Innovation Montessori looks for more students

When Cathy Tobin, principal of Innovation Montessori Ocoee’s primary and elementary school, walked into a classroom, she was swarmed by students. 

They gave her hugs and told her what they were working on in class at the time. 

There were at least 30 students in each large classroom, taking ownership of their academics while working on various projects and assignments. 

Tobin recalled the days when Innovation Montessori Ocoee opened in a little strip mall on Plant Street in Winter Garden with 108 students in kindergarten through second grade. 

“The whole staff could sit around in a circle on a rug, but that’s not the case anymore,” she said. 

This year, the school, which educates children from 3 years old through seniors in high school, has at least 1,100 students learning on two campuses: one for the primary and elementary school and another for the secondary school. 

Tobin said Innovation Montessori now is one of the biggest public Montessori schools in the country. 

For the first time since the school opened, Tobin said there are open seats at most grade levels in the school. She said most of the seats are open in fourth grade and up. 

“This is highly unusual for us, because we usually have a wait list with hundreds and hundreds of people on it,” Tobin said. “This school year, we added two new upper elementary classrooms and another primary classroom. So we created more spaces, which was sadly timed when people are taking the Family Empowerment Scholarship, and so we have lost a bunch (of students) to homeschool and private school, which is a challenge.”

Tobin said the school was started by a group of parents in 2011 who believed in the Montessori style of education and were supportive of the school on a day-to-day logistical basis. Parents were running to Costco for supplies, serving as a custodian when needed, answering the phone and more. 

“One of my concerns as we were scaling up was the ability to maintain that close, community connection, but I think with the help of our PTO and our board of directors, which is all parents as well, we’ve managed to keep that feel for the most part, which is lovely,” she said. “Everyone feels they are part of an intentional community.”

When the school relocated to its primary building on Lakewood Avenue in Ocoee in 2017, Tobin said parent power once again helped with the transition. Parents helped to install the playgrounds with the help of the Ocoee Fire Department. 

As the children of the founding families continued in their education, there became a need for a high school. 

That’s when the school planned to construct a high school, but escalating construction costs during the COVID-19 pandemic put those plans on hold. 

In the meantime, the school had high school students learning in empty classrooms upstairs in the elementary building. 

“The population for high school had grown sufficiently that we couldn’t accommodate them all there,” Tobin said. 

Instead of constructing a new high school, the school moved into a former community college on Silver Star Road to create its secondary school four years ago. Seventh and eighth grades joined the high school students on the Silver Star campus two years ago. 

Innovation Montessori High School celebrated its first graduation class in 2022, and the Class of 2026 will have 46 graduates. 

Regardless of the school’s growth since its inception, Tobin said the goals and mission have remained constant. 

“One of our great goals here is certainly to give the children access to a rich and broad education and help them be constantly curious and regard learning as a joyful enterprise,” she said. “I think that’s what Montessori does. It creates lifelong learners, and it prepares our students for performing tasks that won’t necessarily be replicated by machines. It’s not the factory model of education. It’s way more than memorization and regurgitation of data for test scores. It’s true learning.”