For the past few years, the Board and Leadership Team of Sacred Heart of Jesus Classical Academy have labored to bring a classical high school in the Catholic tradition to Staunton, Virginia. By the grace of God, that labor has borne its first fruit: Sacred Heart has completed a full year of instruction, made possible by thousands of volunteer hours, the devotion of our teachers, and the prayers and generosity of a remarkable community.

As we enter our second year, the work continues to grow. The Board has hired a headmaster, who has in turn assembled a faculty of three full-time teachers and one part-time teacher to carry the mission forward. To mark this new chapter—and to keep our friends and supporters close to the daily life of the school—we are pleased to introduce this newsletter. In these pages we will document our progress, thank those who make our work possible and partner with them, share news of events and milestones, and, above all, invite you to delight with us in the beauty of the mission we share.

We are also delighted to announce our school’s motto: Ad Cor Iesu—“To the Heart of Jesus.” It is more than a phrase. It is our purpose and our prayer: to love the Heart of Jesus and to lead our students ever more deeply into it. It is the end toward which everything we do is ordered—including the formation of the whole person, mind and soul, and the development of those moral and intellectual habits necessary to live a truly human life in union with Christ and His Church.

Classical Catholic education leads students to Christ by guiding them in the development of the theological, intellectual, and moral virtues—and it is precisely this vision that animates our work each day. Such an education does not merely transmit facts or train skills, but forms whole persons who are capable of genuine freedom as sons and daughters of God: empowered to discern the truth, love the beautiful, and choose the good.

From this motto, our newsletter takes the name Cor ad Cor Loquitur—“Heart Speaks to Heart.” The phrase comes to us from John Henry Cardinal Newman, who chose it as his episcopal motto when he was made a cardinal in 1879. For Newman, it captured the deepest truth of genuine communication: that it is not argument alone which moves souls, but one heart speaking to another in the fire of truth and love. We chose it for our newsletter because that is precisely what we hope these pages to be—not a report, but a conversation; not mere information, but a heart reaching out to the hearts of those who share our mission. In every issue, we hope that the Heart of Jesus, burning at the center of our school’s life, may speak through these words to your heart, and draw us all more deeply together into His own.

In this inaugural issue, we are glad to share news of our growing enrollment, our newly assembled faculty, the curriculum we have secured, our fundraising, and more. We look forward to walking this road together with you in the years to come.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us! And may God bless all who read this newsletter.

Dear Staunton Community,

I am deeply honored and excited to have been appointed Headmaster of Sacred Heart of Jesus Classical Academy. As a native Virginian, it is a great blessing to return home after twenty years away.

After leaving Virginia, I earned my Ph.D. in political science from the University of Iowa and went on to serve as a professor at Western Illinois University. Shortly after beginning my career as a professor, my wife and I converted to the Catholic faith and have been joyfully Catholic ever since. While serving as a professor, I became the Director of the Saint Francis of Assisi Catholic Newman Center at WIU, where I helped more than triple student involvement. After a few years, I became the Director of Academics at a Classical Christian secondary school, helping guide its growth from a K–8 to a K–12 school.

More recently, two years ago, my wife and I took our six children on a sixty-four-day pilgrimage from northern Minnesota to Indianapolis following the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage. We camped in hammocks in parks, slept in church basements, and stayed with people who helped us along the way. The pilgrimage taught our family how to be more devoted to God and to trust in His providence. After the pilgrimage, I was led by God into a career change and became the Founding Headmaster of Chesterton Academy of Vero Beach in Florida, helping to establish the new high school with twelve students and four faculty members.

Now we have been led by God to come back to Virginia to embrace this wonderful opportunity to serve Sacred Heart of Jesus Classical Academy. We will be much closer to family, and my wife and six children look forward to this new chapter in our lives.

I firmly believe that a classical education in the Catholic tradition is the best way to educate our children. Classical education seeks to form the whole person through an encounter with truth, beauty, and goodness. Grounded in the Catholic faith, this model nurtures both the intellect and the soul. This school also does not replace parents in their God-given responsibility to educate their children, but rather serves and assists them in this sacred task.

