New space being constructed for Montessori School
Butler Montessori School spent 25 years leasing space in Butler Catholic School, then another 25 years at its current home in Covenant United Presbyterian Church, and its staff hopes to have many more years in its coming location off New Castle Road.
Covenant United Presbyterian Church was sold by its congregation last year, and the preschool has plans to move into a new space near Shockey Mini Storage on Shockey Lane. The building the school will lease is being renovated for the needs of the school, and teachers hope to be in the new building in September, the start of the new school year.
The open house the school hosted Sunday, Feb. 25 afternoon was the final time incoming students and their parents will see the current space, but Germaine Schaeffer, a teacher at Butler Montessori School, said they hoped to present architectural drawings of the new space at the event.
“We’re going to share our materials to everyone and show them how all these materials will be put together in the new space,” Schaeffer said. “We’re renovating the inside to meet our needs. We’re repurposing the building.”
The school has one class for 3- and 4-year-olds and one for 4- and 5-year-olds, and the school usually has 10 students in both classes each school year, Schaeffer said. The Montessori school occupies the second floor of the church, and can have up to 12 students per class, Schaeffer said. The new space will accommodate the same number of students as the space in the church, she added.
“We’re hoping to just be able to continue on like we were doing here, just in a different environment,” Schaeffer said.
While the school’s administrators expect to be moved into the new space by September, Schaeffer said the school will push back its start date if anything unexpected pops up.
Chris Love, who has been a teacher at Butler Montessori School since it was operating out of Butler Catholic School, said the new building will offer slightly more space. Additionally, the architects for the project visited the school’s current space to get an idea of how to best design the new building.
“They wanted to see what we have and how we have it organized and hopefully they are going to incorporate it into the plans,” Love said.
Both teachers said they have a lot of memories in the school’s current building, but the opportunity to start fresh in a new space has them excited for the possibilities. Schaeffer said the students will probably be excited to be in a brand-new building as well.
“When we moved here 25 years ago, we had to see how could we make our stuff work here?” Schaeffer said. “Now it’s a clean slate, and we can say, ‘We’d like this here and a storage cabinet here,’ just have a better flow.”
