Community Montessori Hires New Staff at MMSK
By John Lynch
Following the success of the school’s addition of a full-day preschool program, Community Montessori School has announced a new team of teachers at the Montessori Middle School of Kentucky.
Parents have embraced the full day option for 3- and 4-year-olds, said Administrator Ann Evans, who said plans for adding a toddler program are in the works.
“This has been an exciting year for us,” said Evans, who has been at the school for 25 years. “This program has been well received because it meets the needs of parents.”
CMS is a preschool through sixth-grade program that opened in 1970 and has been on Crestwood Drive since 1976.
In 1996, MMSK opened as a joint effort of area Montessori schools. In 2000, CMS took sole responsibility for the program.
MMSK moved in 2009 into a new building on a 13-acre site on Stone Road, which suited the school’s land-based curriculum.
CMS will move its upper elementary (Grades 4-6) to the Stone Road campus in August when those students will benefit from land-based instruction.
The move will also create much needed space for the preschool and lower elementary (grades 1-3) programs at the 2.5-acre Crestwood Drive campus.
CMS leaders have always envisioned the Stone Road property as a home for the whole program.
When upper elementary students join middle schoolers at the Stone Road campus in August, the new staff will include Ashley Barbour and Dr. Erin Stevenson.
Barbour, who has two children at CMS, will be the Development Coordinator and Middle School Guide.
A Centre College graduate with a master’s degree from UK, Barbour is currently the Facilitator at the Liberal Arts Academy at Henry Clay High where she counsels, mentors and teaches students while overseeing program development.
Stevenson, who has a daughter at CMS, will be the Education Coordinator and Middle School Guide.
Also a Centre College graduate, she earned her master’s and doctorate degrees in the College of Social Work at UK.
Stevenson has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in policy, social welfare, research methods and statistics at UK since 2002.
For the past 12 years, she worked as a research study project director and most recently served as the Director of the Evaluation Center in the UK College of Education.
“CMS is a dynamic, longstanding program that offers individualized program where children come first,” Evans said. “That’s why I sent my children there.
“When you make decisions based on Montessori principles where the child comes first, you can’t go wrong.”
Info: 277-4805 or visit www.cmsmontessori.org.