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Newtown Families Welcome Star Lab

April 16, 2024: Suncoast Post

Jodi Schwarzenbach
A new and innovative school for children entering kindergarten this fall is opening in Newtown.  With a seasoned educator at the helm promising to fill her students’ days with the essential mix of learning and play and focusing on the academic success and happiness of the whole child, parents are excited to experience this new learning environment.  We had the pleasure of speaking with Star Lab’s founding Principal, Alison Rini on what the journey has been like to open a school from idea to inception.

What was the impetus to apply for a grant that would allow you to open a new school? Please discuss the process of receiving the news you had been selected for a Drexel award and what the timeline has been like since then.  

I’ve worked in education for over 20 years, as a teacher and administrator of all different ages and in public, charter, and private schools. I was working at a public Title I school in North Port during the pandemic, and observing the impact of different states closing schools for different periods of time really illuminated the fundamental challenges of a one-size-fits-all model for education. We had desperate families moving to Florida from states where their child had been sitting in their living room for 18 months, with very little learning going on. It was impossible to sort children into academic classes by age because they had had such varying amounts of preparation, and I knew there had to be a better way.
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Newtown Families Welcome Star Lab