About Rowan Classical Academy
Meet Our Founding Master Teacher
Donna Scillieri
A true education cannot rise above the level of its teachers. At Rowan Classical Academy, our classroom is led by a nationally recognized, award-winning educator who has spent over two decades proving that children will always rise to the high standards set by someone who believes in them.
With 25 years of specialized early childhood expertise, our Founding Master Teacher brings a rare combination of structural school-building experience, advanced academic training, and a proven track record of historic classroom success to Salisbury.
A Legacy of Excellence & Leadership
Before coming out of retirement to launch the inaugural class at RCA, she spent years designing and leading premier early education environments from the ground up:
The Blueprint for New Schools: While working for a newly opened charter school in Florida, she served as the Lead Teacher for six years. She was instrumental in essentially starting the school from scratch, building its foundational curriculum, and setting the standard for the entire teaching staff.
Early Childhood Directorship: In New Jersey, she successfully owned, operated, and ran her own private Pre-K through 2nd-grade school for several years, specializing in the critical windows where a child's foundational love for learning, reading, and discipline is permanently formed.
Advanced Gifted Training: She is fully trained as a Gifted and Talented educator, possessing the specialized framework required to identify a child's unique baseline and fast-track their growth far beyond standard state averages.
A Highly Decorated Career
Her dedication to the art of teaching has earned her some of the highest honors an educator can achieve. During her tenure building the Florida charter school, her peers and administrators recognized her unmatched classroom results with prestigious accolades, including:
Teacher of the Year (Two-Time Recipient)
The Golden Ruler Award (Two-Time Recipient)
Unrivaled Classroom Results: The Proof of Mastery
Awards are a reflection of dedication, but the true measure of a master teacher is the success of her students.
Our Founding Teacher specializes in radical academic acceleration. In a striking example of her methodology, standardized testing data from her incoming primary students showed baseline scores tracking strictly at the average 40th, 50th, and 60th percentiles. By the end of that single school year, under her direct instruction, 100% of those same students tested north of the 90th percentile.
This extraordinary leap—taking average students and unlocking elite mastery—is exactly what she is bringing to Rowan Classical Academy.