It was rocket day on Friday, Oct. 18 at The Antioch School: a thrilling chance for students to launch their crafts high above the school, putting their engineering and designs to the test. The launch site was on a 5.3-acre tract of land that, this month, The Antioch School purchased from Antioch College for $600,000. For the past several decades, the school used and maintained that college-owned land in kind. (Photo by Reilly Dixon)
Antioch School to secure land
- Published: October 30, 2024
After months of uncertainty, The Antioch School — touted as the “oldest democratic school” in the country, with 50 students currently enrolled — is set to expand its footprint by over five acres.
Nestled between Glen Helen and Antioch College, The Antioch School will soon finalize a deal with the college to purchase land that, for decades, the private school has been informally allowed to use and maintain for its outdoor education programs.
The purchase, costing $600,000, will grow The Antioch School’s campus to approximately nine acres, and will ensure that its preK–sixth grade students can continue to use that land for exploring and learning for years to come.
“It is a win-win,” Antioch School Manager Nathan Summers said in a recent interview. “We’ve been able to preserve this property and engage with members of our community in a really productive way, and [Antioch College] gets what they need financially.”
As Summers told the News last week, the road leading up to this purchase was paved with uncertainty.
The 5.3-acre tract at the corner of Corry and Allen streets — the one that the school is set to buy from the college in the coming weeks — was first listed for sale along with another, separate 9-acre tract by Dunphy Real Estate this past July. According to Summers, the college did not immediately notify him or the school’s board that the land was up for sale; Summers learned of the sale from a community member.
Summers said he then reached out to Antioch College President Jane Fernandes in August to give her information about what he described as the “historic connection” between The Antioch School and Antioch College. The former was founded over 100 years ago by the college’s then president Arthur Morgan, as a school for the children of college faculty members and a training ground for Antioch College students.
“We’ve partnered together in a bunch of ways over the years, both before and after we became an independent institution [in 1979],” Summer said. “I showed Dr. Fernandes our Forest Kindergarten, and she seemed to have positive feelings about who we are and what we do. She seemed interested in finding a solution that would work for both institutions, but she said that ultimately, she has to do what’s best for the college — which I fully understood.”
The News unsuccessfully attempted to reach Fernandes and other representatives of Antioch College to confirm the president’s impressions of The Antioch School, as well as to discern the college’s motivations behind selling the tracts in the first place.
A few weeks after the listings went online and “for sale” signs were erected, the unnamed community member who had first informed Summers of the potential sale said they were interested in buying the land “in a way that would allow for continued use” by The Antioch School.
That initial offer stalled, however, and the listings were rescinded by the college for the purposes of investigating other potential encumbrances on the land, Summers said.
When the 5.3-acre listing reappeared a couple months later — with the nine-acre “golf course” to the west of The Antioch School no longer being listed — an “unknown buyer with unknown intentions,” as Summers described them, surfaced. Their offer was $600,000 for the tract at the corner of Corry and Allen.
The college’s acceptance of that offer from the unknown buyer instigated a “right of first refusal” clause embedded in the deed — a deed that The Antioch School co-authored with Antioch College in 1985, when the purchase of the school building was finalized six years after the school gained its independence.
That refusal clause dictates that a 30-day window must open for The Antioch School to match an agreed-upon sale price of adjacent land, and that upon matching that sale price, Antioch College must sell the land to The Antioch School over the other buyer.
That’s precisely what happened earlier this month.
The Antioch School successfully raised $600,000 to match the “unknown buyer’s” offer to purchase the college-owned land, and now, as Summers told the News, the two institutions are in the process of negotiating the terms of the agreement and a closing date of the transfer of funds. The purchase agreement was signed on Monday, Oct. 28, and The Antioch School is set to close on the deal on Tuesday, Nov. 5.
The money was raised in short order, Summers said.
Following a Sept. 27 letter to the editor from Ruth Hoff that apprised News readers of the uncertain future of the 5.3 acres near The Antioch School, Summers said “a handful” of community members donated several “large gifts” to the school to support the purchase.
“We thought the price was out of reach, so we weren’t considering an actual campaign,” Summers explained. “But those people who stepped forward [after Hoff’s letter] got us a good chunk of the way.”
Following that, Antioch School Development Coordinator Chris Westhoff launched what Summers described as a “quiet campaign” to contact other Antioch School alumni, local donors and others. In just two weeks of campaigning, The Antioch School garnered enough money to successfully carry out the purchase.
