Exeter Montessori students building kayak to raise money for school,

Saturday, March 13, 2010

By Donita Naylor

Journal Staff Writer

EXETER

Too short to reach the kayak they’re building, the children stand on upended segments of logs.

Using real, adult-size tools, students in grades one through eight work at recess and after school to make a 20-foot, 8-inch gracefully curved, two-seat touring craft.

They’ve twisted and glued narrow cedar planks to form its body. They’ve covered the outside with fiberglass fabric and epoxy. They’ve scraped and sanded, sanded and scraped.

Their kayak-in-progress rests on a low workbench in a picnic shelter overlooking the lake at Camp Canonicus. On weekdays, the conference center at the American Baptist Church’s summer camp is rented out to the Quest Montessori School, founded in 2001 by parents who wanted their Montessori preschoolers to graduate into Montessori elementary and middle schools. The Montessori philosophy is that children learn by watching older classmates and teaching younger ones, by playing with enticing materials that put concepts into visual form and by having a teacher guide their exploration and organize their discovery.

The young apprentices have worked with only the shelter’s roof and some plastic sheeting between them and what winter has thrown since late January. Supervising them is professional boat-builder Margery Bradshaw, a mother who volunteers at her son’s school four days a week since being laid off in January from her boat-crafting job in Newport. Under Bradshaw’s care, the children have operated staple guns, power drills and small power saws.

“I see more Band-Aids coming in from recess” than from building the boat, said Shelly Murphy, the school’s part-time marketing and admissions director.

What the students are building is more than a boat. They’re building skills, community and hope. If all goes well, the kayak will carry not only two paddlers over water, but the whole school closer to its new home in Narragansett, by way of an April 24 raffle.

Every Friday, the Quest school has to be packed up and rolled into storage. The school office turns back into a hotel lobby for the weekend. Out go the classroom wall alphabets, group rugs and learning stations. In come the conference seating, microphones and PowerPoint projector. On Sunday night, the transformation runs in reverse, from conference center to learning center.

The “school on casters” is raising money to move to a permanent home near the University of Rhode Island’s Bay Campus. Although $2.5 million is coming in a federal stimulus loan, the school’s backers have to raise $250,000.

Among their fundraising projects is the raffle of the student-built kayak, worth about $12,000. By selling 200 tickets for $100 each, Bradshaw says, they could raise 10 times the $2,000 they spent on materials. And maybe, just maybe, the winner will donate it back to the school. Tickets can be purchased by calling the school at (401) 295-4012. dnaylor@projo.com

Congressman Langevin, USDA Rural Development & Narragansett Town officials join school to announce plans to move to seven-acre site in Narragansett

Funds from the USDA and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) will help Quest develop state’s foremost preschool to 8th grade Montessori campus Quest Montessori School is one major step closer to breaking ground on its long-awaited, permanent home, following the recent announcement by the USDA Rural Development that Quest has been granted nearly $2.5 million in low-interest financing, which amounts to 90 percent of the funds it needs to complete the project. For more information, see the full news release posted below.

Quest Montessori School gets $2.5-million construction loan

Tuesday, January 12, 2010 By Lisa Vernon-Sparks Journal Staff Writer EXETER — Quest Montessori School has received a $2.5-million federal stimulus loan, funding that will help the school relocate and expand, as well as create jobs for Rhode Islanders, school officials announced Monday. The loan comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development Program, a loan program funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The program promotes rural economic-development projects and job creation. The announcement was made by educators and local, state and federal officials Monday at the school’s temporary location at the Canonicus Camp and Conference Center in Exeter. The low-interest loan will cover 90 percent of the money needed for the school’s $2.75-million relocation to a larger facility, a former water-sample testing company, on Dean Knauss Drive in Narragansett. The remaining amount would be acquired through private donations, a school spokeswoman said. For the past five years, Quest Montessori, which enrolls 70 students in first through eighth grades, has leased space on the Canonicus Campus. Last November, the school purchased the Narragansett site, seven wooded acres on two parcels. The expansion of the 12,500-square-foot building, which will include gutting and renovating the existing structure, will create dozens of construction jobs for Rhode Islanders. lsparks@projo.com

Quest Montessori gets $2.5M for project

By PBN Staff Published online Jan 12, 2010 EXETER – The Quest Montessori School announced Monday it has been awarded $2.5 million in low-interest federal financing to jump start construction of a new, permanent facility in Narragansett. The new facility will accommodate about 200 students from preschool through grade 7 and be built on a seven-acre wooded property on Dean Knauss Drive. The school said the financing from the U.S. Department of Aquiculture will comprise 90 percent of the project’s expected cost of $2.75 million. The new facility is expected to open in September 2010. The seven-year-old, non-denominational, nonprofit Quest Montessori School currently leases a facility in Exeter. The school said it has outgrown its current space and has spent the past three years searching for a new location. The school said its new location offers enough space and convenient access off Route 1. The funding came from the economic stimulus law signed by President Barack Obama last February. questschool.org.

