More about starting a free school...

Another letter, this time from Concord, North Carolina, posted with permission, response will be posted on the blog tomorrow:

Dear Seattle Free School,


I am a homeschooling mother in Concord, North Carolina. Over the years of basically unschooling my children I have become very interested with learning in non-traditional ways. I was a public school teacher and I have learned from my children that there are so many more positive learning alternative than typical education.


I was recently re-reading one of my John Holt books...Instead of Education, and I came across the idea of free schools for a second time. I was interested in them years ago, but my children were young. Now that they are older the idea has come back around, so I started looking on the internet to find out what was out there in other areas. We have nothing like this in Concord. I stumbled across your fantastic website.


I was wondering if you had any advice for somebody trying to start such a school in their community? How many people do you have helping to coordinate the free school as far as volunteers go? How did you start? How long was the planning stages? And, how did you gain community support? How do you manage without any money? I love this idea, but just having trouble wrapping my head around how this all works.


I am just in the planning stages, but your website really resonates with what I was seeing in my mind about how such a school would work.


Any advice you can offer would be much appreciated.


Thank you,


Shannon