The 97-acre Huntsburg campus of Hershey Montessori School has a new, 13,000-square-foot Upper School classroom building officials say is the first academic building in the Midwest designed with the Passive House Institute of the United States criteria for energy efficiency and sustainability.
The 97-acre Huntsburg campus of Hershey Montessori School has a new, 13,000-square-foot Upper School classroom building officials say is the first academic building in the Midwest designed with the Passive House Institute of the United States criteria for energy efficiency and sustainability.
Hershey Montessori, a private, nonprofit school that began in Painesville with eight students in 1978, has grown to 280 students from infancy through age 18, according to the school.
Students come from local communities throughout Ohio as well as from a variety of states and foreign countries including Mexico, Canada, Switzerland and Germany, said Paula Leigh-Doyle, head of the school.
The boarding school has several day students and a program in which students can stay at the school three nights per week if it is too long a commute to homes outside the immediate area, she explained.
The school follows the teachings of Italian educator Maria Montessori, who developed an educational philosophy during the early 20th century based on a student learning at his or her own pace.
Montessori schools do not use specific grade levels and use a holistic approach to teaching a variety of life skills along with academics.
Hershey Montessori began as the Western Reserve Montessori School in 1978. Five years later, it had 78 students, according to its website. By 1986, the school had built a campus in Concord Township and added an upper school campus in Huntsburg in 2000.
The 97-acre upper school campus, at 11530 Madison Road, contains a working farm and students are encouraged to learn skills such as the hydroponic growing of food, sustaining and maintaining the environment, and entrepreneurship.
According to school information, Hershey Montessori is the first of its kind in the world to fully implement Maria Montessori’s vision of educating children from birth through 18. Its first high school class entered the school in 2015 and the school’s first graduating class will complete their studies in June of this year.
The Huntsburg campus uses geothermal wells for heating and cooling, solar panels to generate electricity and a solar-powered bio-shelter greenhouse.
“Our other buildings have had very thoughtful approaches to energy efficiency, so when we discussed the new building, one of our staff, our facilities manager Ben Bowman, was familiar with the passive house concept,” Leigh-Doyle said. “The new building is the capstone of our project to make the Montessori educational philosophy available at one school for children from infancy to age 18.”
The Montessori philosophy emphasizes humans’ relationship to their environment and caring for the environment is a major part of the curriculum, she said.
The new $4 million classroom building was financed by donations and a lengthy capital fundraising campaign, Leigh-Doyle said.
Hershey Montessori will showcase the new classroom building with a grand opening celebration and open house Feb. 10 from 3-5 p.m. The public is invited.
