Creating demand for public Montessori
by David Ayer with Monique O’Grady
Montessori has a compelling story to tell
Monique O’Grady joined the board of the National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector last year. In her career, O’Grady has been a journalist, a school board member, a public relations professional, and a Montessori parent and advocate, so we thought she might have something to tell us about getting the public Montessori story out there. She sat down with MontessoriPublic for this conversation, edited for clarity and space.
MontessoriPublic: Tell me how you got involved in Montessori in the first place?
Monique O’Grady: It was my husband’s fault!
We were living in Arlington, looking for a preschool for my now-28-year-old, and my husband read an article in the Washington Post that mentioned that Arlington County had public Montessori. I didn’t know a thing about the model but I thought, “Well, this looks like a good program, let’s go ahead and apply.” At first she didn’t get in but then eventually she got in as a four-year-old. I remember talking to the teacher at the time and she said, “Oh, you’re really going to love this!”
I said, “Well, this is sweet but children moved through the program, you know by the time my child hits kindergarten I’m going to put her in a real school.”
And a parent overheard and said, “Oh, you might change your mind!” And I thought, “OK, maybe,” but I’m thinking, “No, I won’t.”
But then at the end of the year my child, who was a young four—she only made the cut-off by about a week—she was reading after that one year and I just thought, “What is happening here? This is amazing!” So I tell people, I’m a Montessori convert. When I experienced it through my child’s eyes I was blown away.
MP: Where did that take you? What kind of work were you doing then?
M O’G: I was a Washington Bureau chief for a bunch of Midwest TV stations. I was working on Capitol Hill, just being a regular parent and a journalist and trying to figure out the best place to put my child. But I started to learn more and more about Montessori. Then my second child came along and she got into the program and it was good for her as well. As my children moved through the program I just continued to fall in love with it.
As I learned more and saw this incredibly diverse program really work for my kids, I thought, “I need to make sure other people learn about this and see what a great opportunity it is. At the time it was one of Arlington’s best kept secrets, and it was just starting to grow, and I was really intent on making sure that people knew they had that choice in Arlington. I thought if they chose it they wouldn’t regret it.
MP: You mentioned “incredibly diverse.” Say more about that.
MO’G:One of the things I love about the program is the way that it’s structured to have diverse participation. The public funding starts at kindergarten, so the school charges tuition for three and four-year-olds. But two-thirds of the slots are reserved for families that come from 80% or below median income, and then one-third for people who come from a higher income. And the tuition is on a sliding scale from something that lower-income families can afford up through what a family would pay in a private Montessori school. What I have seen that structure do is to create understanding, empathy, equity, and cross-cultural relationships that really influence who my children are today.
MP: And that carries through into the elementary because once you’re in you’re in?
MO’G:Right, if you get into the Montessori Public School of Arlington (MPSA) you can stay through 8th grade and once you get to kindergarten it’s tuition-free. They had—still have— several Montessori pre-K classrooms scattered around the county in neighborhood schools. Those students have preference in the 1st grade lottery to get into MPSA. I happened to be one of the lucky ones who was able to get into the program that matriculated all the way through 5th grade without having to reapply. My kids had the benefit of learning from some fabulous teachers in their primary, lower elementary, and upper elementary experience in Arlington.
Then as I learned more about the program I had that enthusiasm about ensuring that more people knew about it—and that also the county knew how spectacular the program was. So I worked with a fellow parent, Karla Hagan, to create a nonprofit called the Arlington Montessori Action Committee (AMAC) to promote Montessori, public and private, in Arlington so other parents would know that this is a choice.
MP: Have you continued working in journalism or did you move to an education role?
MO’G: No, I was a journalist until about 2006, and then moved into public relations, where I’ve been ever since. But around that time we had a third child, and of course I wanted him to have the opportunity for Montessori, so we put him in the lottery. But his sister had aged out of the school, so he no longer had sibling preference, and even though I had helped create AMAC, he didn’t get in! So out of my strong desire for him to have Montessori, I put him in private school, Full Circle Montessori here in Arlington. I would have to say, at the time I was kind of devastated, but it was probably one of the most important things that happened. Because it gave me this authentic experience of being in a great private school as well, which was helpful for me to understand Montessori from both sides.
I have never been a teacher—just a Montessori-enthusiastic parent—but I’ve spent a lot of time trying to support teachers and schools and doing advocacy around how to promote and build Montessori in a way that benefits families in the Arlington area and beyond. Also around that time, we had been working to start a Montessori middle school program. And when we finally got a pilot program, my second daughter was one of two kids to start the program. I think it’s been around now for 12 years and my son had the opportunity to go all the way through it through 8th grade.
