SPECIAL EVENT: Virtual Film Screening & Panel discussion Thursday, March 4th at 7pm

On Thursday March 4th, The Newburyport Documentary Film Fest and The Screening Room are partnering to present a Virtual Screening of the acclaimed documentary Welcome to Commie High, followed by a Zoom discussion with Donald Harrison (director), David Camlin (editor), Marci Tuzinsky (Dean of Community High School), and Jonnie Lyn Evans (Director River Valley Charter School).

“It’s a story for any parent who has thought about how to educate their child, whether they are from Ann Arbor, Michigan, or anywhere in America.”
– Filmmaker Donald Harrison

“This is terrific – I loved – LOVED – every second of it. It was funny and moving and topical and interesting.” — Ken Burns

(USA / 2020 / Directed by Donald Harrison)

Welcome to Commie High offers a glimpse into the history of one of the longest running alternative high schools in the country. Ann Arbor’s Community High School (CHS) was started in the 1970s as a “school without walls,” a place where structured curricula were abandoned in favor of flexible programs that fit individual students’ needs. With its focus on real-world education, today the institution is one of the few remaining public schools from the Free School movement and an interesting model to take inspiration from at a time when teachers are looking, out of necessity, toward innovative educational approaches.

In 2015, filmmaker Donald Harrison met Maisie Wilhelm, a young woman who literally camped out for two weeks to get into her public school of choice… and she wasn’t the only one. In an effort to explore “how and why this craze came about,” Harrison and his team talked with roughly 400 alumni and staff of Community High about what makes the institution so special and so effective. Overwhelmingly, students and staff recognize the school for bettering their lives, and the current leadership of Ann Arbor’s public school system is, in Harrison’s words, “effusive of Community High” as part of the city’s educational ecosystem. But while it’s dearly loved, the CHS model hasn’t been replicated more widely in schools across America. Pointing toward its “Commie High” nickname, Harrison suggests there’s a potential for schools that are “based on humanism and supporting individualism” to be “ironically seen as a threat to the status quo” in American education.

Yet today, as the pandemic is leading teachers and administrators to improvise ways to serve pupils through virtual learning and online academies, imaginative approaches are being introduced and a heavily modified variation of Community’s wall-free approach is being tested. Whether you’re a parent, student, teacher, or administrator, we invite you to join us for a conversation about public education, the moment we find ourselves in, and what possibilities CHS and other models have to offer.

Unrated / 1 hr 35 mins.