BY KAREN BOSSICK

Syringa Mountain School will expand to include seventh grade during the 2018-19 school year.

Open enrollment is available for students entering kindergarten through seventh grade at the Syringa Mountain School website.

Full registration will begin after the lottery, dictated by the Idaho legislature, has been drawn on Feb. 21.

In general, priority will be offered to returning students, siblings or returning students, Blaine County residents and then residents outside Blaine County. Any vacant seats after the lottery has been drawn will be filled on a first-come first-serve basis.

Syringa Mountain School was created in 2014 by a group of parents from the Mountain School, the previous Waldorf school in Bellevue.

Mary Gervase, who served as the school’s first principal noted recently that the success of Syringa Mountain School helped inspire the creation of a new Waldorf school in the Treasure Valley.

The Peace Valley School will be located in the soon-to-be renovated Clearwater Research Building off Federal Way in Boise. Organizers hope to create a second school in the Treasure Valley three years from now.

As with Syringa Mountain School, Peace Valley’s curriculum will be influenced by the 100-year-old Waldorf teaching philosophy that draws heavily from music, art, dance and nature. Students at Syringa, for instance, have a robust garden that they have helped create and harvest to educate them about where their food comes from.

Core values like resiliency, compassion and sustainability are stressed.

The school, now in its fourth year, is guided by school director Nigel Whittington. It is offered free of charge as “the other public school district in Blaine County.”

Idaho’s third Waldorf school is in Sandpoint.

Waldorf teachers seek to tailor education so that it’s developmentally appropriate for each child. Not pushing reading on a child until he’s ready, for instance, is thought to save the child the frustration of being confronted with a task before he’s ready.

Noli Burge said her daughter transitioned to Wood River Middle School this year after starting at The Mountain School in kindergarten and spending the last three years at Syringa Mountain School. She was shocked to see he daughter received an A+ in every class.

“At our recent parent-teacher conference, the teachers had nothing but good things to say about the kids that come from Syringa. They mentioned how engaged they are in class, their skills in writing and creative thinking and their general positive attitudes,” she said.

Ginger Ferries noted that her son Spencer’s transition to the middle school had been smooth socially, emotionally and academically.

“He is thriving in all areas,” she said, adding that Spencer’s education at the Mountain School and Syringa had given him a love of learning in a nurturing developmentally appropriate setting. “He was more than ready to spread his wings confidently in taking this next step.”

For more information, visit www.syringamountainschool.org.