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A Brief History of the Albany Free
School & Community
by Chris Mercogliano
Former Teacher & Co-Director, The Free School,
New York, U.S.A.
Author, How to Grow a School & In
Defense of Childhood
Founded in 1969 by Mary Leue, the Albany
Free School is the oldest inner-city independent
alternative school in the United States. The
school was born of necessity when Mary’s
youngest son became so miserable in his
fifth-grade class at one of Albany’s “better”
public schools that he asked his mother if she
would teach him at home instead.
Mary told Mark she would do it, and at that
moment, the Free School’s basic operating
strategy took shape: act first, ask permission
later. When Mary received a threatening call
from the principal at Mark’s former school, she
sprang into action to establish the legality of
teaching her son at home and eventually found a
man in the curriculum department of the State
Education Department who assured her that her
decision was legal.
Thus, young Mark Leue became probably New York
State’s first legal homeschooler. Two weeks
later, Mary ran into a friend who had three
children suffering in another Albany school. She
begged Mary to take them on too, and Mary, not
wanting Mark to be isolated alone with her at
home, readily agreed. The rest of that year,
according to Mary in her “History of the Free
School”—which can be found in Challenging the
Giant: the Best of SKOLE, the Journal of
Alternative Education (Down to Earth Books,
1992)—went “swimmingly.” Revolution was in the
air. It was the year of the student strikes, the
invasion of Cambodia, and the first Earth Day.
In June, Mary and her gang of four voted to
continue the school for another year, with
another vote establishing the name “The Free
School.”
The following September, four students became
seven, two teachers climbed aboard, and the need
for a building was obvious. A rapid and
exhaustive search led to a storefront church in
the city’s South End, which was moving to a
larger building across town. The minister agreed
to rent their old building to the school for
$100 a month. This accomplished two things: It
was all Mary could afford to pay; and the
location ensured that the school would be
integrated in terms of race and social class.
The remainder of the summer was then taken up
with round-the-clock renovations and
fundraising, and come September, somewhat
miraculously, the Free School opened its doors.
What followed was a most wild and tumultuous
year, with parents battling over educational
philosophy and practice, with kids from opposite
ends of the socio-economic spectrum thrashing
out their own issues, and with several city
departments (building, fire and education) vying
to shut down this funky, penniless institution.
As the bureaucratic noose tightened around the
school’s neck, and as the call to the city’s
mayor (who was nearing the end of his 42-year
reign over a Democratic political machine whose
power rivaled that of Chicago’s infamous Mayor
Daly) to shut down “that Free School” once and
for all grew louder, it was Mayor Corning
himself who cooled down the situation, ordering
his officials to work with Mary on whatever
changes were called for.
Two important developments came out of that
initial year of constant trial. First, teachers
and parents hammered out, in a series of intense
sessions, the policy that only those actually
present day-to-day in the building could
determine school policy. Others were welcome to
attend meetings and to advise and suggest, but
that would be the extent of their power. This
absolute internal autonomy remains an
operational cornerstone. Next, in order to
empower the kids to participate in school
governance, and to give them a way to
nonviolently work out their differences (which
were many in that initial period), Mary and the
other teachers instituted a “council meeting”
system, whereby anyone with a serious problem
could call a meeting at any time, with everyone
dropping what they were doing and attending.
Meetings would be run by Robert’s Rules of
Order. Therefore anyone, with sufficient
support, could set policy, make or change rules,
and establish consequences for anti-social
behavior. The council meeting structure provided
a safety net for everyone, guaranteeing that,
borrowing A.S. Neill’s phrase, freedom didn’t
become license.
A fire during the summer after the first year
forced Mary to seek out a new home for the
school. She found—and this time purchased (with
a small inheritance from her mother)—an old
parochial school building on a different edge of
the same neighborhood. Over the next several
years Mary was also able to buy seven other
buildings on the block, for an average of
$2,000. Here Mary was acting on the advice of
Jonathan Kozol, who strongly advocated that free
schools develop some sort of business enterprise
so that they wouldn’t be tuition dependent and
therefore accessible primarily to middle-class
children.
We then spent the next ten years slowly
rehabilitating the buildings apartment by
apartment, which were then used to house Free
School teachers and families, and to generate
much-needed income for the school. Somewhere
along the way, Mary managed to arrange both IRS
and local property and sales tax exemptions,
essential ingredients in the school’s long-term
survival.
Securely housed in its “new” 120-year-old
building, the school was burgeoning, with forty
kids of all shapes, sizes, ages and colors,
eight full-time teachers, and a host of interns
and volunteers. Students came from both
inner-city and uptown neighborhoods, and as word
about the school spread, from suburban and rural
towns as well. The extraordinary diversity of
the student body became one of the school’s
strongest assets.
The place was as intense as ever. Salaries, when
we got paid at all, were miniscule. Many of the
students were in crisis much of the time, and
their emotional struggles tended to bring up
teachers’ unresolved issues. A number of the
teachers were attempting to live together
semi-communally in school-owned housing, which
added a frothy interpersonal dimension. It
became more and more apparent that we needed
some sort of forum outside of school where the
adults could resolve their conflicts and deepen
their communication with each other. Mary
suggested we start a weekly support group, which
has now been meeting continuously since 1974. It
is here that we sharpen our “humanity skills” by
attempting to practice emotional honesty through
compassionate interaction both with the truth
and with each other.
There was surprisingly little staff turnover
during the school’s first decade. As various
teachers stayed on, we began settling into more
permanent relationships. A Free School “baby
boom” ensued, and we started spreading out into
the various Free School buildings, which,
because they were on two parallel streets, often
had adjoining backyards. The buildings more or
less in order, we started in on the yards,
creating cooperative gardens and outdoor
gathering places. More and more, we found
ourselves eating and celebrating birthdays and
holidays together. There was a real sense of
community emerging.
Teachers who were putting down roots decided to
buy their own homes on the block—for the same
low prices that Mary had paid for the Free
School buildings. Armed with the necessary
rehabilitation skills and tools that we had
acquired while fixing up the school buildings,
but with very little money, we devised a
cooperative system for helping each other with
our houses, often by means of weekend-long “work
parties,” as we called them.
The several-year-long housing rehab phase
cemented the shared intentionality that
increasingly bound us together, and we began to
refer to ourselves simply as “the Free School
community.” With the school on a solid
foundation, Mary conceived a number of satellite
projects aimed at addressing the needs of
community members. One Mary dubbed the “Money
Game,” which is part credit union and part
cooperative investment group. Members are able
to earn a much higher return by pooling their
money, and we can also utilize the fund’s assets
to make loans to each other at much lower
interest rates.
Partially in response to the arrival of so many
community babies, Mary, with assistance from
Betsy (both are Registered Nurses), founded the
Family Life Center. The purpose of the center is
to provide perinatal support to pregnant
couples, parenting support to parents of young
children, and to teach self-help medical care.
The center had an immediate synergistic effect
on the school and the community, with the
outreach services of the center drawing in many
new families.
Later, Mary and Nancy, who had previously run a
natural foods store in Albany, started up a food
coop in the basement of the Family Life Center
building, giving us twenty-four hour-a-day
access to organic foods at wholesale cost. At
the same time several community families
collaborated on a small organic farm with goats,
chickens, honeybees and large gardens on nearly
an acre of vacant land on the block that we
purchased together.
Both school and community have continued to
expand over the years. At the present time, the
school’s enrollment stands at about sixty, and
approximately a hundred adults and children make
up the Free School community. Second generation
students and teachers are beginning to show up,
much to everyone’s delight.
May the Free School’s next three decades be as
fruitful and exciting as its first three!
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