Page 22 - BusinessWest January 20, 2025

Impactful Journey
Gobron’s life experiences led her to a non-tradition- al path in the world of education, and eventually to the launch of LightHouse in 2015 along with then-busi- ness partner Josiah Litant.
“High school was terrible for me, and I ended up leaving during my senior year. I was a strong student academically, but it was a really negative space for me in other ways,” she recalled. She started her career
in alternative education at a Montessori school and eventually made her way to North Star Self-Directed Learning for Teens in Sunderland, where she stayed for 12 years.
While program director there, she dreamed of opening a school in Holyoke focused on self-directed learning that would serve a more urban, diverse popu- lation. She and Litant, an education consultant who had worked at Hampshire College, found a home in the Sustainability Technology Entrepreneurship Art Media (STEAM) building on Race Street, which, like Gateway City Arts, was owned by Vitek Kruta and Lori Divine.
Gobron said the model isn’t as radical as it sounds, as college students typically craft their own degree track within certain parameters. “But we typically don’t
recognize the value in that when it’s teenagers.”
Especially those, like herself, who don’t feel they fit into a tradi-
tional high-school structure.
“A lot of times, if a young person isn’t thriving in school, we think
that’s the young person’s fault: they have ADHD, they have whatever. We often don’t talk about it as a systemic problem. Here, we don’t try to blame the kid,” she said, noting that LightHouse’s opening coincided with Holyoke Public Schools entering state receivership (which was lifted in 2024). “There were so many kids struggling, we couldn’t blame them anymore. The system had to ask, ‘OK, what are we doing?’ And there was a window of openness to other possi- bilities that might have otherwise seemed kind of crazy.”
“A lot of times, we hear from parents, ‘I used to have a curious and excited kid, and somewhere, that went away.’ And now we have this child who’s kind of shut down and disengaged, thinks that they hate learning, or have any number of challenges.”
Catherine Gobron stands in the school’s dining area, where students will benefit from a just-launched in-house kitchen.
Staff Photo
campaign aims to raise another $1.5 million; that’s on top of an annual budget that relies partly on tuition, but with philanthropy covering about one-third of the total.
But the school’s mission is important, Gobron said, which is why these efforts are not just challenging, but gratifying. “Our expenses have gone up quite a bit, and we’re still really figuring out how that’s all going to work. But we’ve got a vision to grow it, and I can see it.”
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