Driven by Asheville Primary's closure, a new public Montessori school is headed downtown

ASHEVILLE - Asheville Primary School sits shuttered and mostly emptied on West Asheville’s Haywood Road, now home to storage and the district’s maintenance department, void of its students and the Montessori program that was once a fixture of the community.

But 2 miles northeast, at the heart of downtown, parents and former APS teachers are demanding a second chance.

“There was grief, a lot of grief. I’m still grieving it,” Wren Cook said of Asheville Primary School’s closure. The school was closed at the end of the 2021-22 school year, following a Dec. 13, 2021, vote by the city school board.

Cook is a founder and co-chair of Mountain City Public Montessori, a new charter school opening in August, which will be the only public Montessori school in Western North Carolina, a title once held by Asheville Primary.

Previous coverage:School board votes to close Asheville Primary School

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Her two children, Noah, 9, and Eliza, 6, both attended Asheville Primary, and were there at its closure. She said over Noah’s four years at the school, she watched him “transform,” much of which she attributed to the Montessori method of education, which is based on self-directed activity, hands-on learning and collaborative play.

“The fact that we had this public option, I just couldn’t believe our luck,” Cook said.

And when the school closed, Cook said there was a group of parents, teachers and community members unwilling to let it go.

“I got involved,” she said, “and it’s been a snowball of an adventure.”

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Getting started

The meetings began January 2022, Cook said. About 18 people were volunteering in the first few months, writing the charter application that they submitted to the N.C. Department of Public Instruction in April.

Charter schools are public schools operated by nonprofit boards. The schools have open enrollment, and no tuition is charged to attend. Tax dollars are the primary funding source.

The North Carolina State Board of Education approved Mountain City’s charter school application Dec. 1.

They’ve even nailed down a location in the educational building of the Central United Methodist Church on Church Street, in a space once home to a half-day private preschool.

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Cook said Mountain City will not begin receiving local, state and federal funds until the school opens. Once it does, it will receive a per pupil allotment from the state, as well as local funds, with the allotment determined by where each student resides.

Federal funding will come for children who have already been identified and qualify for Exceptional Children support services.

She projects the Year 1 budget to be just over $1 million, with the number based on enrollment projections.

To this point, the effort has been entirely community funded. Working on writing grants, Cook said the school will begin soliciting donors and consider financing. As of February, organizers have raised about $15,000.

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Inside the open house

“It’s been breakneck speed, and it has become my full time project,” Cook said of the last year.

But she’s not alone. Mountain City currently has eight board members and 10 active volunteers, many of whom were present at a Feb. 4 open house.

Central United is currently housing a Montessori homeschool co-op, so classrooms are already outfitted in a distinctly Montessori feel, with wood-tone learning materials, uncluttered walls, all décor at a child’s eye level, striped rugs and simple work mats and, notably, no individual desks.

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In one of the pre-K and kindergarten classes — all Montessori classrooms are multistage, working on three-year cycles — there is a turtle, named Ally.

Mountain City will open with 108 spots in its first year, offering kindergarten through sixth grade in six classrooms. In Year 2, it plans to expand to seventh grade, and will expand to eighth in Year 3.

It is also partnering with a private half day preschool, Little Grove, which will also operate under the Montessori model in a classroom with Mountain City’s kindergartners.

Enrollment kicked off Jan. 1 and will close March 31. As of Feb. 9, Mountain City has received 270 applications. Students will be chosen by a lottery using software called Lotterease that “manages the applicants’ information and runs the lottery with transparency,” Cook said.

The lottery will be weighted to give low-income families prioritization, and per the 1991 federal desegregation order, families may enter a weighted lottery if they identify as a racial minority.

An enrollment policy can be found on its website.

On Feb. 4, board members and volunteers were setting up and preparing the rooms, but at 10 a.m., someone shouts, “we’ve got a line outside,” and doors open.

Dozens of parents and children filtered through, with over 100 turning out over the course of the morning. This was Mountain City's third open house. It has also hosted six virtual information sessions, with another open house planned, but a date not yet set.

Sasha Skau, a board member and credentialed Montessori teacher, was there to walk children through the materials – from the golden beads, which offer concrete representations of place value, to grammar symbols and other tools.

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'It was so heartbreaking'

Board member Lara Lustig was also drifting from room to room. Like Cook, she is a former APS parent. Her twins went to the school for five years, beginning when they were 3 years old.

“It was so heartbreaking,” she said of the closure. When it shuttered its doors, Asheville Primary was serving 192 children total, including pre-K. Of these, 108 students were part of the kindergarten through fourth grade Montessori program.

“We couldn’t just let it go, couldn’t give it up,” Lustig said. “We had built this beautiful community and resource, and it was like, ‘What, that’s just it?’”

Aaron Brumo, another board member, said something similar. Another former APS parent, he said they had a decision to make after efforts to keep Asheville Primary open were ultimately fruitless.

“When that failed, we could either complain, or we could do something about it,” he said.

Sarah Honosky is the city government reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. News Tips? Email shonosky@citizentimes.com or message on Twitter at @slhonosky. 

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Mountain City Public Montessori will open August in Asheville