We really enjoy our school-wide festivals as an opportunity to gather together for seasonal fun. May Day is particularly beloved as a celebration of spring and the re-awakening of the natural world around us. It is particularly photogenic too, with flowers and brightly colored ribbons. Our school traditions include making flower crowns, a cake walk, bubbles, lemon peppermints (a peppermint “straw” inserted into a whole lemon), a community picnic and dancing around a maypole.
Lowery Farm Campaign Update: Mark Your Calendars for November 28
Dear Madrona Families,
This is a very exciting time in Madrona School’s history. With our 20th anniversary just around the corner, Madrona School has a unique opportunity to create a legacy of Waldorf education on Bainbridge Island with the purchase of the Lowery Farm property. This very special piece of land has become an integral part of our school’s curriculum and culture, serving as our second kindergarten classroom, providing gardening and outdoor space for our 1st through 8th grade students, and hosting many of our lively school festivities.
Many people in our school community have been hard at work on a long-term plan to purchase the Lowery Farm property with the ultimate goal of building a new home for Madrona school on the site in the years to come. While that is still very much our goal, the reality is that without the farm we could not even continue to serve our current students and families—we quite literally do not have enough rooms in our current building for all of our students!
As we move closer to the 2019 deadline for purchasing the land, many of you have asked where we stand in the process. While the Board and Lowery Farm Acquisition Committee have been hard at work putting into place all the pieces that will go into making this dream a reality, nearly all that work has been “behind the scenes.” We’d like to take this opportunity to share with you our progress and alert you to some upcoming opportunities for greater involvement that we believe will be of interest to you.
To date, the Lowery Farm Acquisition Committee has been meeting weekly to accomplish the following items:
• Explore various financing options for the land purchase
• Develop a timeline for the land acquisition and corresponding capital campaign
• Lay the groundwork for an initial capital campaign focused on the land acquisition, including researching campaign consultants
• Work with the City of Bainbridge Island regarding the additional traffic study requested during the Conditional Use Permit proceedings
• Work with the architect on construction budgets and timelines for each of the three phases
While this is by no means an exhaustive list of all our activities, it does provide a snapshot into the work that has been going on behind the scenes to make Lowery Farm a permanent part of Madrona School’s future.
You can be involved as well! As we transition from planning to launching the campaign, we are looking for volunteers in the areas of construction, finance, fundraising and marketing to serve on active committees. The input from these committees will be crucial to the long-term success of the campaign.
To bring more transparency to the process and share additional details about the upcoming campaign, we hope you’ll join us for a Community Info Night on Wednesday, November 28 from 7-8pm in the EHCC Fellowship Hall. We’ll be presenting information on plans for purchasing the farm property, details on the capital campaign launch, and leave plenty of time for Q&A.
Rudolf Steiner said, “Man is not a being who stands still, he is a being in the process of becoming. The more he enables himself to become, the more he fulfills his true mission.” The success of the campaign and the acquisition of Lowery Farm will enable Madrona School to become more than we ever thought possible and fulfill our mission of bringing the joy of Waldorf education to generations of local families now, and in the future.
Sincerely,
Cindy Smith
Chair of the Madrona School Board
Michaelmas Festival 2018
Each September we gather to celebrate Michaelmas, our first seasonal festival of the school year. Our festivals connect us to the natural world and renew our connections between classes, and among parents and friends. Michaelmas is a celebration of courage and harvest. This time of year we observe the seasonal changes in the natural world as plant life bears fruit and then begins to die back, leaves turn and animals prepare for the coming winter. Personally we find ourselves of two minds — trepidation for the shorter, darker, cold, wet days ahead, even as we feel a surge of energy and a counter force to the slowing in nature around us. The story of St. George fighting a dragon with the angel Michael’s help embodies this time of year, a call to gather courage and engage the dragons we need to battle and transform.
As the pictures below reflect, our festival includes challenges for all ages, a baked potato feast utilizing the bounty of our school garden, and a pageant of grade school students to both sing and tell the story of St. George taming the dragon.
Thank you so much to parent Julie Rings for sharing her beautiful photography of the festival with all of us. We are grateful!
Postcards from a new school year!
We are so excited to begin the new school year — our 19th! Here are a few images from around the school and from Lowery Farm in these early days of the year.
Clockwise from the top left: August in the school garden; kindergarteners eagerly watching a dump truck delivery of woodchips; opening day assembly for 2nd-8th grades; 1st grade chalkboard; 2nd grade morning movement on the balance beam; 4th grade has begun each morning with recorders and cursive writing practice; 5th grade mandalas kick off botany studies; first paintings of the year in 6th grade; 8th grade is going backpacking in the Olympics and there is a lot to learn and prepare!
Michaelmas at Madrona School
The weather turned fall-like just in time for our annual Michaelmas festival, and while the grade school had to practice their pageant in the rain in the morning, by festival time, the sun was shining! We had a lovely afternoon. Challenges for all ages, including boat races and an obstacle course for the young ones, and balance beams, pillow jousting, slack lines, tug o'war, giant knitting, and dragon bread roasting for older children. The grade school challenges concluded with a slightly ominous trip through the 7th grade-designed and run dragon's lair (tucked into the woods), where treasure awaited the brave. Then we feasted on potatoes from the garden, and a beautiful dragon's bread offered by the 2nd grade. The afternoon concluded with an all-grade school pageant -- gnomes, shooting stars, royalty, a brave knight and, in the end, a tamed dragon. Happy Autumn!
Harvest Dinner at Lowery Farm
Our recent Harvest Dinner was lovely -- thank you to everyone who was able to come and celebrate the new school year with us! The dinner was a kickoff to our year-long Community Fund efforts to raise $120,000 in non-tuition income in support of our school budget. And, we've raised $56,000 to date! We are grateful for every gift we've received and thrilled that our re-organized fundraising program is off to a strong start. If you would still like to donate, please do so through our website here.
Enjoy these photographs from the event -- a selection from talented parents Paige Clark and Julie Rings. Thanks for sharing, you two!
Looking Towards Our Future: Lowery Farm CUP
In a letter sent out to our school community on May 24, 2017, we were excited to announce that we've cleared one step in the process towards a new campus. This represents a lot of work on the part of many, and we are grateful! As we've lived in to the Lowery Farm property a bit over the last few years, we've grown to love the land and what it might represent for the future of our school.
Dear friends and fans,
I am delighted to report that this morning we received the Hearing Examiner's favorable judgement on our CUP application. As you can read below, Phases I and II of the project have been approved (with a host of conditions, most of them exactly as we had expected) and with phase III being "remanded to the City for further investigation of the traffic impacts of the operation of the proposed auditorium."
We were particularly pleased to be acknowledged in a couple places for our thoughtful design:
"The Hearing Examiner takes notice that schools are more often than not located in residential areas. The plans presented go to considerable length to assure that during normal hours the new school will fit in.
The proposed school development is part of an overall pattern of growth. In the larger development picture, the school actually represents the retention of open space, as compared with standard residential development. 92.5% of the property will remain open. This applicant, a Waldorf school, is particularly sensitive to concerns for preservation of natural conditions because nature plays an important role in its instructional program."
Thank you to all of you who have supported this (lengthy) application process! You wrote letters that became part of the testimony considered by the examiner; you attended meetings; you spoke up in favor of this project. I hope that you feel as pleased about this as we do!
I will be communicating more about next steps soon.
Sincerely,
Missi, on behalf of the board and campus committee
