St. Raphael School

St. Raphael School is a live-online Orthodox classical school operating as a "school within a school" at Scholé Academy, the academy arm of Classical Academic Press. It pairs an integrated liberal arts curriculum with courses in the liturgical arts. Byzantine chant, iconography, Greek, that few online programs attempt.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Classical / online live-class / literature-based
Worldview	Christian-Orthodox (Antiochian Orthodox-affiliated, ecumenically welcoming to non-Orthodox families seeking liberal-arts education)
Grades	K-12
Formats	Online live class, digital
Cost tier	Standard
Parent intensity	2
ESA-common	Partial (varies by state and course)
Accredited	No (part-time live-class model; families retain homeschool status)
Established	2013, by Fr. Porphyrios (Dr. James Stephen Taylor)
Website	scholeacademy.com/st-raphael-school

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	4	Integrated liberal arts with primary-source reading; Omnibus track is substantive
Ease of teaching	4	Live faculty do the teaching; parent supervises and supports at home
Content quality	5	Distinctive Orthodox classical content (chant, iconography, Greek, Divine Liturgy) well-designed
Flexibility	4	Per-course enrollment widely available; full-time schedules accommodate K-12
Value for money	3	Per-course pricing is moderate; full-time schedules reach premium tier
Worldview scope	2	Specifically Orthodox in formation; welcomes non-Orthodox but faculty are all Orthodox Christian
Visual/design	4	Scholé Academy platform is polished and works reliably for live video classes
Support resources	4	Tied to Classical Academic Press infrastructure; Saint Emmelia Ministries community support

Who the publisher is

St. Raphael School was founded in 2013 by Fr. Porphyrios (Dr. James Stephen Taylor) to serve Orthodox Christian homeschooling families. It operates as a "school within a school" at Scholé Academy, which is itself the live-online academy arm of Classical Academic Press, one of the leading publishers in the classical Christian education movement. This nested structure matters: St. Raphael inherits Scholé Academy's teaching platform, scheduling infrastructure, and academic-calendar framework, while maintaining its own Orthodox faculty, curriculum emphasis, and liturgical calendar observances.

The school's canonical-ecclesial affiliation runs through the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America. Fr. Noah Bushelli serves as Spiritual Father. The school is a sponsor of Saint Emmelia Ministries, the homeschooling outreach of the Antiochian Archdiocese, and affirms the Nicene Creed as its doctrinal foundation. Presbytera Maria Koulianos has served as Principal, with more than twenty-five years of educational experience and advanced theological training.

All faculty are Orthodox Christian. The school welcomes non-Orthodox families who want the faith-centered liberal arts education it offers, and has historically enrolled such families, but the institutional identity is unambiguously Orthodox and the curriculum assumes an Orthodox framing of education as a "friend to theosis", the Orthodox theological concept of transformation into the life of Christ. That framing shapes how subjects are taught and how time is paced, and it is not a detachable branding layer.

The core pedagogy

St. Raphael's integrated liberal arts program draws on the classical good and great books of both Western and Eastern European traditions, a genuinely bi-cultural curriculum that is distinctive among American classical academies. The course catalog includes languages (Greek at conversational and New Testament levels, Russian at multiple levels, Arabic, and elements of Church Slavonic), integrated humanities through primary texts, catechism and Orthodox theology, and a specialized track in the liturgical arts: Byzantine chant, iconography apprenticeship, and the Divine Liturgy.

The academy runs on Scholé Academy's class-block schedule, with 75-minute blocks for middle and upper school and 60-minute blocks for lower school, with multiple time slots available in Eastern Time. Students choose classes from across the schedule and typically meet once weekly per course, with independent reading and writing between meetings.

Signature mechanics: (1) Omnibus Liberal Arts track. Classical Academic Press's integrated humanities program, locally adapted at St. Raphael with Orthodox patristic readings supplementing the traditional Western canon. (2) Liturgical arts courses. Byzantine chant instruction (with Christina offering Byzantine music and founding the Synaxis of Orthodox Women Byzantine Cantors), iconography apprenticeship (with Maria Sider-Rose's adult iconography program accessible to advanced students), and courses on the Divine Liturgy. (3) Multi-language Orthodox tradition, students can elect Greek for New Testament reading, Russian for Russian Orthodox theological and cultural sources, Arabic for Antiochian heritage texts, alongside conventional Latin. (4) Conversational, not lecture-based, teaching. St. Raphael's published philosophy treats students as "members of the body of Christ, made in the image of God" and rejects the lecture-and-test model in favor of sustained conversation over primary texts.

