SARASOTA, Fla. – When Briana Santoro and her family moved to Florida in 2021, she set out to find the perfect school for her two young sons. She wanted a school that would be nature immersed, Montessori influenced, and academically rigorous. She found good ones that offered pieces of what she wanted, but none that put the whole puzzle together. So Santoro did what an accelerating movement of education entrepreneurs, including parents, are now doing all over Florida:

She created her own school.

“I just got to the point where I thought, ‘I’m going to solve my own problem,’” said Santoro, who has a background in business strategy consulting.

Roots Nature and Leadership Academy bills itself as “thoughtfully rooted in nature.” It serves 60 students in grades Pre-K through six, up from 25 when it opened two years ago. Nearly all of them use state-supported choice scholarships.

Santoro’s detailed vision includes fully engaged citizens.

As the second half of the school’s name suggests, creating future leaders is mission critical. There’s a big emphasis on problem solving, emotional intelligence, and entrepreneurship. From the earliest ages, the students literally get their hands dirty working on sophisticated science projects that touch on some of the most pressing environmental challenges.

First- and second graders recently learned how monoculture lawns and pesticides hurt pollinators, then created informational brochures and wildflower seed packets to hand out in their neighborhoods. Third- and fourth graders studied regenerative farming, then got a demonstration from scientists, via Zoom, on how soil samples can reveal the chemical differences between organic and inorganic approaches. Fifth- and sixth graders, meanwhile, learned how to make a vermiculture composter from a University of Florida extension agent, then shared their knowledge in a presentation to a community group.

“They’re learning skills that are going to be incredibly useful in how they live their lives,” Santoro said. “Appreciation for nature is going to set this generation up to solve the problems we’ve created.”

Roots rents space from a church. It has multi-age classrooms devoted to music, yoga, and projects. But clearly, its heart isn’t inside.

Santoro was inspired by Richard Louv’s “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.” She wanted to ensure her school honored children and “the essence of their childhood.”

To that end, the students spend 70 percent of their time outdoors, either on a whimsical campus where poodle chickens strut and peck under oaks and pines and a dozen varieties of fruit trees, or in an adjacent pine forest where they build forts, track animals, and otherwise range free for hours at a pop.

This is going to sound too good to be true, but bald eagles built a nest nearby and are frequently visible to students going about their day.

“The school is magical,” said Sarah Love, whose sons Harper, 9, and Carey, 12, attend Roots. “Children are laughing while butterflies are flying, and eagles are soaring overhead. I see kids learning academics while they’re on a mat on the ground with the sun shining on them. It just fills my heart.”

The school’s nature-inspired learning opportunities don’t end there.

Roots includes a “hen hotel” the students maintain themselves; learning “barns” full of Montessori materials the students use outside; and plans for a “special skills area” that will include everything from pottery and woodworking equipment to an outdoor fire cooking kitchen.

Gardening and archery are part of the curriculum. So are deep lessons about “gut health.” Beekeeping is on the horizon.

“They’re going to be better citizens if they know how to grow their own food, if they know how to care for the planet,” Santoro said.

Roots is as good an example as any to highlight one of the most underappreciated story lines to emerge as education choice has become the new normal in Florida:

Choice offers something for everyone.

This year, more than 500,000 students are using choice scholarships in Florida. As more and more parents signal their preferences for learning options, and more schools and other education providers emerge to serve them, more families and educators alike are realizing they can have exactly what they want. The evolving education landscape is increasingly dynamic and diverse.

By 2026, Roots expects to serve 75 students in Pre-K through eighth grade. In the meantime, it has 30 students on a wait list.

“Education is changing drastically,” Santoro said. “There’s a freedom of expression in education that’s never been there before.”

Santoro grew up in Canada. After a successful stint in business consulting, she went back to school to study nutrition. She became a certified nutritional practitioner, wrote a best-selling cookbook, and co-founded a company that specialized in high-end food supplements for kids.

With Roots, she wanted not only a top-notch program, but one that could be accessible to families regardless of income and could pay teachers well so she could attract the best.

The Roots staff is eclectic, talented, and all in on the mission. Several formerly taught in public schools.

On the school’s website, one of the teachers quotes famed environmental writer Rachel Carson. Another notes she was raised in a family of environmental activists who traveled the world with iconic oceanographer Jacques Cousteau. Yet another embraced organic farming and permaculture while living in Thailand.

“I was looking at, who is going to be breathing life into my children?” Santoro said. “If children don’t have a deep compassion for the earth … it’s just not sustainable. What better way to teach that than to live it every day?”

Parent Corbyn Grieco said there is a lot more going on at Roots than green vibes.

Her daughter is climbing trees, building pollinator gardens, and making homemade elderberry syrup. But the school also focuses on core academic standards, Grieco said, and constantly communicating with parents about how their kids are faring with them. Her daughter is reading several grades above grade level and digesting serious knowledge about health, science, and business development.

That’s the sweet spot, Grieco said: Roots is able to achieve academic success while honoring the magic of childhood.

“To this day,” she said, Roots “is the greatest choice we’ve ever made.”

SANFORD, Florida – Charisma Lowery loves fractions, which is not something you hear every day from a third grader, but she does.

Mixed fractions, improper fractions – bring ’em on.

