understanding that they are indeed providing the majority of instruction to their children, because they have to attest to that in the paperwork they submit to their districts," Rodriguez said.

The Alpha School network has been expanding rapidly. Over the past two years, the company has opened new campuses aimed at what it calls "the right families" in major U.S. cities. From San Francisco to Miami to New York, Alpha's marketing materials present these spaces as airy, modern, stylishly furnished—an inviting environment for kids to spend their day in.

Teams at Trilogy, a software company founded by Liemandt, have overseen the acquisition and renovation of buildings for Alpha School. Some campuses, particularly the one in New York City, were built out at great expense and outfitted luxuriously, according to internal company documents obtained by WIRED. Among the members of the New York build-out team was hedge-fund billionaire Bill Ackman, listed as "Parent/Quality Guide/Standard Bearer." Ackman did not reply to WIRED's request for comment.

But the documents say the priority was to move at "Alpha speed." That meant rethinking the "default" approach to school construction, which came with too much "dead weight," according to one Trilogy vice president. "Optimization is a lie at this velocity," he wrote in an internal planning document. "The only reliable way to achieve Alpha's opening timelines is subtraction: fewer approvals, fewer handoffs, fewer phases, fewer assumptions, fewer permanent decisions. If a step survives only because 'that's how it's done,' it is not neutral, it is actively sabotaging the opening date."

A person with knowledge of Alpha's expansion efforts characterized the approach to WIRED: "Instead of 'How do we create the best spaces for our kids?' it's 'What can we get away with?'" Executives would ask questions like, "What are the consequences—are we just going to be fined?" They were told to "Take this cinder block, throw some fucking paint on it, open a school, and call it a fucking day."

One Trilogy document about Alpha's campuses in New York City and Miami describes "Fast-Track Procedures & Assumptions," stating: "We will commence the buildout at risk. We are willing to trade off the financial risk if permits are not obtained." Another document from the team involved with opening new Alpha Schools states: "Alpha explicitly trades cost efficiency and permanence for speed to instruction … We (Alpha) should formalize this doctrine: Opening date > safety > operability > cost efficiency > permanence." While employees are encouraged to follow all applicable permitting rules, the document notes that "many permits exist by habit, not necessity."

People familiar with Alpha's new schools told WIRED that some opened without established plans for emergencies like fires, earthquakes, or active shooters. While "functional internet" and "basic branding" were considered "critical," according to an internal planning document, "first aid" and "fire safety" were considered "nice to have." One Trilogy document directs teams to "budget for potential surprises," noting that the classroom doors in Miami had to be replaced because they lacked internal locks and blinds and were "non-compliant with active-shooter requirements."

One employee who worked at two campuses said, "This rapid expansion is more about a billionaire's ego than the safety of any of these children." Top executives working on Alpha's expansion seemed to be aware of some safety issues. On October 16, 2025, Andrew Jordan, listed on LinkedIn as Trilogy's chief operating officer, asked Claude Sonnet 4.5 to summarize a "postmortem" document containing feedback about the school expansion team's work that summer and fall. (Jordan did not reply to WIRED's request for comment.) The AI-generated summary highlighted "Safety & Compliance Gaps," including "buildings occupied without evacuation routes, safe room locations, emergency supplies, or contact information in place," and "no Shelter-in-Place Plans."

Unsafe Conditions at Alpha Campuses

Another issue flagged in the AI's postmortem review—"inspection tracking"—may have been a reference to Alpha's campus in Miami, opened in the fall of 2024 and charging $50,000 per year in tuition. According to the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department, the building was flagged for several violations, and Alpha does not currently have an annual Life Safety Operating Permit. Instead, it operates under a temporary certificate of occupancy, pending renovations. Last October, a fire inspector observed students in portions of the building they had not yet approved for occupancy.

