Together we are shaping the lives of the young people in our Academy to develop them into strong leaders equipped with academic excellence, Christian values, and leadership training and experience, preparing them to learn, lead and excel in all walks of life.
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CELA is an interdenominational school which means we accept families from all denominations of the Christian faith. We encourage you to read CELA’s Statement of Faith found under the “About Us” tab.
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Our Board of Directors was created with excellence in mind. The Board of Directors consists of Co-Founders, Brian and Nancy Nahey, Nicole Daniels (who oversees Christian Values and Leadership Development at CELA), Matt Burow (CELA Parent and President/Owner of Catalyst Construction), and Andrew Neumann, Ph.D. (Executive Chair and CEO of Open Sky Education). All of the members that were chosen to sit on the Board were hand-picked and add great value to our CELA family.
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We believe that for CELA to be successful in its mission of creating leaders in all walks of life while being guided by a Christian value system CELA will have to excel in three major areas.

Academics: teaching consisting of foundational knowledge in major areas of study, passion for learning, and training for understanding.

Leadership: teaching consisting of personal practice and on-going, consistent experiences in leadership.

Christian values: teaching consisting of a well-developed understanding, knowledge, belief, practice and commitment to Christian values.

Click here to read about CELA’s three pillars in detail.
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All of CELA’s teachers are certified in teaching and many have specialized teaching certificates, Master’s degrees, and/or have graduated with highest honors. CELA has strived to find like-minded teachers with strong potential, good backgrounds, and solid experience; CELA’s hiring process is rigorous and thorough. Much of our teaching staff has taught in unique settings which makes them even more valuable to us and to our students and parents. Our teachers share our mission and work closely with the students and parents to help in achieving mastery and excellence in learning. Some of our teachers come to us with a fresh, new perspective on teaching and some of them have tried and true methods that prove to be timeless classics in achieving success. Please read about each of our teachers’ credentials on our staff page – they are impressive and are much of what makes CELA a success!
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We ARE! CELA has active Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn pages! You can click the icons in the upper right corner to be taken to our pages, or simply search for “CELA” or “Christian Education Leadership Academy” on any of the platforms listed.

Our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter share updates on the exciting happenings at CELA during the day, as well as upcoming events, fundraisers, and CVLD lessons. Check out our pages for fun photos, videos, and bible verses the students are learning!

We hope that you will “follow” our pages, and “like” or “share” posts you enjoy! In an attempt to keep our pages full of positive, uplifting information and serve as a valuable tool to CELA and our students and families, comments will remain private until approved by our page administrator.
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We continually measure CELA’s and each student’s performance in all areas and make necessary adjustments to maximize individual and school growth. We will also introduce new materials after vetting, where we feel they can enhance our performance. You can read specific details about our curriculum by visiting our curriculum page.
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The Christian Values/Leadership Development Program is a Biblically-based program that seeks to train students and faculty to live Christ-centered, fulfilling and virtuous lives. We believe an individual’s character is developed through the understanding of the Christian values given to the world through God and Christ and then comprehending what it means to live a life that daily demonstrates the individual’s acceptance and commitment to these values in everything they do.

At CELA, we take these Biblically-based beliefs and understandings and add to them the examples of people who are living or who have lived their lives exemplifying these values. We study the impact these examples have had on the world. Children are taught how to integrate these values into their every-day lives and behavior. Our families are brought into the lessons through required assignments, working with their children on their lessons while broadening the span of influence and providing the parents a platform to influence the children in a positive manner.

