Sankofa: Our History
The Albany Free School was founded in 1969 by Mary Leue and a group of parents and students who believed that education should feel like freedom. They built something rare: a school where children were trusted, where their voices mattered, and where the goal was not control, but growth. Together, they named it simply, and boldly, “The Free School.”
What started as a radical experiment became a model for community-based education. Educators, organizers, and families came from across the country to learn from its example. Over the decades, the Free School helped shape a national conversation about how learning could be reimagined. It directly inspired more than a dozen schools and learning spaces across the country and beyond.
But like many institutions, the Free School was not immune to the forces of exclusion, inequity, and inertia. As the neighborhood changed, the school did not. While the surrounding community became predominantly Black and Brown, the student body and board remained almost entirely White. Tuition barriers stayed in place. Local families were often left out. The school, once rooted in revolution, had drifted away from the people right outside its doors.
In 2021, a parent at the school who also served as board president of the Hudson/Catskill Housing Coalition joined the AFS board. The goal was clear: to help stabilize the school and begin the hard but necessary work of rebuilding its relationship with the community. At that time, AFS served as the fiscal sponsor for HCHC. The following year, HCHC secured its own sponsor, and the relationship between the two organizations shifted.
The Hudson/Catskill Housing Coalition infused their values of working at the intersection of housing, education, and criminal justice into the very fabric of the Albany Free School’s identity.
In 2022, HCHC leadership entered into a management agreement with the Free School. What followed was not just an administrative change, but a cultural one. Black leadership joined the board. Tuition structures were overhauled. Families from the neighborhood began enrolling again. The school’s identity, once shaped by who was excluded, began to transform into something far more honest and inclusive.
This change did not come without cost. As leadership became more representative of the surrounding community, many White families chose to leave. The student body shifted from more than 90 percent White to more than 90 percent Black and Brown. Enrollment dropped. Trust had to be rebuilt. But through it all, something deeper began to grow. A school grounded in real relationships. In listening. In love.
Today, the Albany Free School is becoming what it was always meant to be. Its students and staff reflect the community that surrounds it. Its classrooms are full of questions, joy, conflict resolution circles, outdoor play, and care that runs deeper than curriculum. It remains a place where young people learn to lead, not follow. To grow into their power, not shrink themselves to fit a system.
With the continued support of HCHC, the Free School is stabilizing its finances, deepening its roots, and moving forward with intention. We are not perfect, but we are present. We are still here. Still free in spirit. Still growing.
(Click here to learn more about the early beginnings of The Free School.)