“The worst case scenario would have been a sale to someone or some entity who had plans that run contrary to our mission,” Summers said. “We love having access to this property. Sure, we could have found a way to live without having access to it, but it really would have been difficult.”
Antioch School Manager Nathan Summers sits in Forest Kindergarten — a little enclave for outdoor learning, which until the school’s purchase of the land, was in jeopardy of being lost. (Photo by Reilly Dixon)
Land of “enchantment”
On the sunny autumn afternoon the News spoke with Summers and Westhoff, the students of The Antioch School were abuzz with excitement: It was rocket day.
The once-a-year spectacle was a hands-on chance for the Older Group, approximately fourth-sixth graders, to launch their miniature electrical rockets high into the sky over the 5.3-acre field and wooded copse that The Antioch School is set to secure.
Led by arts and science teacher Elaina Vimmerstedt, the Older Group set their launch pad squarely in the middle of the field. Other teachers and the Younger Group, first-third graders, plopped down in the grass to watch. One by one, members of the Older Group approached the pad, affixed their hand-painted rockets to a thin spike and ran a couple of electrical lines to a big red button several feet away.
“Three, two, one…”
Young spectators screamed with delight as the rockets propelled nearly 100 feet overhead, and before each vessel reached zenith, the older students were already sprinting to catch the parachute about to waft down. Who would get it first?
“They’re learning about jet propulsion and the physics behind it,” Summers explained. “And there’s the art component. They put these rockets together as a group, and paint and decorate each one. This is why we include arts and sciences together.”
Rocketry is far from the only use of the land The Antioch School will buy from the college.
When it rains, a little creek tends to trickle through the field, and the young scientists are oft spotted conducting tests on the water. In more clement weather, the students build campsites, lean-tos and other interesting structures on which they can play, climb and, by extension, learn. Last year, the Older Group students created their own country in the field they called “Monkeylandia,” made official with a handmade flag and codified rules of governance. To this day, the field is also where students begin their weekly hikes through Glen Helen.
“Exploration of nature is a huge part of who we are,” Summers said. “These kids spend more than half their day outside, free to explore the land and take risks. Outside, there are textures and lessons to be learned that they could never get inside.”
The Antioch School’s focus on plein air education came in handy during the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic; from start to finish, every day was outdoors. “Kids doing math in mittens,” Summers said, and added that there was “zero transmission” of the virus within the school’s community.
Just feet away from last week’s rocket launch site is the original location of the school’s woody “Enchanted Forest.” Historically, until about a decade ago, students would don costumes and perform spooky Halloween skits for parents around this time of year. Then, in 2015, teacher Lindie Keaton created “Forest Kindergarten” in that enchanted forest — an outdoor classroom that’s still part laboratory, part playground, with pedagogical roots in Europe. Tucked away in a grove encircled by honeysuckle and dense vegetation, Forest Kindergarten is where students learn around a fire pit, string up hammocks, talk over hot chocolate and more.
All this — the rocket launches, the site of imaginary countries, Forest Kindergarten — Summers said, was in jeopardy when the land went up for sale.
“The fact that we will completely own this property will give us more freedom in using it,” Summers said with a smile. “Like with Forest Kindergarten, we haven’t been able to build any formal structures. Now, we can maybe build a more established pathway or something more permanent than the tarp that hangs over.”
He added that any possible development on those 5.3 acres would likely have diminished the decades-long enchantment that the surrounding flora and foliage have afforded the school.
As Development Director Westhoff added: “Anywhere our students are, any direction they look, they see trees, greenspace — their space. It’s like they’re in their own little world here at the school. And if a development came here with a big privacy fence, it could change the psychological feeling that the kids have here — the enchantment.”
More practically, less of that wooded enchantment would have also meant less privacy for the school.
“It was kind of a safety issue, also,” Summers explained. “We’re tucked away in this corner, not really visible from the roads. We all understand what schools in 2024 are up against, so we like the peace of mind that comes from privacy.”
The purchase of the land isn’t the only reason for The Antioch School to celebrate; in the coming weeks, the school is set to host two community events.
On Friday, Nov. 1, 6–8 p.m., The Antioch School will host its Harvest Soup Supper, a community potluck wherein attendees bring pots of their favorite soups. That same weekend, on Sunday, Nov. 3, the school will have an open house for prospective students and their families from 1–3 p.m. All are welcome to attend both events.
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