Raising a Village: Can the Bellingham Cooperative School be saved?

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Fri, Jul 30, 2010, 10:54 am  //  Kamalla Rose Kaur

The BCS campus at a quiet moment

I've been sitting on a rough, broad bench made from a deceased cedar tree at 2710 McKenzie Ave., home of the soon-to-be-evicted Bellingham Cooperative School. Dawn arrived a while ago, pinking the clouds, lighting the dew like sparklers across the meadow and over the tall grasses on the school's network of hills with tunnels.

The goats are still asleep. Do they know they must leave? Carolyn Hallett, the goat owner and founder of the goat cooperative, is sadly searching for a new home for them She grieves, “The school creates meaningful community with its spaciousness and welcoming spirit. The most disappointing aspect of the eviction is that Heidi Alford's generosity of spirit is not being reciprocated.”

“It takes a village to raise a child and a school to raise a village,” Tip Johnson tells me. Tip’s daughters attended the Coop School as children and Tip participated there. “The parents of students paid for everything.” Tip claims, “Over the years, the school has had to buy the property, improve the street, install utilities, and make improvements to the house. They had to supply and maintain the school. Yet now the Bellingham Coop School will not be available to others because the owners want to take their profits."

The Bellingham Cooperative School has been raising us for over forty years. Children educated on this land have become parents of children here. The Bellingham Coop School provides pre-school, after school care, and vacation programs to the community. It's a parent cooperative school so the ratio of adults to kids is extremely high. “The country school in the city” gives children room to run and play. The school's children consistently excel academically and socially. At the Coop School parents are welcome to visit and hang out with their children at anytime. They provide support for home-schoolers. You can even drop your kid off for a half day. But beyond these services, beyond the smart and happy kids, dedicated parents, and incredible teaching staff, Heidi Alford, director of the Bellingham Cooperative School, generously allows this land to be used as a Happy Valley hub. Not just parents and grandparents participate here. As a neighbor I'm part of the community too, free to sit on this bench in the early morn or bring my friends over to visit the goats.

“Can the land and school be saved?” I ask Tip.

“If enough citizens complain – then maybe,” Tip answers. "The land was purchased so the Bellingham Cooperative School would have a permanent home. Peter Frazier and Scott Stodola have worked very hard for many years to get around this wish of the late John Frazier, Peter’s brother. John secured the purchase option for the property and gave it to the school. The situation also seems contrary to the life work of their mother, Kendall Frazier, founder of the school. Heidi Alford and the teaching staff and parents and kids are victims because the land is now worth a lot more money. What does this teach children? What does this teach us? It is not a model of sustainability. "

The school started in 1969, but in the early years Kendall Frazier was forced to move the school several times. In the eighties, when John Frazier's construction business was caught up in the recession, he offered his mother the farmhouse he was renting with an option to buy. The school would never need to move again! John wanted to make a difference with his life. He was a champion of the Connelly Creek Nature Area and a remarkable poet. He moved the school into the farmhouse and lived in the loft over the old goat pen (a building that no longer exists.) Later he remarried and continued living in the neighborhood, raising two children at the school, until he contracted multiple sclerosis. John Frazier volunteered at the Bellingham Coop School until his death.

"Kendall Frazier must be in her late eighties or nineties by now," Scott Slaba figures. He participated as a parent at the Coop School in the seventies. "Looking back I appreciate what a fine teacher and effective administrator she was. She was very firm and clear in her vision, kind of like a good superintendent."

Heidi Alford originally worked as a teacher at the Bellingham Coop School. When Kendall Frazier retired, Heidi bought the school with an understanding she could buy the land when she had proven the school viable. Yet her subsequent attempts to buy the land were unsuccessful.

“I’m so sad to see the community disintegrating,” says Rowan Hinkle-Johnson, a sophomore at Sehome High School who attended the Bellingham Cooperative School during her elementary years. “We had freedom to study what interested us moment to moment. We learned to relate to people of all ages. We weren’t forced to sit in desks in rows, rather we ran around as much as we needed. The teachers there were wonderful.”

Wiping my eyes with some tissue found in my purse, gathering up my notebook and pen, I rise from this raw cedar bench. The sun has evaporated the morning clouds already. It’s going to be a hot day in Happy Valley. Soon Heidi, the teachers, and the parents of the Bellingham Cooperative School will arrive to run their garage sale. They will sell decades worth of teaching supplies, books, equipment, and toys today. By the end of this month, July 31 2010, the Bellingham Cooperative School will be gone from this beautiful two acres, probably forever. I wonder if the Happy Valley neighborhood will ever be as happy without them?

“I'll miss the sound of the children,” Kenyth Freeman, another neighbor says. “I'll miss the way the children, parents and teachers didn't mind my walking through their world on the way to the trail or bus. Over the years I've noticed that children at the Bellinghan Coop School are happy and kind and articulate. When a child falls and cries, the other children run to comfort him or her. I'm mourning.“

The Bending Tree's portentous transformation

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David Camp  //  Sun, Aug 01, 2010, 7:34 am

Can it be saved? Not without a deep-pocketed benefactor to secure the land.

St Paul’s School is also undergoing a somewhat traumatic transition, but has been taken over by a group of moneyed men who are remaking the school in their own image (minus any affiliation with the Episcopalians).

It seems to me that whatever the moral or ethical issues of the privatization of the school’s land, it is hard to inject such considerations into a legal framework based on an ideology of greed. Profit above all!

John Servais  //  Sun, Aug 01, 2010, 10:58 am

Actually, it would be nice if the IRS would look to this supposed non-profit corporation.  It seems the land owners may not have been doing anything to contribute to the community or to fulfill their non-profit status.  Tip has posted several articles about this strange ownership and take over of the school.

The sad fact is that we citizens can expose corruption, wrong doing, possible illegal activities and scams but our words are of no consequence.  The IRS, auditors, prosecutors and other enforcement agencies can just remain silent and ignore law breaking.  That is their power as spelled out by law.  It is their judgement alone that determines what issues they pursue. 

Citizens need to communicate directly with enforcement agencies and demand responses.  Too often we naively think that just making something public will get results.  Let me tell you - with over 50 years of active citizen work - that this is simply wishful thinking.  Public officials only respond to political pressure. 

Call the IRS.  If you have influence with them, ask them why they are not investigating.  The Feds also monitor this website and know well what is posted here.  It is not that they are ignorant.  Congressman Rick Larsen has two staff who check this site twice each day.  How do I know?  One of them told me.  Rick can ask the IRS to investigate.  Put pressure on him. 

There is much we can do to save the good things.  But we have to take a bit of our personal time and engage in hard politics.  Not doing so results in the slow disintegration of all we treasure.

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