On September 7, 1971, Community School opened on thirty-five acres in a rural Salem setting that had once been the Green Hill Country Club. This September marked our 50th start to the school year and in this edition of Community News, we share, among other things, the highlights, and successes of a school year that our founders never would have imagined when we opened as “an alternative to public school”. As their vision took shape during the early years on the Green Hill campus and later on land owned by Hollins University, the “free school” transformed into an institution that would lay the foundation for a half-century of students to become policy makers, artists, doctors, authors, engineers, and more.