On a recent morning along Newberg’s Peace Trail, a cluster of Veritas School first graders stood with binoculars trained on a 100-year-old oak tree, counting birds. Director of Advancement Laura Manzer said it is one of the small, recurring scenes that make the campus feel distinct.
“It’s very special that we’re here along the Peace Trail,” Manzer said.
That kind of hands-on curiosity is, by design, the point. Veritas traces its roots to early 1996, when four Newberg families — Bryan and Ann Lynch, Sean and Dottie Boyle, Craig and Susan Johnson, and Dr. Steve and Marilyn Thore — set out to start a classical, Christian school after concluding there wasn’t one within 300 miles, according to the school’s history.
Bryan Lynch left a teaching post at Newberg High School in 2001 to become Veritas’ Head of School, and the campus has since grown from six modular buildings behind First Presbyterian Church to its current site at College and Bell Road, where it added a science lab, a covered pavilion and an outdoor amphitheater over the past several years.
Head of School Adam Fitch, a former public school history teacher who joined Veritas more than a decade ago, said what drew him in wasn’t a curriculum pitch — it was watching how Veritas students carried themselves.
“They could interact with adults in our church or our community in a way that they were not intimidated,” Fitch said. “They cared about knowing something from you, not just getting what they wanted.”
That posture — curiosity aimed outward — is something Fitch said he actively tries to cultivate.
“I want our students to be more interested than interesting,” he said.
The academic structure behind that culture is the classical Trivium: a grammar stage focused on foundational knowledge, a logic stage in seventh and eighth grade, and a rhetoric stage in high school built around persuasive communication. Students take Latin from third through eighth grade, with the option to study French, Spanish, or Greek in high school years.
History and literature are taught together in a course called Humane Letters — 10th graders studying ancient Rome also read Virgil’s “Aeneid,” according to the school. By sixth grade, students begin to lead their own discussion-based classes, a method the school calls “Harkness Method,” debating assigned readings while the teacher steps back. The training builds toward a senior capstone project, the poiesis, in which students research a topic, then defend it publicly.
Fitch calls the underlying philosophy “joyful rigor.”
“If you’re going to love learning, learning needs to be enjoyable,” he said. “We want to work our students hard, but they’re going to know we’re walking right alongside them.”
Manzer said that balance shows up in how families react on campus tours.
“Families have heard about our academic excellence. They know they will see a busy classroom where great learning is happening. What surprises our guests most are the smiles, laughter, and genuine joy our students experience while learning. We haven’t reduced education to entertainment. We’ve engaged them as eager participants in the process.”
Much of the school’s social fabric runs through its House system, which sorts seventh through 12th graders into one of four groups — Homer, Virgil, Dante and Milton — that pair older and younger students as mentors. That immersion with different classes helps students feel more grounded and connected, reducing the stress that can come with growing through the teenage years.
“It’s the beauty of a K-12 school,” Fitch said. “It’s been fun watching these kids grow up together.”
Manzer said the cross-grade bonds can outlast the school day entirely.
“It has been multiple times where a kindergartner has invited their buddy to their birthday party,” she said.
Veritas is a Christian school, but not denominationally affiliated, and Fitch said students explore Scripture academically as well as devotionally, with room for disagreement among families from different church backgrounds.
“We do believe in Jesus Christ, we do believe in the Trinity, and those are the things that are core to who we are,” he said.
The school is an independent nonprofit that receives no federal or state funding, relying instead on tuition and donations; it directs roughly 18% of its annual budget toward needs-based financial aid, with additional scholarships available to children of full-time ministry workers and George Fox University faculty. Class sizes for the 2026-2027 school year are expected to range from 14 to 20 students, with a 15-to-1 student-to-teacher ratio, according to the school.
Asked what he’d want a newcomer to understand about Veritas, Fitch circled back to something simpler than academics.
“This is going to be difficult for them,” he said of new students, “but we’re going to walk alongside them.”
Manzer put it more plainly, describing what she hears from parents on tours: that kids at Veritas — smiling, laughing, running around outside during a spare 40 minutes — genuinely want to be there.
Veritas School is a Christian school in Newberg that serves students from prekindergarten through 12th grade, with a classical curriculum centered upon the liberal arts. The school’s 2026-’27 admissions cycle remains open to PK through 12th grade applicants, with a campus tour as the first step in the application process. Families can reach Veritas Admissions at 503-538-1962, by email at admissions@veritasschool.net, or at the school’s campus at 26288 NE Bell Road. Visit www.veritasschool.net for more information.
