Blog: RSF Makes a Loan to the East Bay Waldorf School

RSF is pleased to announce a new loan to the East Bay Waldorf School (EBWS). RSF financing helped the school complete renovations to existing classrooms and facilities and lease additional classroom space.

The East Bay Waldorf School was founded in 1980 when a group of parents and friends opened a kindergarten in the Julia Morgan Center in Berkeley. Each subsequent year another grade was added toward the full complement of eight grades. The school moved to Emeryville in 1984, where it remained for 12 years. When the school district reclaimed the Emeryville site in 1996, EBWS purchased its current home – an 11-acre hillside campus in El Sobrante, California.

Born from the insights of Rudolf Steiner, the Waldorf model of education unfolds an enriching and rigorous synthesis of academic, artistic, and practical pursuits for intellectual, moral, and physical development. The mission of the East Bay Waldorf School is to ignite the spark of individuality in each child, developing a lifelong commitment to learning, creativity, and excellence. The school’s curriculum integrates the sciences, humanities, mathematics, music, movement and the arts to offer a diverse and profound learning experience.

 RSF’s relationship with the East Bay Waldorf School dates back nearly two decades, when RSF provided the mortgage loan for the purchase of the El Sobrante property. Two additional loans were made, in the fall of 1996 and in 1999, and were used for construction costs, classroom renovations, and the purchase of computers and science lab equipment. The new loan has allowed EBWS to complete renovations and lease three new portables.

“The new classrooms needed to be in place and the upgrades had to be completed in time for the start of the new school year,” says Mike Miller, RSF Senior Lending Manager. “The East Bay Waldorf School community was extremely helpful and cooperative in completing the process. It was exciting to be of assistance in the completion of the improvements to the school!”

 An extraordinary feature of the East Bay Waldorf School is their remarkable hillside campus, adjacent to thousands of acres of regional parkland accessible by foot. The campus and adjacent wild lands function as an extension of the school’s classrooms, providing fantastic opportunities for students to spend time learning and playing in nature.

“This location provides us with rich opportunities to venture regularly into the natural world,” says Kelly Chappie, Interim Administrator at EBWS. “We are committed to offering Waldorf education to a broad constituency while cultivating a school resonant with the impulses of the first Waldorf school: a development of thinking, feeling, and willing in children, which offers them an education in service of realizing and making their own unique contributions to the future.”

About East Bay Waldorf School

Founded in 1980, the East Bay Waldorf School is situated on a remarkable 11-acre hillside campus adjacent to thousands of acres of regional parkland in El Sobrante, California. The school offers an infant through 8th grade program and is committed to offering Waldorf education to a broad constituency. The East Bay Waldorf School ignites the spark of individuality in each child, developing a lifelong commitment to learning, creativity, and excellence. http://www.eastbaywaldorf.org/