School will use new space to expand curriculum
The Advent School, now in its 49th year on Brimmer Street, has entered into a multi-year lease for the use of a former office building at 99 West Cedar St., just off Charles Circle at the foot of Beacon Hill.
The former office building at 99 West Cedar St. that will serve as a new Advent School facility.
“This is an exciting development for all of us here at Advent,” said the school’s head Nancy Harris Frohlich. “As wehead towards our 50th year on Beacon Hill, we are very mindful of our history and our connection to this community.”
Advent will use the building to create additional space for curriculum explorations in art, engineering and design, as well as a center for faculty research and collaboration. The new setting is designed to enable teachers to push the boundaries of children’s thinking and inspire students to imagine new possibilities in all of their learning. The school is working in collaboration with Utile, Inc. architects of Boston on the design work. Interior renovations to the two-story, 5,400 square-foot building will begin shortly in order to have the space ready for the September 2011 opening of school, according to Harris Frohlich.
“With the success of our Early Childhood Center, begun in 2004, we have seen our enrollment grow in such a way that we had to plan for a day when we would need additional space,” Harris Frohlich said. “Our intention is to continue to offer the kind of curriculum we think is essential to a child’s learning in a world where the pace of change just gets faster.”
Mark Cohen, chairman of the school’s board of trustees, which has been overseeing Advent’s painstaking search for the right opportunity to secure additional space, said the process had stretched out over a number of years because of very specific search criteria, the primary one being a location on Beacon Hill.
“We are committed to remaining in this community. There was never a question about that,” Cohen said. “But as a small school that intends to remain small, and because our resources are quite finite as a result, it was really a challenge for us to find the right kind of space that would serve our student’s educational needs, the needs and expectations of our families, and be a good fit with our larger Beacon Hill community.”
Cohen added, “We think we have accomplished that with this new satellite space, and we look forward to it coming alive with the sound of Advent students and faculty next September.”
Founded in 1961, The Advent School is a non-religious, independent school for children in Early Childhood (age 4) through sixth grade, located at 15 Brimmer St. in Beacon Hill. Advent’s 200 students come from almost every Boston neighborhood—Charlestown, the South End, Cambridge, Beacon Hill, Dorchester and Jamaica Plain, among others—and 15 surrounding cities and towns. For almost 50 years, the school has provided an outstanding education, grounded in the principles of social justice and environmental sustainability. Advent believes that teaching children within a meaningful historical, cultural, or environmental context builds confident students who seek out connections within their learning.
For more information, visit www.adventschool.org or call 617-742-0520.