Among many of the most wonderful qualities of Greensboro Montessori School are our parent community and gardening program. On Friday, October 7, we will unite these bodies at an intimate Seed to Table Dinner at the Proximity Hotel. Leigh Hesling, Executive Chef of both Green Valley Grill and Print Works Bistro, and his team will prepare an exquisite meal for us using fresh ingredients from our permaculture gardens and local farms. Even better, Chef Hesling will entertain and delight with a cooking demonstration of each course prior to our enjoying the locavore cuisine. This format mirrors what our students experience in their environmental education lessons on a regular basis.

This exclusive, adults-only evening will include a starter, an entrée and a dessert, each paired with wine. We will also feature a designer cocktail and craft beer. You're probably wondering, "What's the occasion?" We actually have a lot to celebrate:

• Our permaculture gardening program is 20 years old this spring. What better way to celebrate the seed-to-table cycle our children learn than to experience it for ourselves.
• The GMSCA is already hard at work planning the Fall Festival on Sunday, October 9 on behalf of our students, and we thought it was only fair to plan a date night for the adults.
• October marks the beginning of Greensboro Montessori School's Annual Fund. The Seed to Table dinner is a symbolic representation of the amazing things that happen when we grow together and will officially launch our 2016-17 campaign.

If you don't know much about the permaculture gardening program, take a look at our School Within a Garden page. This page gets its namesake from Alice Waters who visited our School in the spring of 2010 while in town for the grand opening of the Edible Schoolyard at the Greensboro Children's Museum. Upon touring our 10-acre campus, she called Greensboro Montessori School a "school within a garden."

The Fall Festival is our biggest annual community event and is family-friendly party on the school field. Attendees bring their own chairs, blankets and snacks and spend the entire afternoon visiting various activity stations along the perimeter of the field. Past activities include inflatables and stations sponsored by each classroom in the School.

The Annual Fund is a yearly giving campaign designed to propel Greensboro Montessori School from being excellent to exceptional. The costs to run an excellent School like ours are tremendous. Simply keeping the lights on, providing a clean environment and maintaining our impressive facilities totals $177,000 a year. It costs another $137,000 annually to ensure each classroom has excellent Montessori materials and every student has life-changing experiences through unique curriculum like the Land Laboratory. And most importantly, to provide the very best in professional, passionate and credentialed educators, the School spends $2,479,000 in annual employee salaries and benefits. There are other costs, like depreciation and interest expense, that take the School's operating budget well over $3 million.

So how does the School implement the extra touches that make us exceptional? The answer is the Annual Fund. Through the benevolence of parents, alumni, community partners and friends of the School, Greensboro Montessori School is able bridge the difference between covering the basic expenses and positioning the School to deliver exceptional educational experiences to our students.

We invite each of you to an evening of delicious food, festive camaraderie and powerful learning (not only how to cook, but also how to keep our School exceptional). Tickets to the all-inclusive evening are $100 per person and you can register online or contact Jillian Crone to pay via check or cash. Seating is limited to 50 guests, so don't delay and purchase your tickets today!