As a teacher in the classical model, I have witnessed how a classical education transforms a child into a mature and virtuous person ready to serve God in this world and to be with Him more fully in the next. I am excited to foster this educational model at Sacred Heart.

I look forward to collaborating with our School Board, families, and the wider community to grow a school that glorifies God and is used by Him to bring light into the world.

May God bless Sacred Heart of Jesus Classical Academy and indeed the entire world!

In His Most Sacred Heart,
✝ Dr. Jonathan Day, Headmaster
Sacred Heart of Jesus Classical Academy

Enrollment is now open for the 2026–2027 school year. This fall Sacred Heart will welcome students in the 9th, 10th, and 11th grades. In the following year we will add a 12th grade, completing the high school and—God willing—graduating our very first senior class.

Among this year’s newest students are two incoming 11th graders, the headmaster’s eldest children, who will join Sacred Heart this fall. We look forward to introducing more of our students in future issues.

If you know a family seeking a joyful, rigorous, and faithfully Catholic education for their son or daughter, we ask you to spread the word: there is a new high school in Staunton, and its doors are open. Families are warmly invited to reach out, arrange a visit, and begin the conversation with us.

A school is only as strong as the men and women who teach in it. We are overjoyed to have assembled a faculty of three full-time teachers and one part-time teacher to carry the mission of Sacred Heart of Jesus Classical Academy.

We hold to a simple but demanding ideal: that teachers should be virtuous friends, laboring together as a family, who model for their students what it means to be lifelong learners and faithful followers of Christ. Good teaching is never the mere transmission of information; it is the witness of a whole life ordered to what is true, good, and beautiful. Our teachers are chosen with that conviction in mind. In future issues we will introduce each of them more fully; for now, we are proud to present our faculty:

•  Dr. Jeffrey Zvengrowski — 11th & 12th Grade Humanities and Art

•  Ms. Katie Zigadlo — 9th & 10th Grade Humanities and Latin

•  Mr. Matthew Wilson — Mathematics and Science

•  Mr. Daniel Kirkland — Music

We are honored to announce that Sacred Heart of Jesus Classical Academy is the first school to secure the rights to the renowned St. Jerome Institute Classical Curriculum.

This is far more than a reading list. The St. Jerome curriculum is a single, integrated four-year journey in which literature, history, writing, mathematics, natural philosophy, and theology are woven together, so that students do not study subjects in isolation but come to see all of reality as a unified whole—ordered, intelligible, and held together at last in Christ, the eternal Word “in whom all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17). Each of the four years carries a guiding theme that gives shape to the whole:

•  Year One — Exodus and Odyssey: What am I searching for, and how does a journey change the one who undertakes it? Students read Homer’s Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, and Beowulf alongside the Books of Genesis and Exodus, tracing the history of Israel, Greece, Rome, and the early Church.

•  Year Two — God and Nature: What is nature, and what does it reveal about God? From the ancient cosmologies through Aquinas, Descartes, Newton, and Darwin, students explore the order and beauty of the created world.

•  Year Three — God and the Human Person: What does it mean to be human, and how do we stand before our Creator? Sophocles, Augustine’s Confessions, Shakespeare’s King Lear, Jane Austen, and Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment guide the inquiry.

•  Year Four — God and Society: Why must we live together, and what do our communities reveal about the life of God? Students take up Plato’s Republic, Dante’s Divine Comedy, and Augustine’s City of God alongside the founding documents of the American republic, culminating in a senior thesis and its public defense.

Throughout, the great books of the Western tradition—Homer, Plato, Augustine, Dante, Shakespeare, and Aquinas among them—are read not as artifacts but as living conversation partners. Mathematics trains the mind in precision and wonder; natural philosophy contemplates the order of creation; and theology, the queen of the sciences, draws every other study toward its source and end in God. This is precisely the ordered, Christ-centered formation envisioned by the Front Royal Statement, and we are profoundly grateful to bring it to our students.