Catechism runs across all grade levels as an integrated component rather than as a separate capstone course, so students are formally catechized from lower school through upper school.

A day in the life

A tenth-grader at St. Raphael with a typical three-course enrollment, an Omnibus humanities seminar, Koine Greek II, and a Byzantine chant course, begins Monday morning at 9:30 AM Eastern with the seventy-five-minute Omnibus class, meeting live on video with the faculty instructor and a cohort of eight to twelve students. The text for the week might be a book of Herodotus, paired with a short patristic commentary from St. Basil. After class, the student moves to independent work: reading the next week's Herodotus assignment and drafting the week's short essay. Tuesday: self-directed reading and writing. Wednesday at 10:30 AM Eastern, the Greek II class meets for seventy-five minutes, working through a Koine New Testament passage and a set of parsing exercises. Thursday: Greek memory work and drill. Friday at noon Eastern, the Byzantine chant class meets for sixty minutes, instruction in Byzantine notation, vocal exercises in the traditional tones, work on a Paschal hymn. Weekends: parish liturgy, which is not scheduled by the school but which the family's rhythm supposes.

Total live instruction across the week: approximately three to four hours. Independent work: approximately fifteen to twenty hours. The parent's role is light, ensuring attendance, providing a quiet space for live classes, discussing the week's texts at home, and integrating the work into the family's parish and liturgical life. A family whose child takes five St. Raphael courses plus math and science elsewhere assembles a reasonable full-time high school load.

What they do exceptionally well

Liturgical arts as genuine academic courses. Byzantine chant and iconography are taught at many Orthodox parishes informally, but few academic programs treat them as serious, credit-bearing courses with trained instructors and progressive skill-building. St. Raphael does. A student who takes three years of Byzantine chant at St. Raphael can cantor confidently in a parish, and a student who completes the iconography track has actual skill rather than a brief exposure.

Integrated Eastern and Western classical tradition. Most American classical programs run a predominantly Western canon. Greek and Roman antiquity, Medieval and Renaissance Europe, English and American literature. St. Raphael integrates Byzantine history, Eastern patristics, Russian literature, and the broader Orthodox theological inheritance alongside the Western canon. For families whose tradition is Eastern, this is the only serious online program that does this at a high level.

Scholé Academy and Classical Academic Press infrastructure. St. Raphael's affiliation with Scholé Academy and Classical Academic Press means it is not operating on a shoestring. The platform works. The class scheduling is reliable. The course catalog is substantial. The teacher training and pedagogy development benefit from CAP's long classical-education publishing track record.

What they do poorly

Narrow Orthodox fit. The school welcomes non-Orthodox families, but its formation, its liturgical calendar, its faculty's shared Orthodox identity, and its curriculum's Orthodox patristic readings are all structurally Orthodox. Catholic, Protestant, and secular families will find the Orthodox content central rather than peripheral, and should weigh whether they want that formation for their children. Anglican and Roman Catholic families sometimes find the transition more accessible than evangelical or secular families do, but all non-Orthodox families make a real choice when they enroll.

Per-course pricing that reaches premium territory for full-time. Individual course tuition at St. Raphael is broadly consistent with Scholé Academy's rates, typically in the $600-$900 per-course range depending on the course and grade level, with some lower-rate enrichment courses. A full-time enrollment of five to six courses per year runs $3,500-$5,500, meaningfully higher than St. Athanasius Academy's comparable Orthodox program at roughly $2,400-$2,800 for a full load. Families should weigh the depth of the Scholé/St. Raphael offering against the lower cost at St. Athanasius.

