Musk-linked Montessori school could open soon in Bastrop
A school associated with Elon Musk may be opening in Bastrop, according to job postings.
Ad Astra Montessori School of Bastrop is looking for teachers who are “warm, joyful, and peaceful” and can begin as early as July. One job posting suggests the school could serve children between 3 and 12 years old.
“Bastrop is quickly becoming the home of a number of leading-edge tech companies including the Boring Co., Neuralink, SpaceX and Tesla,” the job postings said, naming several of Musk’s companies. “While their parents support the breakthroughs that expand the realm of human possibility, their children will grow into the next generation of innovators.”
Facilities for Musk’s rocket company SpaceX (related to Starlink satellites) and his tunneling enterprise the Boring Co. are located in Bastrop County, roughly 30 miles east of Austin. In 2023, news broke that Musk or his affiliates were planning a residential development in the area — with possible plans to incorporate a city.
The Tesla Gigafactory is a short drive away in east Austin, where the company has office space for its headquarters and what it describes as a 10-million-square-foot factory floor to produce the Model Y and Cybertruck.
Neuralink also has an Austin office location where it’s seeking to create the future of braincomputer interfaces.
SpaceX, the Boring Co., Tesla and Neuralink did not respond to email requests for comments. It is unknown if the Ad Astra Montessori School of Bastrop would be open to the public or just to the children of Musk’s employees.
The new school would be located on a former horse ranch, according to the job postings. It’s being developed by Xplor Education, which partners with American companies to provide Montessori early childhood education, and Ad Astra, a nonprofit school established at Musk’s direction with a name that is Latin for “to the stars.”
Ad Astra began in California and was previously open to some SpaceX employees at a rocket factory there, according to an online post by the school’s co-founder, Josh Dahn, who now operates the experimental online school Astra Nova School.
“The location at a rocket factory and our association with Elon Musk made Ad Astra oneof-a-kind,” Dahn wrote on Astra Nova. “But beyond the hype and hyperbole, Ad Astra was special because we had a oncein-a-lifetime opportunity to design a school from first principles. We did not have limitations of any mandated structure or curriculum. Our only directive from Elon was to ‘make it great.’ ”
According to a video shared by SpaceX in November 2022, Ad Astra has a South Texas school in Boca Chica where SpaceX is developing and launching the world’s most powerful rocket.
Job postings for the Montessori school in Bastrop suggest a July 2024 start date for some of the new employees.