Lake Country Classical Academy has rejected a student-led Turning Point club in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, sparking a community and social media uproar.
The Oconomowoc school describes itself as “a Hillsdale College Member School” that provides “a K-12 tuition-free, classical liberal arts education located in Oconomowoc, WI.” It is “an independent (2r), public (tuition-free) charter school.”
Turning Point’s Wisconsin leader Brett Galaszewski wrote on X on October 10, “Another @TPUSA chapter has been DENIED in Wisconsin. This time it’s Lake Country Classical Academy @ClassicalLake. Multiple high-level legacy Republicans are involved in this school, including WI Supreme Court Justice @judgehagedorn. His wife is the one who wrote this letter and rejected the chapter!”
Galaszewski shared a letter received by a parent whose child launched the rejected effort to start the Turning Point Club. Wisconsin Right Now has also obtained that letter. The parent’s name is Melissa Smiley. She is a mom of three kids at LCCA and helped found it. Her daughter, Catie, is the junior who spearheaded the efforts to get a Turning Point student club at LCCA. Melissa Smiley told WRN that two other teens helped Catie Smiley, 17, with the efforts.
“LCCA doesn’t have a lot of opportunity to create that well-rounded holistic graduate profile,” explained Melissa Smiley. “Catie has always followed Charlie Kirk and Turning Point. She signed up with Young America’s Foundation with Scott Walker’s organization as well. She’s always been very civic-minded. Charlie’s death had a major impact on her and she wanted to see if she could make a difference at our school. It seemed like a slam dunk. We’re Hillsdale affiliated.”
Gov. Scott Walker weighed in on X, sharing Galaszewski’s post. “They should absolutely be able to have a chapter. We will fight for students to have @TPUSA @yaf @yrnational or any other conservative groups at their schools! I just reached out to several board members to get a charter approved at LCCA,” wrote Walker, who is president of the conservative Young America’s Foundation.
Smiley blasted the board and administration in an email obtained by Wisconsin Right Now. She also posted on a local parents’ page, indicating that three youth who wanted to start the club were planning to create a petition after the rejection. Smiley’s communication to the school expresses “deep concern and disappointment regarding several recent decisions and patterns of behavior within Lake Country Classical Academy’s leadership.”
They should absolutely be able to have a chapter. We will fight for students to have @TPUSA @yaf @yrnational or any other conservative groups at their schools! I just reached out to several board members to get a charter approved at LCCA. https://t.co/eEuQu9PBiX
— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) October 10, 2025
The parent described herself as someone “involved with this school since its inception,” saying she spent “hours combing through DPI requirements, reviewing curriculum selections from Hillsdale, and helping establish the very framework upon which LCCA was built.” Smiley said she was watching “the vision and integrity of this institution erode.”
The restrictions “diminish the strength of our students’ college applications and rob them of real-world skills that cannot be cultivated through textbooks alone,” she wrote. The Turning Point club’s rejection is “shortsighted,” Smiley wrote, calling the denial “hypocritical and ideologically inconsistent with the very foundation of LCCA.”
The parent called “the decision to reject a Turning Point USA (Club America) chapter” at LCCA both “deeply disappointing and inconsistent with our mission. Student-led activities like TP USA provide vital opportunities for young people to develop leadership, public speaking, civic engagement, and teamwork – all qualities that align directly with classical education and with preparing students for active citizenship.”
“The reasoning was that outside organizations are not allowed to partner with LCCA seems lazy and misguided especially since the school has aligned with the Wisconsin National Junior Classics League, as well as the Joy Theatre,” she added.
The rejection, which a source said Friday might be overturned in the wake of the outcry, comes as conservative youth throughout the country and in Wisconsin have battled administrations at universities and at high schools to create Turning Point clubs. It is particularly stinging to parents, though, when the rejections come from conservative or Christian schools. In the case of Lake Country Classical Academy, the fact that the school is a Hillsdale member school is drawing additional anger, especially with the emotions and trauma over Kirk’s brutal assassination still fresh.
Kirk had close ties to Hillsdale, last speaking there in February 2025. There is an entire page on the Hillsdale College website devoted to him. “Hillsdale College was founded in 1844 with a mission to provide ‘all who wish to learn’ the education necessary to preserve the civil and religious liberties of America,” its website says.
Hillsdale, where Kirk took some classes, has set up a scholarship for the Turning Point USA founder’s kids and is awarding Kirk and his wife, Erika, honorary degrees.
So the challenges that students have faced trying to set up a club that would advance his ideas and mission at Lake Country Classical Academy have baffled and upset a lot of people.
The head principal of the Lake Country Classical school is Margaret Hagedorn, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Brian Hagedorn, who has drawn the ire of some conservatives for his mixed opinions on the Court.
Wisconsin Right Now started working on this story on October 9 after being contacted by parents, and we sent the school an email seeking comment but received no response. On October 10, we called Hagedorn and left a voicemail after being told she was in a meeting. Still no response.
In a response to the upset parent, however, Hagedorn wrote that she understood the parent’s frustrations “particularly around decisions that may feel inconsistent with our shared values of fostering well-rounded, courageous students.” She said the students who led the initiative to bring a Turning Point chapter to LCCA “deserve our collective praise” and called them respectful and solution-oriented.
But she said that “Dr. Wozniak encouraged the students to consider how they might establish an internal LCCA club centered on similar civic and leadership goals, which would allow us to nurture these vital skills – public speaking, teamwork and civic responsibility – within our own framework. This aligns seamlessly with our core philosophy and empowers students to lead in ways that strengthen our school culture.”
That’s a reference to Eric Wozniak, assistant principal.
“This is an administrative problem at her level,” Smiley responded of Hagedorn.
In the email to the board, Smiley wrote, “What makes this decision even more troubling is that Turning Point USA’s mission, vision, and code of conduct, align in complete and perfect parallel with LCCA’s own virtues and core philosophy. Their emphasis on character, civic responsibility and truth, and individual accountability mirrors precisely the principles that define LCCA’s educational model. There is quite literally no disunity whatsoever between the values of TPUSA and those of LCCA.”
Jacob Turner, a student who recently fought to bring a Turning Point chapter to Concordia University, wrote on X, “This is insane. Schools like @ClassicalLake must stop denying chapters. Every student has the right to organize, and that right shall not be infringed. When we as a society take rights away from the next generation we set a dangerous precedent that those rights do not exist. This starts a chain reaction that ALWAYS leads to socialism/communism. We can do so much better for our next generation so why is @ClassicalLake refusing to do so?”
A source told Wisconsin Right Now that Hagedorn also recently rejected a student “Good News Club.” LCCA also affiliates with sports clubs with University Lake School, another outside group.
