Waldorf-inspired school to open doors

PALMER — The story of the founding of Birchtree Charter School seems destined for a happy ending.

With less than a week to go before the school has to open its doors for the very first time, Lori Berrigan, one of many parents who have sacrificed their summers to make it happen, said it’s been quite a ride.

“I tell people I’m looking forward to next summer. I said that in June,” Berrigan said.

For proof of what all of this effort has entailed, one need only look at a calendar and realize that the school didn’t even have the go-ahead to start hiring people and looking for a building until March. They built everything from scratch starting then.

“There’s no way that this school would have happened without the community behind it,” Berrigan said.

Though, she said, for her and for a lot of the parents, it was more like five years’ worth of work, rather than three months’. Berrigan said she’s been doing presentations on the tenets of Waldorf education at local libraries for two years. Birchtree is a Waldorf-inspired school. Once she started getting the word out, Berrigan said, it was one of those things that kind of snowballed.

“I think even if I had stepped away there was no stopping it,” she said.

And that was borne out in the enrollment numbers. To get approval to start the school organizers had to prove they would take in at least 150 students. So that was the goal this summer — to get those 150 signed up. But Berrigan said 400 applied. A lot of those were families who decided Waldorf wasn’t for them. Still, enrollment is at around 220 now and could easily top 240 by Thursday.

The teachers just wrapped up their three-week training with Waldorf instructors, some of whom came up from Outside. In a nutshell, Waldorf seeks to meet kids where they’re at developmentally, delaying certain subjects until children can better understand and master them. It also incorporates topics like ancient myths, music, handicrafts and art into the curriculum. Teachers stay with their students through multiple grade levels.

On the construction end of things, last week crews put up the school’s sign. The building renovation is nearly complete. The new school is visible from the Palmer-Wasilla Highway near its intersection with Schelin Spur.

Berrigan said the company that converted the building into a schoolhouse, Criterion General, has done phenomenal work and the school looks great.

“I would say they’re a company that believes in this community. I think they do a lot for this community,” she said.

The parents have already started volunteering — something that is kind of a mainstay of charter schools. Berrigan said some have built tables, some have installed shelves and coat hooks. Others helped with the organizing process and quite a few have signed up to help in the classroom after the school year begins.

Berrigan said that so far nearly everything has fallen into place. The only thing that really hasn’t is the transportation. This, she admits, is perhaps the only place where the ambitions of the organizers ran into the brick wall of reality. They discussed options with the school district, but they all seemed to mean that the school would have to shorten its day. The school could have gone its own way, hiring its own bus company, but that was prohibitively expensive.

Had they gotten bus service, Birchtree would have been the only charter school in the district to have done so. Berrigan said the school isn’t giving up on the idea. They’re going to look at possibly applying for grants to make it happen next year.

But that’s a puzzle for another day. For now, Berrigan said, she’s happy to be close to the end of this process, and she’s looking back on what she’s learned along the way.

“I guess we recognize it’s a journey for both our teachers and our families, and we’re different. We’re different than what is offered out there in mainstream world,” she said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.