Trish and Shamus Morton's three children found high school a challenging place to be.
They were bright students in gifted and talented programs, but the experience of turning up to a large school with more than 1100 pupils was overwhelming and took a toll on their mental health.
For their daughter, a breakthrough came when she attended a performing arts school with only 20 students. By the time she was ready to go to college, she had built up her confidence and could thrive in a mainstream environment.
Now, the couple want to provide that experience for other students who struggle in regular schools by setting up a new independent special assistance school, to be called Connections High School.
"Our school is about being small," Mrs Morton said.
"Small by design with maximum class size as 16. And with that, we're hoping to support those kids who find mainstream schooling overwhelming."
Mrs Morton has been a teacher since 2001 and her husband joined the profession about 11 years ago after changing careers from accounting to education.
There is a long road to establishing an independent school in the ACT, but there seems to be a community that is eager for the kind of school they want to create.
The couple have submitted an in-principle application to the Education Directorate for a year 7 to 10 school catering to students who can't cope with a mainstream environment.
They may have anxiety, have a neurodivergent condition, be a school-refuser or avoider, or simply need more personalised attention.
It comes at a time when the number of home educated students is rapidly growing in the territory.
A week after posting on a community noticeboard chat group, 160 people filled in a form of support and 60 parents submitted expressions of interest, Mrs Morton said.
"We've been blown away by the amount of support we've been shown so far," she said.
"Some of the stories that come in are heartbreaking."
The school would have four core staff members, paid at the top of the current salary scale and with a lighter class load than teachers in other ACT schools.
"They will be given lots of support, lots of mentoring, plenty of time for collaborative planning, plenty of time for their own planning. So we believe a key part of supporting the kids is supporting the staff."
The founders will draw on Dr Helen Street's theories on contextual wellbeing in schools.
"It's about allowing kids to be well. Not teaching them to be well, not telling them to be well, but creating environments where they can be well," Mrs Morton said.
School fees would cost about $6000 per year. Every child would be on an individual learning plan with flexible delivery of classes, including recordings to help students catch up if they can't be at school.
Connections High School would give students agency in their work but not free choice - they will be given structure and scaffolding to help them succeed, Mrs Morton said.
"Our bigger vision is to have support workers, be they youth workers, counsellors, [learning support assistants] or someone with a combination of all those skills and hopefully be able to put families in touch with other services," she said.
The couple hopes to open the school in 2026. But there are major elements still to be worked out, crucially the location.
"We're currently in negotiations with the University of Canberra about some potential collaboration there which opens up some pretty exciting opportunities," Mrs Morton said.