A person familiar with the school said the high school wing and auditorium were being used even though executives and staff knew the areas were off-limits due to safety deficiencies that hadn't been corrected. "They knew it and they were still operating, even though the fire department had not given them the permits," the person said. "We had to get all of the kids out." For a few days, they added, Miami students were relocated offsite—first to a hotel event space, then a Dave & Busters.

Alpha did not respond to WIRED's questions about fire safety conditions at the Miami campus. While Trilogy employees and contractors were working to bring the school up to code, more issues emerged. One of the school's guides requested that sound-dampening privacy pods be installed in a secluded hallway in the high school wing. Other employees were troubled because the pods would be out of sight of any supervising adults. Some staff referred to the pods as "boom boom rooms" and elevated their concerns to higher-ups, according to internal messages and people with knowledge of the school. The pods were installed anyway.

Alpha told WIRED the Miami privacy pods "are monitored by staff and by motion-activated cameras. They have never been used inappropriately or in the salacious false context presented by Wired."

The $40,000-a-year campus in Fort Worth, Texas, is located in several rented rooms inside a complex that includes a corporate gym. When it first opened, the school space did not have a dedicated private bathroom, according to company documents, people briefed on the school, and staff at the gym. A portable bathroom for the school was installed outside, but employees were concerned about students possibly using the closer bathrooms in the gym locker room, where adults changed and showered, according to people who worked on the expansion effort.

"Some of the common sense that we have about child safety is NOT AT ALL reflected in the conversations that are had here," one employee wrote in an internal company chat. "For reference, I once had to write the following: 'There is no acceptable level of risk for our students to be exposed to naked adults while using the restroom.'"

"Every Alpha Schools facility has private, dedicated bathroom space," the company wrote in a statement, adding that students at the Fort Worth campus "were escorted to and from a private bathroom by staff and were never permitted to use shared gym facilities. There is not one documented incident of a student using a shared locker room bathroom."

Marketing Tactics and Parent Psychology

While employees at Liemandt's company were overseeing Alpha's rapid expansion, Price and the Alpha marketing team were refining the company's message to prospective parents. It wasn't enough to show them photos of smiling children in inviting spaces, cite data on standardized test scores, or evangelize about their smarter way of schooling.

"We spend 10x more than traditional schools on events to distinguish ourselves and dominate mindshare of attendees," a strategy document from 2025 says. At one point, the projected marketing budget for that year was nearly $10 million, representing more than $15,000 for each new student Alpha hoped to attract, the document says.

To sway families in places like Miami, New York, and San Francisco, Alpha would need to "invert the power dynamic," the document says. "We deliberately limit enrollment opportunities, create waiting lists even when capacity exists, and establish application windows that close regardless of capacity—triggering the scarcity psychology that accelerates decisions and enhances perceived value." It goes on: "We must compress the entire decision process into 48 hours through a carefully orchestrated immersion experience that provides all necessary information, emotional connection, and social proof within a concentrated timeframe, culminating in a binary decision point with genuine scarcity pressure."

Another strategy document describes Alpha's plans to make Price a social media thought influencer, capitalizing on her 1.4 million Instagram followers and regular appearances in national media. The document says Price's content should "deliberately polarize" and that "educational influence belongs to the extremes, not the experts." It bluntly describes the marketing team's view of parents and the role of AI in education.

"Parents don't really want better schools, they want rebellious identity," the strategy document says. "Families choose alternative education primarily as [a] statement about who they are, not what their kids will learn."

Since "disruptive AI positioning" gets an "engagement premium" on social media, the document says, "the most compelling narrative isn't technology as helper but as revelatory force exposing traditional education as theatrical rather than functional." In other words: "AI doesn't enhance education, it exposes most teaching as performative ritual."

Currently, Alpha is in the process of hiring a dean of parents for its Manhattan campus. The pay is listed as $400,000 per year. Responsibilities include being "the first to sense when something feels off" and "knowing when a family isn't the right fit." When New York parents make the decision to join Alpha, "they'll be asked to defend it constantly," the job posting says. "You'll make sure they never have to reach for an answer."