Alpha School’s Ritzy New York City Campus Costs $65,000 a Year—but Isn’t Actually a School

In the fall of 2025, top executives from Alpha School gathered a group of 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 of which were hosted by Alpha cofounder MacKenzie Price and its billionaire principal, Joe Liemandt, were designed to show how Alpha was “redefining school” through AI-powered learning models. The goal: persuade families to ditch the city’s traditional education system and join what Alpha initially called “the most forward-thinking private school in New York.”

The pitch seems to have worked. This school year, more than a dozen families have been sending their children to the sixth and seventh floors of the skyscraper at 180 Maiden Lane. According to the current Alpha New York web page, the “school day” runs from 8:15 am to 4:00 pm, and the stated “tuition” is $65,000 a year. (Founding families received a discount.) 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.”

Except the Maiden Lane campus isn’t really a school. Late last summer, months before many of the info sessions, the New York State Education Department declined to approve Alpha’s request to incorporate as an independent school, according to a previously unreported copy of the decision obtained by WIRED. “Instruction as proposed is primarily online, with an AI-based platform called 2 Hour Learning™ that delivers instruction in core academic subjects with little to no supervision or competent teacher delivering such instruction,” the department’s office of counsel 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, which the post called the “Alpha Anywhere Center.” Alpha Anywhere is the company’s line of products for homeschooling, which is advertised as starting at around $10,000 per year. Though the company’s marketing materials didn’t explicitly mention it, parents who enrolled their kids at the Maiden Lane campus would be required to file formal documentation signing up as homeschoolers.

After WIRED began reaching out to Alpha employees for this story in April, the company resubmitted its application for incorporation as a school. That application is pending, according to the NYSED. Under state law, even if Alpha receives permission from the agency to incorporate as a school, it will still have to demonstrate to New York City public school authorities that it provides instruction in core subjects that is at least “substantially equivalent” to instruction in the city’s public schools. And it will have to do so at a time when New York City’s top school official has described AI as an “invasive technology” and parents and teachers have called to further restrict how students can use AI in their coursework.

As WIRED has previously reported, Alpha employs “guides” to oversee the classroom. These adults don’t teach academics themselves; they are meant to motivate students to complete lessons in personalized learning software. (“We call them guides, coaches, teachers,” Price has said. “We kind of use those words interchangeably.”) The company pairs this app-as-instructor approach with a competitive reward system. Students at some campuses can earn hundreds of dollars over time for scoring well on tests or completing enough lessons in a day. At the campus in Brownsville, Texas, sources previously told WIRED, kids who failed to meet their learning goals said they were barred from sitting in certain rooms and said they couldn’t take part in other perks such as attending field trips, getting toys, or eating off-campus lunches. The company claims its model enables students to learn twice as much in just two hours of academics as their peers in traditional schools learn in a day. This frees up students’ afternoons for workshops focused on life skills like grit, entrepreneurship, and leadership.

WIRED spoke with multiple sources for this story who have been involved in building out, setting up, and working in new Alpha campuses across the country. Those familiar with the New York campus told WIRED they had concerns about how up-front the company was with prospective parents about the fact that their children would not actually be attending a 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 joint 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 for comment did not respond.

Under NYSED rules, homeschool parents “may arrange to have their children instructed in a group situation for particular subjects but not for a majority of the home instruction 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.

“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.”

The Alpha School network has been expanding at a rapid pace. Over the past two years, the company has opened new campuses to cater to what it calls “the right families” in major US cities. From San Francisco to Miami to New York, Alpha’s marketing materials present the spaces as airy, modern, stylishly furnished—an enticing 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 the 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?’” the person said. “They’re like, ‘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.” A person who worked at two campuses told WIRED: “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, internal documents show. On October 16, 2025, Andrew Jordan, who is 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,” which included “buildings occupied without evacuation routes, safe room locations, emergency supplies, or contact information in place,” and “no Shelter-in-Place Plans.” Alpha has contracted with a private security firm to provide guards at some 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, the department told WIRED.

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, a person familiar with the school said. 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.”

Alpha’s $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.”

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, and 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.” In her public appearances, Price often describes the one-teacher-many-students model of education as inefficient. With software serving as the one-on-one tutor, there's no need for the outdated performance at the front of the classroom. “Instead of being the sage on the stage, they are the guide on the side,” Price has said.

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.”

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