St. Mark’s Co-op evicted

After 47 years, nursery school must vacate church grounds

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On June 30, St. Mark’s Cooperative Nursery School, which has been on the grounds of St. Mark’s United Methodist Church for 47 years, will be forced to move.

The news came to the school’s administrators on Jan. 26, when they received a letter from the church via certified mail. Since then, the school, which had already begun taking registrations for the 2015-16 school year, has been searching for a new facility to house its students. The building it uses will have to be cleared out two weeks after the end of the current school year.

“The relationship between the nursery school and our church had been fraying for years,” the pastor of St. Mark’s, the Rev. Robert Grimm, wrote in an email to the Herald. “Unfortunately there are times that we have to make decisions for the good of the church that the school hasn’t liked. … We are, however, a church first and foremost and our decisions have to reflect the needs of our parishioners and must be in accordance with the greater United Methodist Church of which we are a part.”

At a community meeting at the Recreation Center on Feb. 12, school administrators said they may have found a new facility, but they could not offer details because an agreement had not been finalized.

“The board of trustees and church council has decided that the best course of action to allow for growth and opportunity for the members of St. Mark’s going forward is to open the space which is now utilized by the nursery school,” the church’s letter to the school read. “This may include starting a pre-school of our own, creative youth programs, and other such community outreach ministries.”

In 2013, the church was forced to sell part of its land, which contained the parsonage, in order to stay afloat financially. The parsonage was an old, large, seven-bedroom house, Grimm said, which was difficult to maintain. The sale of the land gave the church enough money to make many needed repairs as well as payments to the global Methodist Church, which it had been unable to afford for many years.

Since then, the church had been working on the design for a new, more manageable parsonage, and had notified the school that it would be built where the playground is now.

What happened next is unclear, as accounts from the school and the church differ. To maintain its licenses and registration, the school needs a playground with 200 square feet of space for every child who uses it. The school said that the church was unaccommodating, and would not give students enough space on the new playground the church plans to build, even though the school offered to help offset the cost by donating its existing playground equipment. The church claims that discussions with the school broke down last year, and that the school was not giving it other options for the playground.

“We believe we acted in good faith to work in partnership with the nursery school on a new playground,” Grimm said. “It was only when it became clear that things were not working out that we began to consider the possibility of operating our own church-led school.”

St. Mark’s is home to many other organizations, including the Mosaic Church of the Nazarene, which uses space for Sunday worship and keeps an office there. There are also soccer, basketball and theater programs for children. No other groups are being removed from their space at the church.

Alison Spahn, co-president of the school, detailed the difficulty of finding a new space at the community meeting. Not only must it have a sufficiently large outdoor play area, but it also needs an indoor play space and classrooms with 35 square feet of space per child. There also need to be toilets with child seats, a separate bathroom for adults and enough parking for staff and parents.

“What [Co-president Jeannie Evans] and I are working on is not survival: our goal is prosperity and growth for our school. Making it bigger and better than it already is,” Spahn said. “Our first and foremost target is fall 2015: finding a new home and setting it up to be ready for our students for September. And while we do that, we will be working on the long-term plan for the vision of our school, involving a large partner who has large resources, with synergies that will make it a mutually beneficial collaboration.”

Members of the school’s board did not say at the meeting who the large partner was or where the school would be moving. They did say, however, that it would likely be relocating to a new building for three to five years, and then moving to a different location with its large partner.

The new location would be in the heart of Rockville Centre, board members said. The prospective building has 10 classrooms — four more than the current school building, which houses 112 students this year — and enough outdoor space for a playground. “This town has been our home for 47 years, and we don’t want to move,” Spahn said.

While many in the school community are supportive — the first question asked at the community meeting was, “What can we do to help?” — Spahn said she understands that not everyone can live with the uncertainty, especially if they are considering moving their children to a different nursery school. So the school will offer refunds for the 2015-16 school year to those who want them.

“I could sign [my daughter] Josephine up to any of the other great nursery schools in Rockville Centre, and I’m sure she would do fine. But that doesn’t make this right,” Spahn said. “And I’m sure that the church’s decision to vacate our school was not an easy one, but it still doesn’t make it right. All we can do, as St. Mark’s Cooperative, is to make the right decision for our school, for our children, and for the families and our staff.”