/ White House Elon Musk, seen here at the Kennedy Space Center in 2020, provided funding for a nonprofit linked to a new private school opened in rural Bastrop County. The nonprofit eventually plans to open secondary schools and a university. Ad Astra then moved its operations to Texas, according to the school’s 2021 nonprofit paperwork. The school’s now-defunct website, accessed through the Wayback Machine, says it opened in Brownsville in that year and aimed at “disrupting the traditional education model.” Musk was listed as the principal officer for that nonprofit. Its paperwork says the school ceased operations in June 2023. Musk has long been wary of the conventional education system, which he has said fails to create problem solvers and independent thinkers. “I just didn’t see that the regular schools were doing the things that I thought should be done,” Musk said in 2015, according to Ars Technica. “So I thought, well let’s see what we can do. Maybe creating a school will be better.” But, recently, he has become more and more publicly critical of the conventional school model. Musk now says the American education system has been broken for a century, blaming in part a perceived over-investment in administrative staff. He regularly rails against what he calls “woke mind virus,” a vague concept that liberal thinking breeds an overreliance on political correctness as opposed to truth, and says public school teachers are peddling it. His criticisms come as public schools, especially in Texas, have been targeted by conservative pundits and politicians. Gov. Greg Abbott, echoing some of Musk’s own gripes, has made it a priority this year to allow parents to use tax dollars to send their kids to private and religious schools. Abbott himself supports Musk’s foray into the education world. In 2023, the governor posted on X, “At least they will be educating students on skills actually applicable in the workforce rather than pushing woke ideologies.” Ad Astra School in Bastrop Patricia Lim/KUT News Ad Astra, a private school open around the corner from Elon Musk's corporate compound in Bastrop, shown on Dec. 11, 2024, includes a small playground and basketball court. Ad Astra School in Bastrop County is already open. It is located at the corner of FM-969 and Earhardt Road, about 45 minutes from downtown Austin, in a portion of unincorporated Bastrop County. Just down the road is a tree farm. Musk’s corporate compound is less than five minutes away. The compound houses SpaceX and Starlink offices, the headquarters for Musk’s tunneling business, the Boring Company, and the soon-to-be-home of X (formerly Twitter). Also on site is Hyperloop Plaza, a public gathering space with a convenience store, bar and barber shop, and Snailbrook, a small enclave of homes for Musk employees. The Texas Newsroom requested a tour and interview with school leaders and did not receive a response. But during a visit to the site last week, a security guard said students are already enrolled and classes have started. The small white farmhouse that is home to the school appears to have been revamped, with new-looking windows, roof and ramp. There is a small playground and child-sized basketball court in the back of the property. A security doorbell system confirmed the location as “Ad Astra.” Patricia Lim/KUT News Exit of The Boring Company next to the Hyperloop Plaza on FM 1209 in Bastrop on Dec. 11, 2024. An Austin-based LLC owns the school’s property. It’s linked to the X Foundation, a nonprofit with a mission “to create an independent primary and secondary school and, ultimately, a university dedicated to education at the highest level.” It’s unclear where the university may be built, if it comes to fruition. The nonprofit’s paperwork says the endeavor will start with a school in Bastrop with future “plans to expand based on the needs of the local community and on a timeline that provides for quality education and overall experience.” Musk’s name was not on the X Foundation’s most recent annual filings but it counted among its assets 736,500 shares of Tesla Inc. stock. The nonprofit received about $100 million in seed money from Musk’s charity, according to the Musk Foundation’s 2022 filings.