Work to begin on Journey Montessori School building
Journey Montessori School is building a school right where Beth Clayton wants — at the edge of nature.
Construction on a two-room school is about to start at 1209 Unity Way, across the street from Unity Santa Fe church and steps from La Cuchara Trailhead of La Tierra Trails.
The project fits the sensibilities of Clayton, Journey’s head of school. Journey is a nature-oriented school, and its first to sixth graders have been based at Unity Santa Fe since the school opened in 2013.
Journey expanded to space at Children’s Adventure Co. for pre-K to kindergarten in 2017 and middle-schoolers in 2018. Journey has 48 students.
The planned 3,000-square-foot school building will allow Clayton to have all students on the same street. She will keep the Unity Santa Fe space but move the middle school students into that facility.
The elementary and pre-K to kindergarten students will be in the new building, which she said should take six to eight months to build. As soon as she gets a certificate of occupancy, the assignment for all students will be moving into the new school.
“I would move immediately” even if it was the last two weeks of the school year, Clayton said.
“Our whole point in starting this school is to get children out in nature and away from the stress that causes so much angst in children,” Clayton said. “We don’t give homework. We don’t have excessive testing. They do a lot of hiking, camping and backpacking and service work that we do, like trail maintenance.”