By Ken Mammarella
Contributing Writer

Centreville Layton School “teaches children who learn differently,” it says on its website. Its reputation for that approach draws students to its 23-acre location, just north of Centreville, not only from northern Delaware, southeastern Pennsylvania and northeastern Maryland, but also from Delaware below the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal and an hour away into South Jersey.

“What we do is valued. There are not a lot of other places that they can go,” said Head of School Richard Taubar, who started 25 years ago as a third-grade teacher and has devoted his career to the Centreville School, which in 2014 merged with Layton Preparatory School, and the combined school. 

“They’ve all struggled in school somewhere else, with dyslexia, ADHD or whatever their conditions are,” he said. “They’ve fallen through the cracks.”

The website (centrevillelayton.org) says the 100 or so students, in pre-K through 12th grade, “may face challenges in one or more of the following areas: language processing difficulties; dyslexia; difficulties with spelling, reading, writing, and math; fine and gross motor skill delays; executive functioning disorder; social skills; anxiety; receptive and expressive language disorders; peer relationships; school-related apprehension” and attention issues such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

For some students, their issues are identified and addressed early (and that’s the best, Taubar said), with students then mainstreamed into larger private, parochial and public schools. For others, their issues are identified later, and families choose Centreville Layton to address these issues. And some students get their entire education there.

“Our main focus is academics,” Taubar said, with a curriculum focused on problem solving and critical thinking, but there are also elements engineered for socialization. “We try to create an environment as focused as possible for each student. We can’t offer everything that large schools can, but students are more likely to be involved in activities like theater, government and sports.”

3-D printers and a gecko

Centreville School was founded in 1974 as the Delaware Learning Center, a formative play program for children with learning differences. The school gradually expanded into a pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade program that moved to its Kennett Pike location in 1984.

Layton Prep opened in 2005 with a class consisting primarily of ninth-graders before expanding to serve all high school grades. It was in the New Castle Corporate Commons before moving to the Centreville School campus in 2012.

The Kennett Pike campus today features the main building, part of which dates back to 1934; the annex, which is nicknamed “the mansion”; and the gym, which was built in 2019-20. The old, smaller gym, was then converted into a multipurpose room that every day serves as the lunchroom and at times an art gallery, dance hall and a performance space, with a raised stage. There’s also a barn, which during a visit at the end of the 2024-25 school year housed a pig named Boris and a rooster. 

Outdoors, there’s a playground, a certified bird habitat, some trails and a creek – that’s why boots in one vestibule await younger students ready to splash and explore.

Classrooms sport lots of specialized things to enhance learning, such as art supplies in two art rooms, a wide range of musical instruments and 3-D printers. On this day, Thomas Mendola, the academic innovation coordinator, was printing hearts, and he said that he introduces students as young as kindergartners to computer-aided design.

Upper School teacher Alicia Latham had multiple enhancements in her classroom, including six chicks, a yellow crested gecko named King Louis (sent home during the summer and the two-week winter and spring breaks) and a hydroponic garden nurturing strawberries and a tomato plant.

The hallways and staircases that connect the warren of spaces in the main building are put to use as display areas for lots of student artworks and many inspirational thoughts and quotations.

What students think

Centreville Layton has a staff of 40, Taubar said. It has a 5:1 student-teacher ratio, and the average class size is eight in the middle and upper schools. True, the average grade size is eight as well, but some classes mix students in differing grades with similar abilities. Sometimes, older students have formally helped younger students, say as reading buddies, he added.

The school website lists tuition as $32,750 pre-K through eighth grade and $36,000 ninth through 12th grade, with need-based financial support available. That tuition is higher than Sanford and sometimes higher and sometimes lower than Tatnall. 

Students appreciate the school’s approach.

“People are nice, and you don’t feel judged,” said Shyanne Gregor, a 12th-grader this fall from Coatesville, Pa., who wanted to only say that she was “sent here.” She likes the small class size and how “everyone works together.”

Tyler D’Amico, a seventh grader this fall from the Newark area, started at Centreville Layton when he was in second grade and hopes to transition out for high school. “I’ve progressed a lot,” he said of the work on his learning disability. “You get more help, and teachers give you ways to solve problems and the tools you need.” Plus: “Everyone’s willing to be friends.”

Librarian Loredana Hansen enrolled two children in the school. Melania, who graduated this year, has ADHD and autism, said her brother Christian, a ninth-grader this fall. Plus, “she’s very shy,” Christian said. He likes the school’s style, contrasting that to the “stress from the piles of homework” he had at Holy Angels School. “People struggle with many things,” he said. “But this is the world. It helps you mature.”

“The thing that Centreville taught me the most is thinking outside the box,” alumnus Peter Harris said in a fundraising video for the school. “In life sometimes when we think a little differently, it’s stigmatized, but quite often I think that’s the greatest gift, and being able to leverage that, Centreville has taught me that.”