New Montessori school won't forget building's history

As the former Center for Building Hope reopened with a new vibrancy Dec. 5, touches of the site’s past were not about to be forgotten.

NewGate Montessori high school students walked through hallways on the school’s first day with plaques from the Center for Building Hope still attached to the walls. Those plaques recognized donors who made construction of the Center for Building Hope possible.

Center for Building Hope is a defunct nonprofit that supported cancer patients and their caretakers.

NewGate Headmaster Tim Seldin said the cause to which those donors answered the call remains important, even if the new purpose of the buildings is to educate NewGate’s students.

“The people who donated to this center were doing so because of the work of the center,” Seldin said.

NewGate also plans to restore the former owner’s herbal gardens on the property to use for lessons in agriculture, cooking and healing.

The facility, just less than 11,000 combined square feet on 4.8 acres at 5481 Communications Parkway, was purchased Sept. 15 and quickly transformed to serve students. Seldin said the facility is perfect for the Montessori educational style — plenty of smaller rooms in a tranquil setting — while its overall size will continue to give the school room to expand.

“For a school of, say, 150 kids, it’s perfect,” said Seldin, noting there are only about 200 Montessori high schools in the world.

NewGate has about 55 students attending seventh through 12th grades in Lakewood Ranch, leaving room for NewGate to triple its high school program to about 150 students. 

The shift of students also will open about 75 more spaces for younger students at NewGate’s original campus on Ashton Road in Sarasota.

Seldin said he expects growth to be steady. At the high school level, NewGate likely will admit about 10 to 20 new students each year, but is willing to take up to 25 students between now and June.

Center for Building Hope’s two-building campus will serve the immediate student body well. The front building, with a reception area, conference room, offices and rooms for meetings and other needs, will continue to be used in that manner. Students will utilize a library-lounge area, and some of the offices likely will be converted for academic purposes. An old craft room, for example, will be perfect as the school’s new science lab.

The second building will be more like a school with small classrooms, a learning kitchen and a large cafeteria-like room for lunches or larger events.

Students helped finish minor repairs to their new building — repairing drywall and painting, for example — required in both buildings.

Seldin and his wife, Joyce St. Giermaine, see the new campus as a stepping stone for things still to come. 

They purchased the Old Mission, a rustic home with a vineyard on 19.6 acres on State Road 64, in 2007 with visions of running a school there one day.

The property serves as the couple’s primary residence, as well as offices for their Montessori Foundation, a nonprofit that manages NewGate and provides training, research and other support for Montessori schools across the world.

The Center for Building Hope campus fills an immediate need, while the Old Mission will fulfill a need for Montessori schooling in future years, once East County is further developed, Seldin said.