Our History
Halloween 2005
Kyle Holder first started working with young children in 1987. He had graduated from The University of Texas Austin in May of 1986 with a Bachelor of Business Administration, and decided not to pursue becoming a CPA! He perused the Daily Texan job listings regularly and came across an ad for a local pre-school. It sounded interesting to work with young children and Harma Jordan of Child Craft Schools in Hyde Park gave him a chance to work as an assistant teacher on a hunch, even though he had no practical experience or education in child development.
Working at Child Craft was inspiring and it made an impression so deep that a career change was at hand. Kyle continued to progress at Child Craft, becoming a Summer Camp lead teacher and then taking on more managerial duties over the next year and a half.
In 1988 he moved to Sante Fe New Mexico and started working with a pre-school in the mornings, and the Sante Fe Girls Club as an after-school Director in the afternoons. In the summer of 1989, Kyle started his first business from scratch, a summer camp called “The Discovery Club”. He instantly filled the camp with families he knew from the after school program and the oldest children from the pre-school. Families raved about the nature based daily field excursions to all the great places Sante Fe had to offer. The campers went to Indian dances at the local reservations, hiked trails at the mountain ski areas, climbed the Pecos Mountain steams and played in the Rio Grande!
In the winter of 1989, Kyle moved back to Austin, as his brother was about to have a son, and that was the final motivation needed to “come home”. In early 1990 Kyle started working with Austin Community Nursery Schools as an interim Director, and within a few months a Site Director position opened up at Child Craft. Harma and Ken Jordan hired Kyle on, as their hunch back in 1987 had proven to them that gut feelings are important to listen to!
While working at Child Craft, Kyle proved to be an effective leader, and enrollment steadily rose from about two thirds capacity, to a waiting list for all ages. With the school full, Harma, Ken and Kyle started to look for expansion opportunities in Austin, and looked a several schools that were for sale. One of those schools was The Children’s Discovery Center. Harma and Ken decided that it was too small for them to consider, but quickly realized it would be perfect for an owner/director situation. Kyle pursued purchasing it on his own, and in August of 1991, officially took over The Children’s Discovery Center (and also got married that same week!)
The Children’s Discovery Center had been started by Dianne Arnett in 1979 with the intention of creating a safe environment for children to explore and learn through hand-on experiences. It was a very good match for the qualities that Kyle wanted to perpetuate in a pre-school. The reputation was good, and it had tremendous potential for growth, both in numbers of children and quality of education. From an initial child population of 19 children, The Children’s Discovery Center grew to 64 children within 2 years.
After a few years, with the help of the Educational Director, Kelly McRee, the school on Duval Street full, Kyle and Kelly investigated the philosophies of Reggio Emelia and Bev Bos deeper and deeper, and began thinking of ways to re-create the magic of the Sante Fe Summer Camp while utilizing these great child-centered philosophies. They started looking at property around the more rural edges of Austin to open a second site that would give the older children a chance to experience true nature, especially since so many children now live in urban settings that have little or no relationship with a nature-based atmosphere. After ruling out places like Dripping Springs that would have been too far to take kids back and forth to on a daily basis, an opportunity surfaced. A remote feeling piece of property very close to downtown that was perfect for a second school came up for sale!
Straw Bale Structure
In 1998, The Discovery School was born. It was based on 6 acres of woods, buffered by hundreds of acres of bird sanctuary that could never be developed. There was a spring fed creek and magical trails wound around throughout the entire property. The school was constructed with straw-bale technology, and had it’s own rainwater collection system. Over the years a pool was added, and a full size Indian teepee on the back of the lot was the main destination of hikes.
Children that had enrolled at the Hyde Park location as infants and toddlers would graduate to the school on White Cliff Drive when they turned 3 ½ or 4 years old, and the van would travel the 15-20 minute short commute to what felt like the middle of the forest!
As the schools became more and more popular, teachers that had professional credentials would come to work with the pre-school, as the reputation for quality and professionalism spread through the community. Some of the teachers with Master’s degrees and teaching certificates were working in this pre-school setting rather than work for the public school system. They chose to work for literally half the pay in order to have the quality of life that the public school system was not able to provide.
Through the feedback that came from families that graduated from the Discovery School to the public school system, Kyle and Kelly were hearing that the magic that children felt at pre-school was getting squashed in public school. The love of learning and self confidence that they had gained was being replaced by “teaching to the test” drills, and militant procedures.
Leigh Moss, a certified teacher with a Master’s degree, had taught at The Discovery School for several years, and then gone on to work at Cedars International Academy, a Charter elementary school. She voiced to Kyle and Kelly that she felt that opening up a Charter school with a progressive, innovative, developmentally appropriate philosophy and curriculum was achievable, given the talent available through all the contacts we had.
In late 2002, it was decided that a Charter would be sought from the Texas Education Agency in the name of a new non-profit 501(c)3 corporation, Austin Discovery School Inc., to operate a non-profit Charter elementary school. Over the next two years, Kyle, Kelly and Leigh worked with professionals with roots based in progressive, innovative child development philosophies and wrote a Charter that was awarded by The Texas Education Agency in 2004.
In September 2005, the Austin Discovery School, a Charter elementary school, opened it’s doors. It’s location was on a 200 acre campus with 2 freshly renovated 8000 square foot buildings, access to miles of hiking trails leading to the Colorado river and over 100 eager students awaiting a fresh look at elementary education! Within 3 years the school had attained a “Recognized” rating from the Texas Education Agency, and the dream of offering children a place to go to elementary school that was not just educational, but fun, was realized.
In 2009, all the schools are flourishing, with Kelly and Leigh working at the Charter School, Kyle overseeing the pre-schools with the help of Site Directors Ros Schneider at the Children’s Discovery Center on Duval Street, and Dustin Withers at the Discovery School on White Cliff Drive. Both pre-schools are 4 star accredited with the Texas Rising Star accreditation certification. The Charter school is serving 260 children this year and plans to serve over 300 in 2009-2010, and the pre-schools serve over 100 families of Austin.