Our Christian Values curriculum also plays an integral part in our Leadership Development Program as we believe it is imperative to have a great value system in order to be a great leader. Also imperative to developing confident leaders are the continual opportunities we give our students to practice and become comfortable in leadership positions. Our students take part in these roles on a daily basis, both in their classroom and through school-wide programs such as student-composed and delivered announcements, prayers, chapel programs, concerts, etc. These continual, rotating leadership opportunities along with intentional public speaking and speech classes, forensics competitions, etc., are giving our students the confidence they will need to become great Christian leaders for our future.
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As a part of our Christian Values and Leadership Development (CVLD) Program, students are encouraged to look for ways to serve others. Students have participated in service projects such as Sole Hope, G9 Penny Wars, and the Linus Project (to name just a few). Please stop by and look at the awesome display case outside our front office which is full of the projects that our students have been privileged to be a part of so far. Our students, families, and staff are making a difference in the community and the world, we are so proud of them all!
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The CELA Lion Pride is the name of our parent involvement group that supports and serves the families, teachers and administration of CELA. Families are encouraged to be as involved as they want. We do ask for a minimal amount of “service hours” as part of our family agreement, however, we find that many families become more involved by choice. Aside from being involved with the CELA Lion Pride and events that are sponsored by them, we have parents and grandparents that volunteer in classrooms, in the lunch room, in the library, in athletics (coaching, judging, concessions, etc.), on field trips, as well as helping with special events (such as teacher appreciation week or the fine arts productions that we do each year). Our families are so very gifted and their talents help us to be a better school, leading to a better education for their children and grandchildren.
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Yes! CELA’s mascot is a lion named Ari which means “Lion of God” in Hebrew. We asked our students what characteristics they wanted their mascot to have. Based on their responses, our mascot was defined and then carefully chosen and created. Ari was introduced to the CELA family on October 6, 2016. Read the story of how Ari came to be on Ari’s page.
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The physical design of the Academy was very intentional. There are two wings (each with an upper and lower level) which house all grade levels except 3K through 5K which are in the main area by the front office. Having wings to accommodate classrooms isn’t all that unique, but the Nahey’s took the classroom design one step further by creating “pods” within the wings for each grade level. Each wing houses two pods in the lower level and two pods in the upper level. Each grade level has a pod which consists of three interconnecting classrooms with a gathering space that connects them all and a teacher workroom. The gathering space is where the students’ lockers are located so this is a natural meeting area for them – they can hang out with their friends on fun, casual furniture before and after school. The gathering space has many uses: it can also be used during the day if all the grade-level classes want to meet together, if the students need to stay inside during inclement weather they can play in the gathering space with educational games, read books from the classroom library or interact with the ActivTable (designed for collaborative learning) that every pod has, older students can pick up younger siblings in their gathering space after school, and when students are working on special projects and need room to spread out the gathering space is perfect….its list of uses goes on and on!
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We intentionally keep classes to 16 students or less; doing this allows our teachers to be able to have more one-on-one time with students if needed and lends itself well to small group projects. We believe this approach allows students to excel and reach mastery at a faster pace. Grade levels are invited to meet together in the gathering space for lessons when a larger class size would be beneficial.
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CELA has chosen to use the MAP testing platform for Math, English/Language Arts, and Reading and administers the tests three times per year (fall, winter, and spring) to evaluate how our students are progressing. MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) is developed by the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) and these tests measure and compare our students on a national level.
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CELA accepts children of average intelligence and above. The only situation in where a student would not be invited to attend or return to CELA would be one where we have determined that CELA does not have the resources to support the significant academic or behavioral needs of an individual student. We believe that all children, regardless of their capabilities, deserve the best education possible and in these situations we feel that public schools are best equipped with the appropriate intervention resources and specialized staffing to meet such unique needs.
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CELA students are expected to reflect a modest appearance that represents their Christian beliefs and demonstrates they dress for success. Dressing appropriately helps set the culture of pride and respect and creates a dynamic learning environment. CELA’s dress code is clearly outlined in our Family & Student Handbook and allows for a varied selection of appropriate and approved attire.
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CELA does have a program in place where parents can choose to enroll their full-day 3K, full-day 4K and 5K-8th grade students in before- or after-school care for a nominal hourly charge. This program is offered as a convenience to parents who need to drop their children off prior to the start of the school day or are unable to pick up their children immediately at the end of the school day. For more information about this program, please call (262)691-4321, email info@CELAedu.org, or talk to one of our office staff.
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A majority of our students choose to attend a private high school. Some of the private high schools our students have chosen include: Brookfield Academy, Catholic Memorial High School, Divine Savior Holy Angels High School, Lake Country Lutheran High School, and Marquette High School. A few of our students choose to attend a local public high school such as Arrowhead Union High School or Pewaukee High School.
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Yes, CELA offers a number of sports for students in 4th-8th grades, enrichment clubs for students in 5K-8th grades, and also participates in academic competitions at the school, regional and state levels. Our elementary grade level specials classes and middle school electives provide enrichment opportunities in the fine arts. To read and see more, view our activities page.
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CELA challenges all of its students with high-level learning each and every day, however, in addition to grade-level learning, CELA is able to offer classes that are above grade-level. This is especially apparent in the middle school area where we offer high school level Spanish and math options. In addition, CELA requires all 8th grade students to take an ACT Prep class to prepare them for taking the test during high school. CELA also requires all 8th grade students to take a Civics class preparing them for the high school Civics Exam. Students at CELA will take the Civics Exam which may allow them to pass out of taking it at the high school level depending on the high school. Passing the Civics Exam is a Wisconsin requirement for high school graduation. Read more about our middle school electives or read our curriculum page for more information.
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The cost of educating a single student at CELA is over $14,500 annually at this time. However, due to the generosity of the founders, families pay roughly half of that cost in annual tuition. Due to the Nahey Charitable Foundation, CELA is not tuition-dependent which sets CELA apart in terms of its ability to engage in the acquisition of the best instructional resources, technology, and school amenities.

