Waldorf School of Lexington celebrated its 50th birthday in the 2020–2021 school year. We are proud to share highlights of our history as one of the most established Waldorf schools in the country.
Guided by Steiner’s unique educational model, a group of parents opened a kindergarten and day care center in the basement of St. James Church in Cambridge in 1971. Three years later, the School added a first grade and moved to rented space in the First Armenian Church in Belmont, where the School’s three faculty members decided to incorporate as “The Waldorf School” and apply for membership in the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America (AWSNA). Working with our mentor school, the Waldorf School of Garden City in New York, we were able to enroll students in kindergarten through 6th grade by the end of the decade.
In 1980, a large and unexpected gift to the School allowed us to move to the vacated Adams Public School building in Lexington. Members of our community pitched in to patch, paint, and clean the building. A year later, the School was able to purchase the building from the town with the support of its neighbors in East Lexington. The building’s light-filled classrooms and proximity to nearly 200 acres of fields, woods, and meadows made it particularly suited to the Waldorf curriculum.
Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, the School steadily expanded program offerings and developed a faculty and staff to take on work formerly done by parent volunteers. In 1993, WSL became a full member of AWSNA. We opened a high school in 1996, with 10 ninth grade students in the entering class. Originally housed in the basement of the Follen Church next door, the high school moved into the historic building at 703 Massachusetts Avenue after a capital campaign raised funds to purchase and renovate this space. In need of additional resources to grow, the high school became an independent entity in 2004 and relocated to Belmont.
In 2005 the School converted the first three floors at 703 Massachusetts Avenue into Preschool classrooms and created a play garden at the rear of the building. This permitted WSL to meet the growing demand for a greatly expanded early childhood program.
During the Summer of 2020, we moved our school store, Homespun, to the 703 Mass. Ave. Building. Today, we are a thriving school community, offering programs for children from the age of six weeks through 8th grade. WSL’s future on our Lexington campus has been secured through a long-term land lease, which has allowed the School to put down permanent roots. A Vision 2020 statement— together with a long-range plan drafted through the cooperative effort of teachers, parents, and trustees—articulates our vision for the future of our campus, our faculty, our students, and our place in the wider community. As we work joyfully to meet the needs of our children in this new millennium, we are mindful of the many gifts we have inherited from those who preceded us in establishing, growing, and evolving the Waldorf School of Lexington.
