Our Fifth School Year Beckons!

Here are a few updates from over the summer from our beloved campus in Bovina.

Campus in August - Still Prepping for School Start!

We had another busy summer at Bovina Center Montessori School, with so far our greatest enrollment for our Summer School and Daycare! Our Summer School program for any PreK-6 kids ran for four weeks and included fiber arts, arts with plants, survival skills/nature week and dance and movement. Our Infant and Toddler Summer Daycare Programs ran this year for a whole 7 weeks, the longest we’ve done yet! We are proud to provide care and curriculum for ages 0-12 years in our area, for both locals and visitors in Delaware County over the summer.

This year we had to cancel our beloved Pink Street Festival because of our massive construction project, which you’ve all probably noticed if you driven by the school. After two years of planning and approval processing, the school was granted a brand-new septic system, funded by the Catskill Watershed Corporation and installed by Bovina’s own LaFever Excavating. The system includes a brand new triple pump setup, that pumps the wastewater up to three large leach fields on the north hay field, almost encompassing the whole field.  The new system not only replaces the previous system put in by the Rabelers' Family of Suits Us Farm fame, which was installed in 1966 and was starting to become faulty. It will also safeguard the school’s overall plans for growth, including a maximum student body of 207 students one day, of which 24-35 may be boarding.

Other renovation projects at the school have primarily been focused in the large Blue Barn aka the School Barn. Work has been completed on our school’s café and shop (which will be run by the middle school students), we have a brand new roof and gutter system, and new underground drainage, new Primary outdoor pen, as new walk pathways and a new long-term parking area.

Barn Extension / Future Commercial Kitchen Almost Complete

We are also finishing the new extension to the barn, which will host the school’s future commercial kitchen, offering school lunch options and much more. For now, the extension space will be the middle school student classroom. With almost all of the first floor done (save a few spaces), we are looking ahead to take a breath and save some money before we start working on the barn’s upper floors that will contain four classrooms on two floors: lower and upper elementary, middle school, and high school. 

We are now walking into the School’s fifth year with 85 students from 0-15 years enrolled (including our first middle school boarding student!), 17 teachers and 8 admin, 4 sheep, 4 bunnies, 3 cats, and a couple of staff dogs! Chickens will re-added later again, once our new chicken run has been finished.

Again this year we will be offering After School Programming - open to all children ages 4-12 years in the area (you do not need to be enrolled at the school to join), including Table Tennis, our Wolf Pack Runs club, Pre-school Ballet, Arts and Crafts program, and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Afterschool Table Tennis coached by former professional table tennis player and parent Ilya Solovyev

We are excited to finally be up and running again and are looking forward to another productive and beautiful school year ahead!