CAMDEN — On Saturday, June 8, 2024, Watershed School will host its final commencement ceremony, celebrating the graduation of its last two seniors. In addition, the school will honor its founders: Ralph Moore, Pete Kalajian, Will Galloway, and the late Phil Gerard and Sherry Frazer.

Watershed School was established by a group of dedicated parents and educators who envisioned a learning environment where students would have a voice in their education. Gathered around the kitchen table of Ralph Moore and Bridget Buck, they brainstormed ideas for a school that emphasized the importance of the learning context as much as the content, fostering a community rooted in personal integrity and respect. 

According to Will Galloway, who served as Head of School for 15 of the school's 20 years, "context was always equally if not more important than content – where how we learned was as important as what we learned."

The school officially opened in 2004 at the Lincoln Street Center in Rockland, moving to Camden in 2012. Since its inception, Watershed School has blended intellectual rigor with project-based learning, design thinking, consensus building, and a joy of learning, all within a community-focused framework.

“We began with just 12 pioneer students, but even with such a small group, we established the core elements that defined our program,” said the late Phil Gerard, the school’s founding director, in 2015. “In that first year, we launched our weekly All-School Meeting, outdoor and urban trips, community service projects, an open schedule with no-classes project weeks, a strong focus on arts and skill-building, and narrative evaluations and a commitment to avoiding conventional grades.”

Watershed’s philosophy of connecting the classroom to the community saw students engage in projects such as changing the city of Rockland’s light ordinance to preserve dark skies, enhancing data monitoring for the Seabright Dam, reinstating Camden’s Energy Committee, and participating in the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy. Students and the wider community benefited from collaborations with organizations like the Steel House, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, Darling Marine Center, Bay Chamber Concerts, Liberian Education Fund, Trekkers, and the Maine State Science Fair. Watershed also initiated the Camden Conference in the Classroom curriculum, now adopted statewide, and was one of the first schools to introduce a climate change class, producing critical research for the town of Camden on sea level rise, carbon neutrality, and climate change mitigation.

The school will close its doors at the end of June.

“This commencement ceremony will be bittersweet,” said Ronni Blaisdell, Interim Head of School and faculty member since 2016, in a news release. “As we celebrate our seniors and honor our founders, we also bid farewell to a school that has profoundly impacted so many students, families, and community members. We owe immense gratitude to our founders and former leadership.”

“We are thrilled to incorporate the founders' recognition into our final commencement,” said Jo-Ann Cook, President of the Board of Trustees. “We are deeply grateful to Ralph Moore, who developed and taught an Ethics course from the Institute for Global Ethics; Pete Kalajian, who not only taught science but also helped create and carry on the school's community culture; Will Galloway, who led Watershed with integrity and dedication for 15 of our 20 years; and the late Phil Gerard and Sherry Frazer, who not only led the school in its early days, but taught Science and Math, respectively, until 2015. They truly left a lasting legacy.”

The Watershed School commencement and founders recognition ceremony will take place on Saturday, June 8, at 12 p.m., at the Camden Snow Bowl. The event is open to the public.