So I saw it when it was just a little tiny program with my oldest child, who’s 10 years older than my youngest. And then I got to see AMAC advocate to create a middle school program that’s now been in place for over a decade.
MP:So how did NCMPS come into the picture for you?
MO’G:Well, as we were trying to grow the program, NCMPS co-founder Jackie Cossentino was kind enough to do live talkbacks for parents. I wanted people to be able to ask a national leader in public Montessori, “What should we be expecting? How can we make our program stronger? How do we support our teachers? How do we get our district to support our program in the best way?”
I used to do an AMAC holiday cookie party where we invited every teacher to my home to meet each other and talk about issues or just have fellowship, and one year Jackie came! So I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the National Center. I was really thrilled when I was approached about potentially being on the board.
MP:So as a Board member and a public relations professional, and Montessori advocate, let me ask you this: What does public Montessori need to do to expand our reach?
MO’G:One area we can improve on as Montessori leaders is to involve parents more. Parents are a really important catalyst for getting people to understand how beneficial Montessori can be, and for explaining that to decision makers. I was on the school board in Arlington, so I thought a lot about how to explain the benefits of Montessori to elected officials, who have the ability to start or advance programs in their community. Parents are our best advocates and best supporters of our teachers. So the more we can get parents excited about what Montessori has to offer, the more Montessori we will see.
MP:So what are the steps for that? How do we reach those parents, or how do we catalyze parents who right now don’t know they want Montessori because they don’t know what it is?
M O’G: I do think that there are opportunities, and I do believe that parents can be enthusiastic about it. We need to figure out ways to bring them together to talk and help them tell their stories. And just as important, we need to figure out ways to have our children who have finished high school tell their story. We did that at the NCMPS Conference in Asheville last year with funders. I brought together my son and some of his friends to do a talk back about how important Montessori was to them and how it helped them successfully manage virtual learning, how it helped them through middle school or high school. We heard from students who were going to Yale, UVA, Syracuse—all over.
As a journalist and a public relations professional I think storytelling can change hearts and minds.
MP:There’s been some of this in the Montessori world, but of course a lot of that is private schools making videos for their websites which may give a different image from what we’re going for.
MO’G:I see that, but I would still try to get the communications across the Montessori world working together and pulling together.
And I can see the tension between public and private Montessori, because I helped start AMAC and I was a public parent who could not get my child into one of the few spaces available, so I went and spent a lot of money on private. But one thing we can all agree on in Arlington is that the growth of public helped spur the growth of private.
One didn’t take a hit because of the other. Both have benefited, because when you create the demand for public Montessori you can never meet the demand, and because you cannot fully meet the demand, and because of the way we set up the program, there are very few spaces for people who could otherwise pay for private. So it increased the demand for private as well as for public.
MP:Say more!
M O’G: Creating demand creates demand. Across public and private that’s what we found in Arlington. Currently we have about 500 students in just one school in Arlington and several smaller programs around the county. But in the time I’ve been here I have seen so many private schools pop up, and they’ve grown from just pre-K centers to actually offering elementary as well. Why? Because people get on the wait list, and then we have hundreds of kids who want to be in our program, whose parents apply every year, and they can’t get in because spaces are limited. And the private schools benefit from that because we create the understanding and the demand but we can’t fill it all.
MP: If the model is so popular and schools have huge waiting lists, which they do, and people see it and they have the same reaction you did, like “Wait— what is going on here,” why isn’t this taking off everywhere?
MO’G:Well, we have to build demand everywhere. And it means new systems for districts, and we need more teachers, so there are barriers.
And one of the things I’m most excited about is a private entity acting like a public institution. We’re seeing this with the Bezos Academies. I love the idea that the Bezos Academies are offering free Montessori-style preschool to families who otherwise couldn’t afford it, and they’re getting communities to accept the idea of free Montessori preschool. That is creating a new demand.
So what happens when those kids exit that program? What do they do with all that great Montessori-minded education and understanding? Bezos is opening a door that can be leveraged to build public Montessori because it’s offering almost the equivalent of public preschool Montessori in communities that maybe aren’t used to having it. So the question becomes what can we do with that? How do we build on this and ask, how do we continue to educate those lucky children in communities that are now more knowledgeable about Montessori? Is there a way for us to build off of that excitement now as schools are opening so that by the time those children come through the two years Bezos offers for free—could they land in new public Montessori PK classrooms and be the children who’ve had two years of experience who can help the other children move along and understand the materials and everything else that goes with?
There’s just a lot more storytelling we could do. We could get in front of the National School Boards Association. We can go to districts and help them understand that Montessori can solve some of their problems—maybe they want to draw families in. Maybe they have equity and diversity concerns. Maybe they want social emotional learning. Montessori can fill a need in every district.