No full-school accreditation. Students enrolling at St. Raphael retain their homeschool status. The school does not issue an accredited diploma; its transcript documents coursework under a homeschool framework. This is the same limitation as most part-time live-online academies and rarely creates practical difficulty for college admissions, but families expecting an accredited-school diploma path should look elsewhere.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick St. Raphael School if: your family is Orthodox Christian and wants the deepest available online offering in Orthodox liturgical arts, Eastern classical curriculum, and catechesis; you value the integrated bi-cultural liberal arts tradition (Western and Eastern); you are comfortable with per-course pricing and assembling a custom schedule rather than a fixed grade-level enrollment; you value Classical Academic Press's institutional infrastructure; the iconography, Byzantine chant, and Greek/Russian/Arabic offerings are actively interesting to your student.

• Skip St. Raphael School if: your family is not Orthodox and you do not want a distinctly Orthodox formation; you need an accredited diploma; you want a lower-cost full-time Orthodox option (see St. Athanasius); your student does not engage well with discussion-based, primary-text-reading instruction; you want a full physical-school experience with athletics and in-person peers.

Cost honest assessment

Per-course tuition at St. Raphael runs in line with Scholé Academy's broader Classical Academic Press pricing, typically $600-$900 per course per year for core academic courses, with some enrichment courses priced lower and some advanced or specialized courses priced higher per published course pages as of April 2026. A student taking three courses per year (a typical part-time homeschool enrollment) will spend approximately $1,800-$2,700. A full-time five-to-six-course enrollment runs $3,500-$5,500 per year.

Compared to St. Athanasius Academy's Orthodox online program at approximately $473 per core class per year, St. Raphael is markedly more expensive per course, a reflection of the Scholé Academy / Classical Academic Press infrastructure, the specialized Byzantine chant and iconography faculty, and the Orthodox liturgical arts courses that have no direct comparator elsewhere. Compared to The Socratic Experience at $12,600-$14,400 full-time, St. Raphael at full-time remains meaningfully less expensive. The pricing question is whether the depth of St. Raphael's specifically Orthodox liturgical-arts and Eastern-classical offerings justifies the premium over St. Athanasius for families who want that specific depth.

A realistic all-in family cost for an Orthodox family with two middle-school-and-high-school students taking three courses each at St. Raphael runs approximately $4,000-$5,500 per year, before textbooks and supplies.

ESA eligibility notes

Classical Academic Press and Scholé Academy are listed vendors on several state ESA marketplaces as of April 2026, which carries over in most cases to St. Raphael courses. Families using Arizona ESA, Utah Fits All, and Florida Step Up For Students have used ESA funds for Scholé / St. Raphael tuition, subject to each state's specific restrictions on religious curricula and online-academy instruction. The Orthodox religious content of St. Raphael courses, including courses explicitly titled around the Divine Liturgy or Byzantine chant, may be subject to state-specific restrictions; families should verify with their state administrator before enrolling in specifically religious coursework. Academic courses (language, literature, history) in the Scholé framework are typically less restricted.

Alternatives

• St. Athanasius Academy, a family would choose St. Athanasius over St. Raphael because St. Athanasius is a distinctly Antiochian Orthodox ministry with a lower per-course tuition and a more scheduled full-time model, at the cost of less specialized liturgical-arts offerings.
• Memoria Press Online Academy, a family would choose Memoria Press over St. Raphael when they want classical Christian live-online instruction without the specifically Orthodox formation, at slightly lower per-course pricing.
• Veritas Scholars Academy, a family would choose Veritas over St. Raphael when they want a Reformed Christian classical live-online academy with a very broad course catalog and an accredited-diploma option, rather than Orthodox-specific formation.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed St. Raphael School's primary page at scholeacademy.com/st-raphael-school, individual course pages (including sample course listings for Greek II), and the raphaelschool.scholeacademy.com About page in April 2026. We cross-referenced the founding history with the school's published account of Fr. Porphyrios's founding in 2013, and we verified the Antiochian Archdiocese affiliation and Saint Emmelia Ministries sponsorship against the school's own published materials. Per-course tuition figures are based on representative Scholé Academy course listings; specific tuition varies by course and grade level, and families should confirm current pricing on individual course pages before enrolling.