A new high school in the Bay State that will cater primarily to LGBTQIA+ students and their families is slated to open in autumn 2025. Complete with a 300-acre farm, the J.S. Bryant School is an approved private school of the Massachusetts Central Berkshire Regional School District.
Reports Boston.com:
The J.S. Bryant School will open in 2025 at the site of the former Cummington Inn, with a separate farming campus located just a few minutes down the road for experiential learning. The school bills itself as the first private, nonprofit therapeutic high school in the country dedicated solely to the needs of LGBTQ+ high school students.
“There are many schools across the country that are welcoming to the LGBTQIA community, but they don’t solely focus on the needs and the wants of the community,” [cofounder Allison Druin] explained. “And many of them don’t have any or many staff that are in the community, that can be role models for these kids.”
Both she and [cofounder Ben] Bederson have backgrounds in education, per their biographies on the school’s website. Druin, who most recently served as vice provost of research and strategic partnerships at New York’s Pratt Institute, has co-founded three high schools.
“The idea [for the J.S. Bryant School] really took hold a few years ago,” she explained. “Even though we knew we weren’t going to be making a school for our kid, because our kid needed a school immediately, we made it in honor of our kid.”
The school is named for Julia Sands Bryant, whose father — the famed 19th century poet William Cullen Bryant — was born near Cummington and had a homestead there. Druin said the school can accept 38 students, with class sizes hovering around seven to eight students per classroom.
Read the complete Boston.com story here.
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