South County Independent

School moving to North End

November 19, 2009

By Mark N. Schieldrop/Independent Staff Writer

NARRAGANSETT — The Quest Montessori School in Exeter is moving to Narragansett after signing a purchase-and-sales agreement for a two-parcel, seven-acre property on Dean Knauss Drive, school officials said this week.

“We are so excited,” said Paul Raymond, head of the school. “We’re looking forward to finally having a permanent home and being in a centralized place where we will be able expand our program and reach more families.”

The school, which opened in 2001 and has been located at a temporary site at the Canonicus Camp and Conference Center in Exeter, is about 90 percent complete in securing “affordable financing” for the $2.75 million development project to renovate the 12,500-square-foot building in the North End, Raymond said. The building has been vacant for several years and used to be home to Ceimic Corp., a water quality testing firm.

More details about the financing will be made public during a press conference at the school on Monday.

Although the campus in Exeter is a bucolic location, surrounded by 300 acres of pines and fields and featuring Lake Adams, the Quest Montessori School has outgrown its home. School officials refer to themselves as “the school on casters” since their building is used on weekends and holidays by the American Baptist Churches of Rhode Island, which owns the sprawling property. Every Friday, all the tables and chairs are put away to clear the space for conferences and retreats.

“We’re a school in a briefcase,” Raymond said. “Everything gets packed up and put away on Friday and we put it all back on Sunday. It has been a good arrangement for us, but the need for our own, permanent location is increasingly immediate.”

Now the school can’t do simple things, such as starting a garden, burying a time capsule or even setting up a science project that needs more than just five days to complete. Its leased property also has held back the school’s growth.

“Our middle school program has grown from six to 15 in the last few years, and we have a wonderful retention rate of 98 percent,” Raymond said. “We’re a tight community, but as we grow, the need for bigger classrooms and more space has become very apparent.”

The new building will accommodate about 200 students, and one of the long-term goals for the school is to expand its preschool and toddler programs. The Quest Montessori School is a bit of an oddity in terms of Montessori schools, since it began with elementary and middle school programs first. Other schools tend to focus on younger children first, Raymond said.

The new building will undergo an extensive renovation and will seek LEED certification, which is a mark of meeting stringent energy efficiency requirements. The design will reflect the school’s larger mission of sustainability and provide students an opportunity to learn about how the effort to “go green” can be put into practice, Raymond said.

Getting the building in shape will take about a year, but the school has the advantage of not having to face a lengthy planning process. The property is already zoned for a school and the utility infrastructure is in place.

A key benefit to being located in Narragansett, Raymond said, is that the school will be more visible and accessible to South County residents. It also will be nestled within a row of commercial businesses off Boston Neck Road and not much more than a stone’s throw from the University of Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay Campus, Casey Farm in North Kingstown, the ocean and acres of woodlands, fields and stone walls.

“We will be able to incorporate connections between the nearby woods and the environment as well as the business community,” Raymond said. “A key part to the Montessori model is to foster that connection and relationship with the community. The new building is very centrally located. The building and the environment itself will be part of the learning process.”

Montessori students run their own businesses. On Tuesday, as some children played ball in the back field, others helped a teacher stack bundles of wood that eventually will be sold at nearby markets. The students cut and split the wood themselves, and Raymond strolled from room to room with an energy similar to that of his students.

“It’s all about fostering and nurturing those connections between the student, the classroom, the teacher and the world,” Raymond said. “The environment is set up to be collaborative, cooperative and community-based.”

Although some parents will have a longer drive to get their students to school in the morning, Raymond said, the majority of parents are excited and supportive of the move.

“It speaks a lot to the health of the school if we can go through with a project like this,” Raymond said. “One of the things parents look for in a school is a sense of security that the school is healthy. I think the development of our own home in Narragansett sends a message to families that we’re here to stay.”

The Montessori model is based on hands-on study and students are grouped according to their development rather than grade level. Cohorts are broken up into early elementary, later elementary and middle school levels and students have the same teacher for three years. After graduating, the typical student would have had just three teachers.

The new school should be open in time for the 2011-12 academic year