The performance of the CELA student body excels in comparison to the best known private schools in the area, when considering performance in academic excellence, Christian values and leadership development. These best known private schools have tuition ranges from $15,000 to $20,000+ per student annually which is more than two times the cost of CELA. Learn more about our tuition structure on our tuition page.
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CELA is an interdenominational Christian school. We have chosen to focus with our students on the Christian values we all share and leave the teaching of doctrine of individual specific religious denominations to the parents and church.
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CELA has a restricted technology environment. This means that we do NOT open the internet to our students. Each student is given a laptop computer for school and another for the home, but neither computer can access the full internet. Only those sites we have reviewed and opened may be accessed by students. We have also purchased a number of online supplemental instruction programs which can be accessed and utilized by our students, staff and parents in school or at home. We fondly call these programs “REES” (Restrictive Environment Exploratory Software). We found that our parents prefer our technology environment which shields students from the dangers of the internet.
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Every book in the CELA library is catalogued with three explicit levels attached to it, a Fountas and Pinnell reading level, an Accelerated Reader level, and a Lexile reading level. Because each student is assessed in reading fluency and comprehension three times annually, students may place their name in a computer in the library and a list of books appropriate to that student’s age and reading level will be generated from him/her. Amazing!
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With our small class sizes, qualified staff and strong parent involvement, we truly do facilitate personalized education for each child. This is evident in the growth of each student.

CELA has a safe, supportive and loving environment free from common school elements such as sarcasm, bullying, bad language and disruptive behavior that plague many other schools.

CELA teaches leadership in a very intentional manner beginning in 3K and continuing through 8th grade.

Our CVLD (Christian Values and Leadership Development) Program is unique in the manner that biblical lessons are extended to help students understand their place as Christians in this current day with the goal of equipping students with an awareness and capability to apply the values they learn.

The service component of our school curriculum ensures that students not only use their talents and gifts to help people in need locally and internationally, but furthermore that each service activity is intentionally connected to our study of specific Christian values throughout the school year.

CELA has three math levels in each grade level beginning in 5th grade through 8th grade. Qualified students in the middle school take high school mathematics courses in 7th and 8th grade.
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If administration feels the need to cancel school during a regularly scheduled school day (i.e. bad weather), parents receive an email early in the morning directly from CELA. You can also watch the local news channels (WTMJ 4, FOX 6, and WISN 12) and if CELA is closed for the day it will be listed with the school closings.
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