AURORA | All good things must come to an end — even preschools.
Friday will be the last day in operation for the Montessori School of Aurora, which will then be closing its doors and selling off all its materials. It’s a bittersweet decision for owners Lori and Joe Contreras, who have operated the family-run business for 27 years.
“It’s been very challenging but extremely rewarding,” Joe said.
Previously a high school counselor, Lori Contreras discovered the Montessori philosophy when she put her own children in early childhood care, and quickly fell in love with its emphasis on hands-on learning and creativity. She and her husband decided to start their own Montessori school, and in 1995 opened the school on Smoky Hill Road with just one class.
In the ensuing two decades it grew to six classes of students from one year old through kindergarten, serving 140 students at its peak. It was the first Montessori school to open in Aurora, Lori said, and the family prided itself on their unique ethos and the fun events they would have every year, including holiday parties, a kindergarten graduation and a yearly cultural dinner where families would dress up and bring foods from their various backgrounds.
The school was hit hard by the pandemic, and after re-opening following quarantine the school was down to just 10 children. It followed all the necessary protocols — masking, no parents inside the building for over two years — and eventually regained most of its student population, but the couple has made the decision that it’s time for them to retire, and so for the school to close.
“We’re pretty sad, but we’re also excited for the next adventure in our life,” Lori said.
The couple’s children, Dustin Contreras and Rachel Perez both went through Montessori education as children — or in Perez’s case from “18 months to age 34,” she joked. Perez got her bachelor’s degree in education and became qualified as a Montessori director, and now teaches at the school herself.
Many of the school’s staff members became like family as well, teaching for upwards of 10 or 20 years and putting their own children in the program.
While Lori and Rachel taught, Joe was in charge of the business end of operations and of building maintenance. Dustin said that some of his own favorite memories involve getting up early to help his dad with odd jobs around the school, such as shoveling snow and changing the lights.
“Helping him (are) my main memories of the place,” Dustin said.
Joe said that family-run ethos is what made the school so special.
“Everything in this entire school I’ve had my hands on,” he said.
He built most of the furniture himself, and when the school was first opening he kept all of the books himself by hand, writing on a piece of paper.
“We knew we were going to start it not for the money but to have a say-so in the care and nurturing of children,” Joe said of what motivated them. “That’s been our whole goal the entire way. We started off doing things very simply and we’ve never lost sight of that.”
The school will be selling all of its materials, including furniture, books, art supplies and Montessori-specific curriculum, at a sale this Saturday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at its building on 18585 East Smoky Hill Road.
The family wants as much of it as possible to be able to go to another good home, but sorting through 27 years worth of materials in preparation for the sale has been emotional.
“I was going through my classroom and I was like ‘I need to keep this rock this kid gave me this one year.’ It’s hard to weed through everything,” Perez said.
Lori and Joe said they plan to spend more time with their grandchildren in retirement, including Perez’s one-month-old daughter Viviana. For her part, Perez will soon start teaching at a Montessori school in Lone Tree — the same place that she was a student when she was young and where her mom first got interested in Montessori.
“It’s kind of fun to see things come full circle,” Perez said.