Little Tree Community branches out

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Hollister resident Sandra Schwehr and her colleagues had a vision of bridging the gap between school and families. As a teacher in a local Montessori school, Schwehr said she believed that a small classroom structure could foster better connections 

“We wanted to build a space where the kids not only could be friends but their parents could be friends, and that we could also be a part of the family,” she said.

In 2020, Schwehr and her daughter Natasha Schwehr founded Little Tree Community. They experienced growing demand since opening and decided to expand. 

However, the process was not easy. Schwehr filed for a conditional use permit with the city of Hollister to relocate her school to a building at the corner of Powell Street and Nash Road at the end of 2023. After many challenges, including delayed responses from city staff, Little Tree Community got its approval from the Hollister Planning Commission on Feb. 6.

The permit will allow the nonprofit to serve 47 students in two classrooms.

Before filing for a permit, Schwehr said she spent three years asking the city about how to approach expanding her operation and was only told to file for a conditional use permit.

“The biggest challenge is there were no clear-cut directions,” Schwehr said. She called it “trial by error.”

In the time it took her to get the building up to code for her operation, Schwehr said Little Tree Community lost about $120,000 in expected revenue and lease costs for the new building. She said that doesn’t include investments such as a fire system that cost $14,000.

Schwehr said it would have been helpful if the city had had a guide of what would be required of her. 

Local government bureaucracy was a common complaint of residents who participated in BenitoLink’s 2024 listening sessions. 

The Hollister Planning department did not immediately respond to BenitoLink’s request for comment.

Schwehr said she is ready to start classes but isn’t sure when she can start using the new building. She said she sent an email to the engineering and design consultant that the city contracts asking about next steps.

The students are also ready. At the Planning Commission meeting, Coen Adragna, a Little Tree Community student, urged the commission to approve the school.

“It’s important for me to move to the new site because I love this community,” he said.

Not only are current students awaiting the move, so are new families. Schwehr said some of the parents cannot go back to work until their children start classes. 

“We have families who are waiting to go to work but they can’t afford to send their kids anywhere else,” she said. 

The building, previously used as a church, includes two classrooms and a playground area to be developed in the future. One classroom will serve 3- to 6-year-olds. The other classroom will host 6- to 11-year-olds. The school will operate from 7:45 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Planting the seed

Little Tree Community started serving 14 students ages two to 11 at Schwehr’s house on Sunset Street. It quickly grew to 28 students and led to a waitlist. 

Because Schwehr was limited to serving 14 students at a time, half of the Little Tree Community students attended class in the morning and the other half in the afternoon. 

“We started with the homeschool component because it was right after COVID,” she said. “A lot of parents were wanting a different option other than sending their kids to school.”

She said Little Tree Community began looking into expanding and reached out to different churches and property owners but were not successful in identifying a potential site. 

That was until Dante Bains, who had just bought the property on Powell Street, approached her to gauge her interest in it.

Schwehr said she signed the lease, submitted her application for the conditional use permit to the city and obtained her nonprofit status in December 2023.

She said another big element in making this happen was the Wildflower Foundation, which supports Wildflower Montessori schools. The foundation provided training and a loan to the school.

Schwehr said at the Planning Commission meeting that Little Tree Community was trying to build an “intentionally diverse” Montessori school to offer service to all families. She said the school is also very active in the community. 

“It’s our goal to show the children how to make the world a better place through ourselves and our smaller community,” she said.

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