FernLeaf is growing!

Learn what's in store for our students in the 2021 - 2022 school year.

“When life is not coming up roses look to the weeds and find the beauty hidden within them.”― L.F.Young

It’s been a year of weeds. Between the pandemic, politics, virtual learning, and gas shortages, this past year has felt unending and just plain yucky.

With all the weeds we’ve been dealt over this past year, FernLeaf has found space to grow. Not only grow, but truly flourish. Here are just some of the amazing things we’ve accomplished and a few incredibly cool opportunities yet to come!

We had an incredibly successful year in virtual learning. While it was not without its challenges, our Teachers and Students showed their resilience and grit leaving us set up for an incredible year ahead!

We have been able to continue to offer a virtual option for families through the end of this school year and still remain connected as a community. And with community being a huge part of our mission, it has felt like a big win for our Staff and families.

And, we continue to grow.

We have hired an Athletic Director for the 21-22 school year, who will offer PE classes as well as multiple after-school sports opportunities for FernLeaf students including basketball, soccer, cross country, flag football, Ultimate Frisbee, and Girls on the Run.

We have also added an Adventure Sports Coordinator to our staff in the fall to facilitate opportunities for rock climbing, kayaking, rafting, mountain biking, snowboarding, skiing, backpacking, hiking and more.

We are excited about our new staff members who have been specially selected to help develop our high school programming beyond middle school!

We are adding a Middle and High School Guidance Counselor (don’t worry Bryan isn’t going anywhere), an Exceptional Children Director to oversee our K-12 EC Program, and an upper grades Intervention Specialist (allowing more kiddos to have access to our intervention team!).

Since this year’s Enrollment Lottery resulted in 250 eager students and families on our waitlist, we are excited to open up an additional kindergarten class to help meet some of the demand in the community. It is exciting to offer the FernLeaf experience to another group of excited families!

Also beginning in the 21-22 school year, FernLeaf will be building its fleet of transportation vehicles to help students and families with access to school and fieldwork opportunities. Using this same fleet, FernLeaf will also offer morning pickup and afternoon drop off in convenient locations throughout the Asheville and Hendersonville area.

FernLeaf will be partnering with local, healthy food providers to provide lunch options for students and staff at a modest cost. Support for families in need will be provided based on Federal Poverty Guidelines.

And the list goes on and on.

On top of all of this growth, we are incredibly excited to return to all of the usual things that make FernLeaf great! Things like Field Work, Overnights, Project Based Learning, Outdoor Education, and school wide, community building Events!

It’s going to be an INCREDIBLE year!

Whether you’ve been here since day 1 or begin with us in the fall, we are so grateful to you for being a part of the FernLeaf community!