stinson_beach_preschool_portable_classroom
Teaching assistant Lisa Eigsti helped move the Stinson Beach Preschool into a new mobile classroom on Tuesday, culminating the Montessori program’s efforts to retain a home on the Bolinas-Stinson Union School District campus. The move also provided a chance for the team of teachers to organize children’s “work stations,” which will be brightened by custom-built windows.    David Briggs

The flatbed trailers came barreling down from Vacaville, led by an escort—a truck that appeared miniature beneath the flapping flags, the streaming banner proclaiming “WIDE LOAD,” and the two halves of what would be Stinson Beach Preschool’s new classroom, each 12 feet by 40 feet. The convoy made its way down to Novato, west to Point Reyes Station, south past Olema and Dogtown along Highway 1 to Stinson Beach. (One wonders how the drivers navigated the Thirteen Turns.) The trailers and a crane arrived at the same time at the Stinson Beach campus, where workers set up a stabilizer and began calibrating how it would carry its load. “Everybody felt like this will never happen,” said Christine Cunha, a preschool alumn and former board member who’s been managing the project. “Thursday was a celebratory day. For me personally, with my long history of involvement with the school, I have to say that as I watched the first unit being craned in, flying through the air and over the fence, starting to come down to its new home, I felt emotion. It took a lot of work to put the pieces in place and to align the parts to make this a reality.” Out on the playground, the younger students stared up in awe. “Best recess ever!” some said. An installation crew came Friday to hook the pieces together and create a foundation, and the preschool’s founder and head teacher, Susan Tacherra, has since emptied a storage container she’d packed at the beginning of June and unloaded a jumble of boxes. A playground set-up is still being designed, but the yard will likely feature two lunch tables, a sandbox, a water table and a small playhouse within a perimeter fence. Since 2004, the preschool has rented a classroom from the Bolinas-Stinson Union School District for roughly $5,500 annually, but the district’s board had for years complained about overcrowded classrooms and debated whether to continue the agreement. In 2012, the board launched a “Preschool for All Task Force” to investigate the feasibility of combining the Montessori school with the area’s other preschool, in Bolinas, and housing it on its campuses; meanwhile the preschool’s administration searched for a new space. Neither effort produced results, and the district evicted the preschool at the end of June. But weeks later, the preschool received a $30,000 bridge loan from an anonymous benefactor that allowed it to sign a three-year contract with a portable company. Now, Ms. Cunha says that although more fundraising is needed, the school plans to resume within the next couple of weeks.