Kelly Webster is ready to step down after 28 years leading

The Island School.

Through the entry and past a privy decorated with finger paintings, colorful egg cartons and an array of baby shoes is an office at once professional and warm, capturing the essence of its occupant, Kelly Webster, and the school she helped build.

After 28 years filled with incalculable pride and Hershey’s kisses, Webster is leaving the helm of The Island School.

“I’ve been thinking about this for three years,” Webster said. “It’s hard for the community and for me. I’m not a person who is used to being on center stage…and I really will miss the children most of all.

The last day for students is June 16 and already emotions are running high at the school, where Webster accepts roses and phone calls from well-wishers.

She’ll actually work until June 30 to help transition the new head of school, Trish King, and then be on her way toward a year-long absence from anything Island School-related.

The Island School is coming up for accreditation from the Pacific Northwest Association of Independent Schools, and Webster had to decide if she wanted to take that on or let the new head start fresh and assume the responsibility.

“In any organization there comes a time for the founder to move on and for new blood to come in,” she said. “In order for the school to move forward and keep being a more viable place, it’s time for a new person. Some of this is gut, and some is logistical timeline stuff.”

Webster was 28 when she and friends Nancy and Dave Leedy began to figure out how to bring their educational vision to fruition: a small school where every child matters.

The co-founders began planning in January 1977 and opened their school in September of that year with 11 students in kindergarten and first grade.

“We both had pretty active children and couldn’t imagine them sitting in desks in rows and buckling down,” Nancy Leedy said. “We wanted them to keep on growing as they did when they were little.”

“No one in the county knew how to certify a brand-new private school. There was no little book,” said Dave Leedy, who grappled with building codes and permits on the fly. “We survived a blizzard of pink slips of violations…and proved you don’t have to have structure to create a corporate structure for nonprofit status.”

Early on, the trio met with a lawyer to draw up the papers for nonprofit status.

“He said, ‘It looks like you have to have one of you be a chief officer,” Nancy said. “We all looked at each other and I thought, there’s two of us and one of you, so we picked Kelly and it saved our marriage.”

Nancy Leedy was the education director who ordered materials and got excited about programs. Her forte remains teaching and nurturing relationships with children.

Webster, she said, always had “the ability to go out and interest complete strangers in what we were doing. She is our mouthpiece. She always had a vision for the kind of space she wanted. She has a wonderful architecture and artistic sense.”

The Island School is “our third child and Kelly’s fifth child,” Nancy said. “I think Kelly’s leaving is an emotional time. I was surprised at the timing. I thought we both might make it to 60. But it does make sense. There are a lot of responsibilities weighing on her. She carries that burden like no teachers can.”

And, the Leedys said, Webster “knows how to do the nice little things for people – a little chocolate in your box, a note for a child on the chalkboard, a thank-you letter for a local business that supported a school project.”

The parting is not easy for Webster.

“I’m 57 now and the school’s only head,” she said. “Only in the last six months have I felt this is my school. Part of the atmosphere and the feeling of this school is who I am.”

Love of kids

Webster’s unabashed love for children and her desire to help them become confident, compassionate, industrious individuals with a sense of humor and a sense of service – and do it in a way to fit the child’s style – are evident in the programs she has initiated and the way she and her staff interact with their students.

They “take the academic side and weave into that, social behavioral perspectives, the part that makes a whole person.”

Following this philosophy, the school’s design emphasizes openness and interaction for its 96 students.

Only the fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms in the Day Road East building employ closed doors. Hallways open to the library and performance space and the younger classrooms.

Even the teachers’ lounge is barrier-free – and fifth-graders are the only students who may cross over. Cushy couches with soft pillows and chairs are grouped together and large windows brighten every space.

The play area offers equipment designed to engage the children’s imaginations in non-electronic fashion. Deer sometimes stroll among the trees, whose trunks display pages of poetry written by students.

Webster’s demeanor contributes to this tranquil atmosphere. She regularly welcomes children who polish their manners by learning to say, “May I please have a Hershey’s kiss?”

The children look out for one another. One child pointed out that his classmate is allergic to chocolate, something Webster had forgotten. No one teases a student with Down syndrome, and the community bands more tightly together in times of illness and death.

