A liberation school for Cincinnati’s youngest freedom dreamers
We accept publicly funded childcare vouchers
Exploration
Each program curates high interest, exploratory programming that is age appropriate. We value field trips, guest educators, community and family members to help us enrich our programming through arts, culture, science, literacy, storytelling, theater, community activism, language programs, music and much more!
Liberatory Education
Black people have a long and beautiful tradition of using education as a tool for liberation. Children have always been a part of that tradition from illegal literacy campaigns during enslavement to The Black Panther Party’s Liberation Schools that encouraged young people to love, support and join liberation movements. We invite ALL children, not exclusively Black children to work towards a liberated world now and not wait until they “grow up.”
Smaller class sizes
Our class sizes are intentionally smaller than state requirements because we believe our children and educators benefit. Our children and families will get more individualized attention and our educators will be able to better plan and facilitate high interest, age appropriate activities each day.
Challenge them to find solutions that will benefit us all
We prepare our students for life, rather than a narrow focus on kindergarten readiness alone. If our classmates are not eating healthy vegetables, then we must find out why and try to solve that problem together because healthy food is essential to life. This is one example of a project that was launched because we wanted to solve a problem in our school community. We noticed that fresh vegetables are not always available in nearby supermarkets, so students decided that we should grow our own and share our harvest with our loved ones! We experimented with new vegetables and shared recipes from our families. Some children that barely ate vegetables were describing the differences between arugula and Bibb lettuce during this unit!
Our children were preparing for kindergarten by exploring science, documenting the process in journals, and by taking turns listening to one another. But we were also preparing our young people to love and support our communities with the new skills they are developing. We want to find solutions for our people just like our ancestors have done for us. We don’t wait until we grow up.
We value families as partners and our children’s first teachers
When you join our school, you join our family. We love and value families as important contributors to our community because you are raising our greatest gift— our children! We believe that we must also care for ourselves and each other if we are going to take on the responsibility of raising our children. We strive to support families beyond the care for our children because we have a deep love for Black people and are committed to our collective liberation. This should go without saying that we value all identities, but we give extra special attention to eradicating anti-Black racism in all of its forms. We work with community organizations to provide wrap around support for the varying needs of our families. We also employ parents as teachers and believe in the skills, expertise and knowledge that they bring to our school.
