Fairfield School closes

BY WENDY ELLIOTT

The Advertiser

NovaNewsNow.com

Kings County’s only alternative school, Fairfield School in Wolfville, closed its doors last week.

“We were unable to achieve the enrolment necessary to make the school work,” says board member and parent John Grant.

“We worked hard and gave it a good try,” Grant said. “I guess people in the Valley weren’t ready to support unstructured schooling.”

In the past five years, Grant noted, “a lot was learned and those lessons will lead to good, self-motivated young people.”

He says his children will return to home schooling. “It’s disappointing. I still believe in it, but we have no regrets.”

As a pediatrician, Grant says the parents he meets in the emergency room who are at their wit’s end will have fewer options.

Enrollment at Fairfield School was as large as 25 youth when it opened, but the founders left and in some ways the school never recovered.

Grant adds that there is now a great property with three acres in the middle of Wolfville going on the real estate market. “A yard sale is planned. We have to tidy up things.”

It was only a year ago that the school achieved charitable status.

Fairfield was built on the successful 35-year-old model of Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts. Based on democratic principles, students initiated their own educational experience.

Fairfield School, which opened in February 2002, was the first democratic school in Canada.