One of Webster’s favorite school traditions is the Monday morning sing for kindergarten through third grade – “because the older children get jaded about the songs the little ones like to sing.”

Although the school holds Halloween costume parades and Valentine’s Day parties, religious holidays are not celebrated. Families are welcome to come in and talk about their holidays and many do.

“Teachers are looked at as authority figures,” Webster said. “It’s not our place to put one idea in their heads. It’s our place to put ideas in their heads, show them options, give them the tools and let them do the research.”

Despite the utopian setting, Webster acknowledges the reality of her position.

“It’s a hard job,” she said. “It’s nonstop. You don’t go on vacation without leaving a phone number. It’s exhausting dealing with people, their children and their money. This is a real community and I’ve been at it a long time.”

Because the school takes “normal children and everything they do,” Webster has done her share of sorting out the situations that crop up in any school, be it a child who has misbehaved or a parent with issues. Whatever the situation, Webster is driven by what is best for every child.

“Who gets an opportunity like this? And you’re with children every day,” she mused, still amazed at her professional good fortune. “We are making a difference in children’s lives.”

Although Webster is departing, the Leedys will remain an important force at the school. Upon Webster’s announcement, they discussed their own retirement and concluded it would be too big a shock for a small institution.

Nancy, a third-grade teacher, plans to stay in the classroom and assume the role of school historian. Dave is the “Roving Resource,” teaching students chess and math and engaging them in enriching activities.

The legacy

The original faculty had small children when the school first opened in – yes, the legend is true – a garage for 11 children.

But it was a beautiful space that Webster created, Nancy Leedy said, one she would have stayed in, but Webster envisioned more for their own children and the school.

“We were children of the ’60s,” Webster said. “We were kids ourselves. We had little kids. We certainly weren’t businesspeople. My parents taught me management, finance, fiscal responsibility. They and my grandparents never thought we wouldn’t make it.”

Webster was the art teacher and her motto was, “In art, there are no mistakes.”

Trained in day care, she recruited people and found money. Since this was an independent school, Webster could teach under the supervision of the Leedys, who were trained teachers.

The founders’ original intent was to get their decidedly cutting-edge program running and offer it to the local school board for funding. But they decided the board wasn’t ready for alternative education and started a private school instead.

The co-founders have worked hard to fine-tune their dream.

The faculty and staff now number 24, with specialists in physical education, art and music. There are always two grown-ups in every class and two “Grandmas” on board for weekly reading and emotional comfort.

The multi-age extended day program is in its second year, under the tutelage of two male teachers. And, Webster points out, one-quarter of the parents receive financial aid.

“We couldn’t do what we do without parents, grandparents and friends,” Webster said, adding family involvement is by design.

Webster has lived on Bainbridge for 31 years; she summered on the island when she was growing up.

Although she will delve into other interests post-retirement, she has no desire to relocate altogether.

“I’m a big believer in roots,” she said. “I still live in the house that my children grew up in and I want to see my grandchildren there. I won’t live here 12 months a year, though.”

And what are her plans come July 1?

“I will have no affiliation with the school for the first year. I think that’s best,” she said.

After traveling to France, she intends to return to work with children in some capacity.

“There is an unequalness of our educational system,” Webster said. “There are a number of organizations that work with minority children and support them and their cultures. I want to address leveling the playing field for our education system and global education. I will always come back to fund raise, as only a founder can.”

As she gets ready to leave, she retains certain hopes for The Island School: that it will “keep its soul, get stronger and take the lead in the education community.”

Her legacy, as she sees it:

“I am most proud of the amount of diversity (we have) in a small school. And the confidence our children have in themselves. I’m proud to have been a part of this and what we’ve done for parents and families. We had a dream and we made it happen.”

“Kelly created a place where families are an integral part of their children’s education. Her respect for children and childhood are part of her legacy. She has a lot of faith in the early learner. It’s there, she says, and it just needs to be encouraged,” Nancy said.

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Bid farewell

Colleagues, family members and friends will gather at a special Farewell Tea from 1-4 p.m. on Sunday at the school to honor the educator who has spent more than half her life helping children from kindergarten through grade 5 learn about themselves and their world. The Island School is located at 8553 NE Day Road.