Charisma, 7, loves fractions so much that one morning while in the second grade, she jumped out of her mom’s car during drop-off and ran to the front door of her school because she knew fractions were on the menu during math class.

That’s how Charisma began the book she wrote during the 2023-24 school year as part of a schoolwide project at Prodigy Academy Advance Learning Center, the K-8 private school in Sanford that she attends with the help of a Florida Tax Credit Scholarship.

 

The scholarship is funded by corporate donations to Step Up For Students, which manages education choice scholarships for K-12 schoolchildren in Florida.

Megan Allen, Prodigy’s CEO and founder, had each student write a book about a topic of their choice. The books were printed and are available on Amazon.

“Charisma Goes to School” is about a day when Charisma’s class is learning about and being quizzed on fractions.

Spoiler alert: She aced the quiz.

“It's me going to school and how it feels and telling people how cool school feels like to me,” Charisma said.

What’s so cool about it?

“I get to learn stuff,” she said.

Math, science and social studies are her favorite classes. History, not so much.

Allen called Charisma the “ideal student” for her work ethic and her ability to learn the material. Charisma arrived in kindergarten with reading and math skills above her grade level. So, she skipped the first grade.

“Charisma is super, super, super smart, almost too smart,” joked her mom, Kim. “She uses words like ‘inappropriate’ instead of ‘bad’.”

Charisma said she’d like to be a teacher or a gymnast. Maybe an author.

“Charisma has told me since she was 2 that when she turned 34 she will be on the moon, and she has stuck to it,” Kim said. “That is a statement she makes frequently. ‘When I'm 34, I'll be on the moon.’ So, I see her in a science career, maybe teaching science, but I definitely see her in science.”

Kim wanted Charisma to attend a private school to learn in a small environment with more one-on-one attention from teachers and staff. Kim worried Charisma would get lost in a large educational setting.

Kim toured Prodigy Academy and said she felt comfortable with the setting and with Allen and her staff. And if she felt comfortable, she knew Charisma would, too.

“The fact that she gets to be here in a small environment with people that actually care about her and her future has definitely made her blossom into the child that she is right now,” Kim said.

Their future was one of the reasons Allen had the students write books.

“I love giving the kids skills where they can take into their adulthood,” Allen said. “It was a way to start developing different skills and allow each kid to see this is something possible. A lot of times we don't do things because we don't know it's possible. So, the earlier we can expose them to things, to know these things are possible, the more they are more likely to continue doing it.”

The fledgling authors produced works that included superheroes, magic pets, a meteor that gives a boy wolf-like powers, and a menacing sea monster. They spent a month writing. The books were published last spring.

Charisma and her classmates not only wrote the stories, they also picked the art and saw the books through nearly all phases of production. They even kept the profit from the Amazon sales.

“When the book came out with my daughter's name on it, I was super, super proud. Proud is an understatement,” Kim said.

Kim owns a full-service salon. On the front desk just above a candy dish is a picture of Charisma and the cover of “Charisma Goes to School.”

“My clients come in and say, ‘Oh my gosh! That’s so cool!’ I say, ‘Yeah that’s cool. It’s even cooler when you buy it,’” Kim said.

This year, Allen is teaching the students how to market their books with T-shirts and mugs. The students are also designing Christmas wrapping paper they can sell. So, marketing and finance are on tap this school year.

And more writing and publishing.

At the end of each school year, Allen asks her students for feedback on what they liked and didn’t like. Overwhelmingly, the students said they loved writing books and wanted to do it again this year.

“Some even started over the summer,” Allen said. “Some of the older ones want to write chapter books. I said sure, give it a try.”

Charisma is going to continue with her story, though it takes place a few years in the future.

“Teenage Charisma,” she said.

Teenage Charisma is going to protect her classmates from bullies.

“That’s Charisma,” Kim said. “She’s a defender.”

And a published author.

Private schools. What happens to private school records when private schools close? Sometimes, they disappear. Palm Beach Post.

Charter schools. The Broward school district is taking a closer look at how much it charges charter schools for bus transportation after a citizens task force complains the district is losing money on the deal and subsidizing the competition. Miami Herald. (The district is considering other ways to reduce busing costs, too, reports the South Florida Sun Sentinel.) A K-8 charter school that teaches boys and girls separately is proposed for Palm Beach Gardens, reports the Palm Beach Post.

School choice. The Palm Beach district gets 17,500 applications for about 9,000 district choice seats. Palm Beach Post.

Digital education. Florida's mandates on digital offerings brings opportunities and challenges, editorializes the Palm Beach Post.

Privatization. The Volusia school district is right to consider outsourcing custodial services to save money, editorializes the Daytona Beach News Journal. The move could save about $5 million a year, the News Journal reports.

Florida's progress. Matt Di Carlo at the Shanker Blog: "Again, Governor Bush and supporters of his reforms have some solid evidence to draw upon when advocating for the Florida reforms, particularly the grade-based accountability system. The modest estimated effects in these high-quality analyses are not as good a talking point as the “we quadrupled the number of A-rated schools in six years” argument, but they are far preferable to claiming credit for what’s on the scoreboard after having changed the rules of the game."

Pace of change. Sweeping changes to teacher evaluations, academic standards and testing have district officials on edge and lawmakers considering changes. Tallahassee Democrat. (more…)