Benefits of Becoming an Independent School:
- Keep a local school
- Quickly adapt to population changes
- Allow qualified and screened instructors in the classroom (arts, etc)
- Allow staff to work more closely together across grade levels and disciplines
- Attract students from surrounding choice towns (Stockbridge, Pittsfield, Hancock and Granville ) and possibly home school families.
- Attract families to move to the community
- Faster implementation of schedule changes
- Faster implementation of curriculum changes
- Community input valued in curriculum and extracurricular activities
- Create a school culture that puts the child first at all levels of decision making
- Give community direct and accountable input into the school
- Independent schools can serve a wide range of students
- Not every small public school can serve every child well, the same is true for small independent schools. During the process of creating the school, the community can determine the range of learners they can best serve sustainably.
- Public schools are often hampered by top heavy regulation from the state and federal government - an independent model allows an escape from regulation that does more to create excess staffing to comply with paperwork than it does to serve the needs of children.
- An independent school can adapt to and change while the school year is in progress.
- An independent school can create an endowment that will grow over the years and help fund special programs.
- An independent school allows for staff and administration to work cooperatively and evaluate each other.
- An independent school allows a strong leader (principal) to guide the school in education and teacher mentoring and development, to meet the specific needs of the school and staff.
- An independent school puts local control back into education. Staffing is local, evaluation is local, curriculum is local, input is local.
- An independent school can choose to become certified in, and serve any of the 13 levels of federal SPED categories and control quality of services delivered.