Brightfield parents and co-founders pose with members of the school’s inaugural third grade class during a recent visit to the Bath YMCA. Front row, from left: Gus Ahalt and Marlowe Green. Back row, from left: Brightfield School Board of Trustees Chair Cyrus Ahalt, volunteer spokesperson Kate Hitchings Ahalt, and Board of Trustees Secretary Kat Sanders. (Photo courtesy Kate Hitchings Ahalt)
Parents interested in providing their child with a community centric education experience have a new option in the Midcoast with the founding of the Brightfield School for Place-Based Education in Bath.
The new school opened its doors for its first school year Sept. 5, welcoming 23 students spread across grades 1-8.
The Brightfield School was founded by a community of parents determined to carry on following the closure of the Chewonki Foundation’s elementary and middle school in June. Citing a lack of long-term financial viability for the education program, Chewonki’s board of trustees voted on Nov. 4, 2022 to close the school at the end of the term. Parents were informed via email that same night.
The board’s decision left the families of the school’s final 44 students with no local options to continue providing their children with a place-based education. For various reasons, some families associated with Chewonki moved on, but another group took action.
In an interview Sept. 15, Wiscasset resident Kat Sanders, secretary to Brightfield’s board of trustees, of Wiscasset and volunteer school spokesperson Kate Hitchings Ahalt, of Bath, both parents of Brightfield students, marveled at the distance traveled from despair to determination.
“We found out on a Friday night, and a week later we met on a Friday at a greenhouse on Route 1,” Sanders said. “A great proportion of the parents turned out as a community and I think there and then decided that we were going to do something.”
“I think it is fair to say as individuals we didn’t really know what we were doing,” Hitchings Ahalt said. “But the core group of people who decided that we would do it had the creativity, the motivation, and that camaraderie to make it happen.”
Within the group, individual members have significant experience in areas like operating nonprofits, building trades, fundraising, marketing, graphic design, and so on. When they have needed it, the core group has been successful pulling in expertise from outside sources, Hitchings Ahalt said.
“Mount Desert Island School (has) been incredibly supportive and throughout the process right from the start,” Sanders said. “Talking about the way they do things and offering advice.”
Other support has been offered by Midcoast Conservancy, which among other things is acting as Brightfield’s fiscal sponsor while the school’s 501(c)(3) status is pending.
Setting up Brightfield, the community was able to bring experienced educators including Chewonki veterans Lorna Fake, who teaches grades 1-2, and Megan Philips, who teaches grades 3-4. West Coast native Katie Mathews teaches grades 5-6 and veteran teacher Kat Cassidy teaches grades 7-8.
Brightfield students hit the trail in the woods near their Bath school. The place-based education school serves students from Bristol, Newcastle, Wiscasset, Alna, Westport Island, and Edgecomb, and well as students from Sagadahoc and Cumberland counties. (Photo courtesy Kate Hitchings Aholt)
The four teachers together are supported by one support teacher and one administrator. Music and art are provided by guest instructors. The entire operation is overseen by a five-person board of trustees.
Fake said Brightfield parents in Bath take turns driving the school’s minivan to Wiscasset to pick up Lincoln County students. When the grade 7-8 students wanted tables for their classroom, a parent with skills and experience showed up and helped the students design and build them, applying math, using hand tools, and practicing teamwork and communication skills.
Although Brightfield is physically located in Bath, the school serves students as far away as Brunswick to the south and Bristol to the north.
Brightfield occupies the entire second floor on the Bath United Methodist Church, but has no religious affiliation.
Before settling on a location, organizers looked at every available commercial space on the Route 1 corridor from Brunswick to Damariscotta, Hitchings Ahalt said. Whatever space they found had to be safe and secure and ready to accept students by Sept. 5.
The school’s current home came with a partially finished space with plenty of room to expand, a welcoming landlord offering a three-year lease with an option to extend, and a central location that could still serve students from Lincoln, Sagadahoc, and Cumberland counties.
The space itself is also large, well over 2,000 square feet, and will allow the school to eventually serve up to 56 students. When the Brightfield founders first discovered the location, Joe and Becki Dikitanan, owners of the Westport Island building and design firm Atlantic Home & Co., checked out the property.
“I think Becki’s family, understanding the building trades, went in there and said ‘Well, this space is already great, it’s good to go. It meets all our requirements in building code and fire safety,’” Sanders said.
“Bath UMC has been a great community partner for us,” Hitchings Ahalt said. “I think it has been mutually beneficial to us and they have a mission to serve to the community.”
The church building is also located on seven acres of woodlands, which are surrounded by property protected by the Kennebec Estuary Land Trust and connected with the Whiskeag Trail. Another abutter, the Oak Grove Cemetery, is maintained by Bath Parks and Recreation.
All are prime fodder for an educational philosophy that emphasizes getting outside and engaging with the immediate surroundings. Fake said her class was recently exploring the Oak Grove Cemetery during an “alphabet hunt,” during which her students tried to locate specific letters on the various stones.
During this excursion, they met a parks worker who explained to the students he was hired by the city to keep the stones clean and described the process for doing so.
“I think sometime people think (place-based education) is more complicated that it is … You’re not just putting kids in the woods and saying ‘off you go for the day,’” Sanders said. “It’s very structured but it is quite mindful and deliberate in the way it approaches teaching…I think if you put adults in the same format they would likely do well.”
Moving forward, Hitchings Ahalt and Sanders said recruitment is important if the school is going to continue to thrive and grow. The goal was never to open a school and stop. It was to build and maintain a school community.
To that end, Brightfield welcomes inquiries from parents interested in a place-based education. Going forward, the school plans to host open house events and pizza nights. Information on the school, place-based education, and an application form are all available on the school’s website.
Every family is required to pay a tuition, and Brightfield offers flexible tuition, which is amount tailored to the family’s ability to pay. Currently, 75% of Brightfield families avail themselves of flexible tuition.
“We want to make school as inclusive as possible so every family regardless of income, has the potential to attend, but we have to make the school financially viable, so we have a minimum tuition,” Hitchings Ahalt said.
During the application process, school officials and the applying family review the family’s financial situation to determine a dollar figure that meets the mutual needs. Once the amount is agreed upon, it is prorated over the course of a year.
“This sort of takes the place of financial aid,” Hitchings Ahalt said. “Instead of having to apply to a school whose tuition is X dollars and then separately seek financial aid, you go through the flex tuition process and determine what your family can reasonably and viably pay over the course of the year and then make an agreement with the school upfront about what that is. So our tuition is in a range, it is roughly between $5,000 and $14,000, but there is a floor, so we ask every family to pay something.”
Hitchings Ahalt and Sanders agreed that the closure of Chewonki school was a dramatic development but the silver lining is the community that came together for Chewonki stayed together to create Brightfield.
“Once Chewonki closed, there was nothing like that in the area at all,” Hitchings Ahalt said. “I think part of our driving force here was trying keeping it alive in the community and to continue to offer that. Look at where we are in the world. We are in Midcoast Maine. It’s astonishing. It is the perfect place to deliver that kind of education.”
For more information, go to brightfieldschool.org.
Brightfield first and second grade teacher Lorna Fake reads to her combined class in her new classroom. Brightfield applies a place-based education philosophy, which stresses meaningful engagement with the natural world and local community. (Photo courtesy Kate Hitchings Aholt)