In May 2026, bishops, superintendents, scholars, and Catholic school leaders from across the country gathered at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia, to confront the crisis—and the great opportunity—facing Catholic education in America. The fruit of their deliberations was the Front Royal Statement, which sets forth seven cardinal principles for the renewal of Catholic primary and secondary education:

1.  The Supernatural End of Education — that all true education is ordered to God and to the formation of the whole person.

2.  The Nature and Dignity of the Human Person — that every child bears the image and likeness of God.

3.  What Children Deserve, the Rights of Parents, and the Duties of the State — that parents are the first and primary educators of their children.

4.  The Ecclesial Responsibility of Bishops and Priests — that the school belongs to the living mission of the Church.

5.  The Formation and Responsibilities of Teachers and Leaders — that educators are formed intellectually, spiritually, and pedagogically.

6.  The Integrity and Order of the Curriculum — that all study is ordered toward wisdom, with Christ the Logos at its center.

7.  The Transmission of a Living Catholic Culture — that a school hands on a whole way of life, rooted in the worship of the Church.

We wholeheartedly affirm the Front Royal Statement, for in it we recognize the very mission entrusted to us here at Sacred Heart. These seven principles are not an external standard we strain to meet, but a faithful description of what we have set out, by God’s grace, to be.

On June 11, 2026, the bishops of the United States, gathered in plenary assembly in Orlando, solemnly consecrated the United States of America to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Offered in the context of a Votive Mass and joined by parishes across the country, it was a public act of devotion and dependence, entrusting our country to the merciful Heart of Christ as the nation prepares to mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

For Sacred Heart, this moment carries a particular joy. We bear the name of the very Heart to which our nation has now been consecrated. What the bishops have asked for the whole country—that its restless heart find its rest at last in the Sacred Heart of Jesus—is the same end toward which our school is ordered each day: Ad Cor Iesu, to the Heart of Jesus. To form young men and women who love that Heart, and to send them out to renew the life of the Church and the nation, is the mission entrusted to us under this patronage.

We invite you to make this consecration your own. The prayer of consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is printed at the close of this newsletter; we ask you to pray it with us, for our students, our school, our families, and our country.

Through the extraordinary generosity of our community, we have raised more than $306,000 toward the coming year—and gifts continue to arrive. We are deeply grateful to every donor who has made this work possible.

A small, young school cannot be sustained by tuition alone. As the Front Royal Statement reminds us, a Catholic education must not be a privilege reserved for the few, but a real possibility for every family that desires it. Your support is what makes that possible—it keeps our doors open, our tuition within reach, and our mission alive. We thank you with all our hearts, and we ask you to continue walking with us. May God reward your generosity a hundredfold!

We are pleased to present the official logo and emblem of the school, together with our school colors—blue, red, gold, and white. Every element carries meaning:

•  The shield represents faith.

•  The heart represents love.

•  The fire represents hope.

•  The crown of thorns represents the suffering we endure in this life.

•  The cross represents our salvation.

•  The laurel wreaths in the emblem represent the crown of eternal life.

•  The fleur-de-lis represents our hope of forming joyful saints.

Taken together, these symbols tell the story of the Christian life: a faith that loves, a hope that endures suffering, and a Cross that leads us to the crown of glory.

There are many ways to share in the mission of Sacred Heart of Jesus Classical Academy:

•  Pray for our students, our faculty, and the growth of the school. This is the first and greatest gift you can offer.

•  Refer — tell families who long for a faithful, classical education that there is now a high school for them in Staunton. Please let them know there are scholarships available.

•  Give — every gift, of any size, helps keep tuition within reach and our doors open. Donate securely at our online giving page.

•  Volunteer — share your time and talents in support of the school.

•  Follow — stay connected through our website, sacredheartstaunton.org, and on Facebook, and watch for the next issue of Cor ad Cor Loquitur.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, source of all consolation,
watch over this little school that bears Your name.
Form our students in wisdom and virtue, our teachers in holiness,
and our whole community in love of You. Amen.

Ad Cor Iesu.