HENDERSONVILLE – Mariana Buda always knew there was something different about her youngest child Saul, now 12. Unlike his three older siblings, he had problems learning shapes and colors as a baby and, despite flashes of intelligence that left as soon as they came, Buda was at a loss as to what was wrong.

“We struggled from the beginning, but the doctor kept telling me not to compare my kids, that each kid is different,” she says. “So who do I compare with? Every parent compares each kid. It is impossible not to, they are fruit from the same tree.”

Buda would not give up, and soon it was discovered Saul had high levels of mercury that were causing his learning difficulties.

All of Buda’s children had attended independent Sumner Academy in Gallatin, and Saul started there as well before moving into the public school system’s special education programs to see if that would be a better fit.

But in addition to the mercury poisoning, Saul also learned things differently, just like his oldest sister Tania, now is an Air Force Academy graduate and government intelligence officer. As much as Buda looked to her children to find out what was wrong, she did not have the experience of watching his sister through her younger grades.

Buda and her husband are from Romania and left the country when communist ruler Nicolae Ceausescu came to power. They made arrangements to go on vacation, but were stopped at the airport because of paperwork problems involving Tania, then 3. Knowing these were delaying tactics, they left her with a relative, who was to join them the next week. It took them eight years.

“In the public school you get lost very, very quick,” Buda says. “And the sad part is that the kids who learn different are super smart, but they get frustrated because they don’t understand they way they teach. They give up.

“She told me her first four years of school she had to have speech every day. Until she got here, we did not know her problems. We put her in Sumner Academy and, because it has a low ratio and a small group of kids who help each other so much, she overcame her disabilities.”

She had been pushing Sumner headmaster William Hovenden to hire a special education teacher. Inspired by Saul and Mariana’s persistence, the opportunity presented itself to do something more – foster the opening of a new school, The Edison School, in Hendersonville.

This fall, the school will serve students in Sumner County with average or above-average intelligence but have difficulties in traditional learning environments.

“I have thought about this for a long time,” Hovenden says. His wife Valery, a teacher at Sumner, had been working with Saul every day for two hours after school while he was attending public school. “You realize the child is not processing information the same way and they need to do some adjustments to present things in a different way.”

And Saul was not the only student who needed a different approach. In the past, he would have gone to Benton Hall Academy in Franklin or Curry Ingram Academy in Brentwood, easily an hour’s drive from Gallatin.

“I tested at Curry Ingram, but it is $37,000 a year ($34,000 for K-9),” Buda says. “It is impossible to pay that money, and it is so far away. Then Valery told me about Benton Hall. I went to visit and was impressed, especially the principal Rob McFadden. We decided we had to go there.”

So they went through the tests and prepared to tackle the daily commute, and Buda was confident in her decision. But within two weeks, McFadden was out at Benton, leaving for personal reasons. But Buda would not give up.

“This was an opportunity for me to push to open something here,” she says.

Hovenden knew McFadden and approached him about opening this new school, which will be located in the Hendersonville Church of God, across the street from the old Twitty City.

Hovenden has received two $25,000 donations and is expecting more. Tuition has been set at $11,000, with financial aid available. The operating budget will be between $250,000-$350,000.

“Our biggest expense is going to be staffing,” Hovender says. “And right now, it is an employer’s market. There are a lot of unemployed teachers out there. While we haven’t hired anybody yet, we are in the process of looking at possibilities. We will certainly see how the summer goes in terms of enrollments.”

He thinks they might start this fall with as few as 15-18 students, but could accommodate nearly 40 in grades three through six. The ratio of students to teachers has been set at 6:1. Six children have already been registered.

“I think that it is a new school that is viewed as necessary and will be a plus in so many ways,” Hovenden says.

McFadden, who spent eight years as headmaster at Benton Hall Academy, and 18 years there total, says he is excited to bring his customized approach to learning to Sumner County.

“We are working with kids with learning differences,” he says. “And not every kid is going to have a certifiable learning difference. You are working with some kids that have a reading weakness or a math weakness but fail to qualify.

“So in public school they would get no services. Those are the kinds of kids who get lost in the shuffle. But the learning capacity is there, especially when they are younger.”

Options are important to parents like Buda, who was tempted to give up after years of fighting. But with her son excited to start at Edison on Aug. 13, she knows it was worth it.

“Every parent who has a kid who struggles, it is not his fault,” she says. “If the school system is failing for a regular child, how do you think a child with learning problems feels like? They are just lost, completely. But there are other ways of learning. Let the kid have a chance. Give the kid one year and when you see a kid who wants to go to school, who is excited, you feel accomplished. You feel lik Buda says. e you did not fail your kid.”