A determined group of Heights parents who have long sought a creative educational experience for their kids are opening Cleveland's first-ever Waldorf school. It is expected to open this fall in the former Coventry Elementary School in Cleveland Heights.

"This is a great thing for Cleveland Heights," says Amy Marquit-Renwald, a Shaker Heights resident who grew up in Cleveland Heights and helped to create the new Urban Oak School. "We're going to see families move here for the Waldorf school, and families stay because of this."

Urban Oak will initially offer preschool, kindergarten and a combined first and second grade class. After the first year, the school will offer additional grades.

"We had people lining up to support the school," says Marquit-Renwald of the process to seek approval from the city and the Cleveland Heights-University Heights school board. "People are dying to have Coventry be a school again."

The school will be private because Ohio's charter laws were deemed too difficult to navigate for an alternative, Waldorf-style school. It will seek accreditation as a Waldorf school, a rigorous process, over the course of its first seven years.

"The model is really about helping kids develop all aspects of themselves," says Marquit-Renwald of the 100-year-old Waldorf model, a contemporary of Montessori education. "It offers more free time to develop creativity, deeper foundational work -- including delayed introduction of purely academic work -- in the early years to better prepare for critical thinking and complex thought in later years, and use of personal interaction as the main vehicle for learning and fostering empathy, as opposed to interacting with technology."

Urban Oak School is hosting information sessions in the coming weeks for interested parents.

Source: Amy Marquit-Renwald
Writer: Lee Chilcote