Twenty-five years ago, Deborah and Jim Peters started Cambridge School in Pennington with 10 students and a belief: that every student deserves the opportunity for an excellent education.
They believed that children with learning differences ranging from dyslexia to ADHD to auditory processing disorders should be able to thrive in an academic setting, regardless of their differences.
In just a few years, the school attracted enough students to necessitate a move from South Main Street to Straube Center Boulevard. Today, some 125 students in grades K-12 attend Cambridge School.
This year, Cambridge School has pledged to complete 25 acts of kindness — acts of community service — to commemorate not only the anniversary milestone, but also to honor co-founder Jim Peters, who died in 2023.
Courtney Peters-Manning, the daughter of Jim and Deborah, has been on the staff of Cambridge School since 2009.
“The loss of my dad three years ago has been really difficult, not just for us personally, but (also) for the school community,” Peters-Manning told the Express. “He was a force of nature. When my parents founded the school, my mom did a lot of the academics and my dad did the business plan. It was a beautiful partnership.”
Peters-Manning, a member of the Hopewell Township committee and a lawyer by trade, learned the business side of running a school from her dad. Today, she is school’s director of finance.
“He was really involved with the kids, not just the business side,” Peters-Manning said. “Kindness was just really important to him. In the fall he’d always do an assembly talk about how he was bullied in the fifth grade and how he always said that if he ever started a school, he’d make sure no one was ever bullied.”
And so, to honor him and the 25th anniversary, Cambridge School students and staff will spend the next year completing community service projects that will embody Jim Peters’ spirit.
“What better way to spread love and joy in the world. He would love that,” Peters-Manning said.
One of these acts of kindness is set for this month: a partnership with nonprofit organization Rise Against Hunger and a commitment to pack 10,000 meals for local people in need. To be eligible for the partnership, Cambridge School had to raise $4,100, which it did largely through donations from school parents.
“As a very small school, we see this as an extraordinary accomplishment,” said head of school Ellen Gonzales. “We are incredibly proud of the way our teachers, parents, students and staff came together to make a meaningful impact beyond our local community.”
On March 6, the entire school community will spend the day putting those meals together for Rise Against Hunger, which will then distribute to them to food-insecure people in the area.
Counselor Kayla Greene is coordinating the event for Cambridge School. She says Cambridge School worked with Rise Against Hunger in a different way last fall, when upper school students volunteered at the “Trenton Plates, the World Takes” event at Cure Insurance Arena in Trenton.
“We went last year just to see what we could do,” Greene said. “They said an in-person event was something we could do (at the school). We would have to raise $4,100 minimum to be able to have an in-person event here. We started to raise money at the beginning of the school year, and hit that goal last week (around Feb. 13).”
Greene said students and staff can expect to go to school that morning and see the lunchroom transformed into a meal-packaging area. “Basically our students are going to work in a team in an assembly line and put these meals together,” Greene said. “We’ll have two groups of various ages, so kids will get to work with other kids that they don’t see every day — older kids, younger kids can just bond and do this meaningful experience together.”
Greene points out that this event is just a start. “This is a huge event, but it’s also just one event of those 25,” Greene said. “The theme is all about just volunteering in the community.”
Deborah Peters echoed her daughter’s sentiment that her husband would have loved to see the school come together this way.
“Everybody misses him and talks about him and what a force he was in this school,” Peters said. “He understood them, especially the middle school boys. It’s a tremendous loss to not have him. We’re trying to do something for the 25th anniversary just to commemorate him and celebrate the school.”
Students at Cambridge School may have a variety of learning differences, but many of them have dyslexia — a disorder that affects a person’s ability to read. Cambridge School teachers and staff are specially trained not only to instruct students with dyslexia, dysgraphia, ADHD and other conditions, but also to help nurture them in an environment where all students are in similar situations.
“The school has a myriad of success stories of children who came to us who couldn’t read, and now we have doctors and lawyers and rocket scientists,” Peters said. “We’re experts in teaching children how to read and write.”
And, Peters-Manning said, nurturing kids’ strengths. “Dyslexia comes with gifts as well as challenges,” she said. “If you get the right early reading instruction, dyslexia can be an asset. Our kids are creative. They think differently, out of the box. They approach problems in creative ways. Dyslexia has nothing to do with intelligence. Our students are very bright.”
Both of Peters-Manning’s own children went to Cambridge School from an early age. “My younger one, when he was diagnosed, he was like, ‘Yes!’ because in our house, we are very dyslexia positive.”
Deborah Peters said that when people think of a school that is for children with differences, they get a picture in their minds of what that would look like — and that the picture would be inaccurate when it comes to Cambridge School.
“So many people come into our school and say, ‘Are you sure this school is for dyslexic kids?’ Because our kids look like typical kids. Our kids just struggle to read. But other than that, it just looks like a small private school.”
She said that one thing she feels is a strength for the school is that instructional techniques are consistent throughout the educational process.
“Every one of our teachers, even the gym teacher and the art teacher, they’re all language-trained in the modalities that we use. Because the reading difference doesn’t go away when (students are) in science class or when they’re in PE.
“I use the analogy that it’s like driving a car. When you do the same thing every day for years, over and over again, it becomes automatic.”
Perhaps the school’s commitment to a 25th year full of service projects will make community spirit automatic as well.
“Community service was really important to him, and kindness was really important to him,” Peters-Manning said. “The fact that the kids and the parents all bonded together and accomplished this, raised enough money now they’re going to pack meals for people in need — my dad would have been really proud.”
On the web: thecambridgeschool.org.
Jim and Deborah Peters founded The Cambridge School in Pennington in 2001. This year’s 25th-anniversary celebrations are intended to honor Jim, who died in 2023.,
