<< Previous   of   Next >> (click to enlarge) Snohomish County Business Journal/JOHN WOLCOTT “We will establish a culture of quality education,” said Jane Cassady of Camano Island, one of the three founders of the new Stillwater School, which will open this fall on land formerly home to Hank Graafstra’s Country Charm Dairy.

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CONTACT SCBJ Kurt Batdorf, Editor kbatdorf@scbj.com

Stillwater School to open in Arlington

Educational curriculum to use innovation, engaging experiences to teach, motivate students

By John Wolcott
SCBJ Editor

When the new independent, nonprofit Stillwater School opens in Arlington this fall, parents and students will have an opportunity to experience an entirely new approach to learning.

Stillwater will be the first school in Western Washington offering the highly successful Expeditionary Learning concepts that have been proven in numerous schools across the country. An educational program that spun off from New York City’s renowned Outward Bound program, EL curriculums center on using innovation and engaging experiences both in and out of the classroom to teach and motivate students.

“We will establish a culture of quality education,” said Jane Cassady of Camano Island, one of the three founders of the new school. “During my research, I visited a K-8 school in Denver that’s using the program and talked with families of the students. Their results have been extraordinary.”

Cassady is partnering with Arlington residents Tasha Branch and Caroline Sumpter to open the school at Hank Graafstra’s former Country Charm Dairy. This year’s class, limited to 12 students, will gather in a small yellow house on the property that was the Graafstra family’s home in the early years of the farm. Next year, kindergartners and first-graders will hold classes in the historic, renovated barn. Eventually, the founders plan to build Stillwater into a K-12 school with 165 students. Enrollment for kindergarten began May 29.

Cassady said she admires the successes of the Arlington School District and its reputation for quality education but believes Stillwater School will be able to provide a totally different program than the programs offered by the Washington state public school system.

“For one thing, we don’t want to be involved with the state’s WASL program, which only sets the minimum standards for schools. The state has approved our school and agreed they would monitor us annually to be sure we meet WASL standards, but students won’t be involved in taking the tests,” she said.

The founders of Stillwater School are not the first ones to become enamored with the EL school concept. She said schools in Spokane and Kettle Falls also use it. Nationally, there are EL schools in Buffalo, N.Y.; Prescott and Tucson, Ariz.; Bonner Springs, Kan.; Polaris Charter Academy, Ill.; and Boise, Idaho, among many other communities. In 2003, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded a $12.6 million, five-year grant to create 20 new EL schools nationally.

“The three of us all have children under 5 years old who will be ready this fall or soon afterward to begin schooling here. We all want a program that will graduate exceptional students who will become involved in their communities,” she said. “We will have an environment in which students accept failure as an opportunity to learn and move on, an environment for personal growth at their own rate.”

That doesn’t mean the school will adopt a slack program with no structure. It will be structured in ways that help each student to succeed at their own pace, she said. If a student is reading at a level well ahead of peers, he or she will be given advanced reading work but will stay with the class rather than being moved to a higher grade.

“Some schools already have tried mixing grade levels to match students’ abilities, and it hasn’t worked,” Cassady said.

Stillwater School’s programs will engage students in rigorous academic work that inspires children’s love of learning and embraces their natural exploratory nature.

But the school also will promote a service to community, individual responsibility, an understanding of the world around them, concern for other students and an attitude of lifelong learning. Family involvement is an important aspect of the school’s program.

“We will have teachers with a passion for teaching, which already describes our first one, Christine Rogers, who taught recently in innovation charter schools in Hawaii,” Cassady said.

Funding for the school began last fall with an auction at the barn that raised $25,000, showing strong community interest in the new school. That money, Cassady said, provided for hiring Rogers, buying supplies and preparing for the fall opening. Tuition for kindergartners will be $5,125 a year, plus $350 for materials, payable in two installments.

Volunteers also are needed for grant writing, carpentry work or other skills, she said. Donated construction and landscaping materials are being sought, too, as well as furniture and other needs.

So far, response has been encouraging, she said. More than 125 people attended the auction, and several families came to the open house in late May.

“They were people very well informed about EL programs who asked very detailed questions that reflect a lot of serious interest in the school’s program,” Cassady said.

Stillwater School will become a part of Ronin Northwest’s redevelopment of 13 acres of the former dairy, creating Haller Village, with local shops, cafes and community-oriented businesses. One of the school’s founders, Branch, is a principal with Ronin Northwest.

Also, the Arlington developer will build a small neighborhood of town homes, cottage homes and other residences known as Haller Point. The city of Arlington is exploring the purchase of former dairy farmland below Ronin’s development for a possible riverfront park.

For more information, call 425-244-3832, send e-mail to admin@ stillwaterschool.org or go online to www.stillwaterschool.org.