In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

CHAPTER FOUR I FIND A SCHOOL In my research on this progressive vision, I came across an edited collection of articles by a variety of alternative educators, entitled Deschooling Our Lives. This collection dealt with homeschooling alternatives, unschooling, democratic schools, and free schools. Tucked into this book was a short article by Chris Mercogliano about a place in inner-city Albany, New York, called the Free School. Mercogliano (who is the school’s co-director) briefly described the school, its surrounding community, and a bit of its history. This article was excerpted from Mercogliano’s book about the school, entitled Making It Up as We Go Along, and I promptly read the book in hopes of getting more details, for I suspected that this was a place that actively embodied the alternative vision of education. The book tentatively confirmed my initial suspicions and I sought out the opportunity to research this school as a participant observer who could experience firsthand what this alternative , progressive, educational vision was all about. Chris Mercogliano explained that the school began in 1969 as a homeschooling situation. A woman by the name of Mary Leue had a son who was unhappy with his school, one of the “better” ones in the Albany area. He asked his mother to teach him at home and she agreed. After a bit of bureaucratic wrangling, Mrs. Leue received official sanction for homeschooling her child and he became, according to Mercogliano, “perhaps the first legal homeschooler in the modern history of New York State.”1 A friend soon asked Mrs. Leue to take on her three children who were also unhappy with their schooling experiences and thus the school was born. Over the next few years, Mrs. Leue shifted from schooling these children and others in her home to schooling them in an old parochial school building and then in a second, where it continues to this day. The school grew in student population over the years and finally settled into its present size of approximately fifty pre-kindergarten to grade eight students and about seven to eight paid teachers, a paid cook, and numerous temporary and full-time volunteer and intern teachers. 53 54 FREE SCHOOL TEACHING What fascinated me about this school was that it was located in and served children from Albany’s inner city. These were not affluent, privileged kids whose families paid substantial tuitions. I had come across critiques of progressive, private schools that argued that such environments do not work well with students who are not enriched or privileged. It was unusual, then, to see a progressive school with this particular population of students. How could this school continue if it were not fully tuition supported, thus requiring a mostly affluent student base? The full answer lies somewhat outside the scope of this study, but some rudimentary information is applicable here. The buildings rented and then later purchased for the school were exceedingly inexpensive at the time because the neighborhood was, basically, in slum or ghetto areas (and still somewhat is, although gentrification is making inroads ). Mrs. Leue had inherited a small amount of money, which she used to purchase the building that now houses the school “for practically a song from the veterans group, [which at the time owned the building and] which was anxious to flee the influx of black and Hispanic newcomers.”2 Mrs. Leue had initially financed the school’s low overhead costs by utilizing her husband’s university professor’s salary and her inheritance. This money, however, could not cover every expense, especially with more students and teachers coming on board. Mrs. Leue, along with the other teachers who became involved early on, specifically wanted the school to have a diverse student population and not be composed only of children whose parents could afford private school. So she and the other early teachers decided that tuition would be on a sliding scale based on family income. (The current scale ranges from $0 to $75 a month for families with an after- tax income of $0 to $14,999 to $700 a month for families with an after-tax income in excess of $100,000.) Mrs. Leue and the early teachers also did without salaries for the most part, and to this day salaries are still extremely low. At different times, the school has obtained small project-oriented grants and the teachers have also made attempts at funding through such free-enterprise ventures as a college textbook distributorship and a...

Share