Sudbury Valley School

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The Sudbury Valley School

Location
2 Winch Street Framingham, MA United States
Information
Established	1968
Faculty	8
Grades	ungraded, ages 4+
Number of students	140–210
Campus size	10 acres (40,000 m²)
Campus type	suburban
Philosophy	Sudbury
Governance	School Meeting (democratic, vote by students and staff)
Website	http://www.sudburyvalley.org

The Sudbury Valley School was founded in 1968 in Framingham, Massachusetts,^[1] United States. There are now over 35 schools based on the Sudbury Model in the United States, Denmark, Israel, Japan, Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. The model has three basic tenets: educational freedom, democratic governance and personal responsibility. It is a private school, attended by children from the ages of 4 to 19.

At the Sudbury Valley School, students individually decide what to do with their time, and learn as an aside to their personal efforts, interactions and ordinary experience, rather than through classes or a standard curriculum.^[2]

Facilities

Following the educational philosophy, the school facilities are somewhat different from most schools. The furnishings of the school as much as one would expect in a home; comfortable chairs, couches, books lining the walls. There are no traditional classrooms and no traditional classes; instead children are free to explore any subject or talk to any staff member about an interest, as part of educating themselves.^[3]

Curriculum

The school has no required academic activities, and no academic expectations for completion of one's time at the school. Students are free to spend their time as they wish.^[4]^[5]^[6]

Government

Students are given complete responsibility for their own education and the school is run by a direct democracy in which students and staff are equals. The corporation is wholly owned and operated by the School Meeting, in which each student and each elected member of the staff has one vote.^[7]^[8]

Staff

There is no tenure at Sudbury Valley School. The School Meeting, with each participant receiving one vote, hires staff, as part of its duties in running the school. Every year, in the spring, elections are held for next year's staff. Anyone who wants to serve has to place their names in nomination. The School Meeting debates the school's staff needs, and discusses each candidate in turn. There is an election with secret paper ballots which is open to all students and staff. Staff are not chosen solely through this election; rather, staff candidates must meet a threshold of support in the election in order to be hired, but they are hired at a School Meeting.^[7]

Jay Flood^[9]
Scott David Gray^[10]
Daniel Greenberg, founder
Hanna Greenberg, founder
Mikel Matisoo
Peter Poulos
Mimsy Sadofsky, founder
Kristin Wilson

Alumni

Sudbury Valley School has published two studies of their alumni over the past forty years. They have learned, among other things, that about 80% of their students have graduated from college,^[11] and that they have gone on to become successful in many areas of life.^[12] There have, as yet, been no formal studies of graduates of other Sudbury schools, but anecdotally, they seem to have similar results.^[11]^[13]

Officers of the Corporation

Officers of the Corporation are elected by the School Meeting, meeting as the corporation, at its annual meeting.^[8]

President: Kelly McCarthy, student
Secretary: Olivia Rose Charles, student
Treasurer: Scott Gray, staff member