Olivia Loria is the Western Superintendent of Clonlara School and a Clonlara School Advisor. She lives in Pine, Colorado, so she is an off campus staff member. She has enjoyed working with home educators since 1981. Olivia has 36 years experience as an educator in public and private schools, and with home educators. She holds a Colorado professional teacher's license and a professional special services license.

Also, she holds a Michigan permanent Elementary license. She has had experience working with gifted students so many gifted and special needs students are assigned to be her advisees in Clonlara. She loves working with the international students, so many of them are assigned to her,too. At MSU, she was lucky enough to have education professors who introduced her to A.S. Neill, Silvia Aston Warner, Jean Piaget, John Holt and Jonathan Kozol. Education seemed like a wonderful, invigorating world. A fellow education major and Olivia, who had known Pat Montgomery since were 12 and 11 years old, heard that she was starting a school. They went to visit her and heard all about Clonlara and Pat's experience visiting A.S. Neill in England. Olivia was soon disappointed to find in her student teaching and her first job as a speech therapist that education was not exactly that way in the public system. She stuck it out for three years doing speech therapy in Waterford, MI.

After that, her then husband and Olivia decided to move to Colorado, but first they took a year and half to travel the world. Traveling was a major educational experience and eye opener for Olivia. They traveled most of Europe, and in a bit of Africa and Asia. They went overland from Turkey through Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to India.

After returning from travels, they decided to spend some time in Michigan near family and friends before moving on to Colorado. Olivia called Pat Montgomery to see if she had any openings at Clonlara. She did and Olivia spent the 1974-75 school year teaching 4, 5 and 6 year olds at the Clonlara campus school.

In 1975, Olivia moved to the mountains in Colorado. The 1975-76 school year was a very busy one for Olivia as she taught part time at the then Evergreen Open Living School, did speech therapy at the Park County Schools closer to her home part-time and gave birth to her daughter. When her daughter turned five, she wanted a better and different education for her than was being offered in the public school near her home where she was the local kindergarten teacher. So, she called Pat Montgomery and consulted with her on how to start a school.

In 1981, Olivia founded Pinewood School which started with five students. Pinewood and Clonlara were sister schools for a number of years. When Olivia started the school in 1981, homeschoolers came to see her and asked for help with curriculum and asked if their children could attend Pinewood on a part time basis; hence began her work with homeschoolers. When she closed Pinewood's campus school in 1985, she had 20 students attending full time and 20 students attending part-time. At that point, Pinewood became a school for homeschoolers. In 1996, Pinewood School merged with Clonlara School. It was the first alternative school merger. As part of the merger, Judy Gelner and Olivia adapted the Pinewood Curriculum K-12 for Clonlara School. Olivia loves being back at Clonlara and being a part of the many changes that are occurring for Clonlara. She feels that education is a wonderful invigorating world here at Clonlara!

Personally, Olivia loves to dance, garden, travel, and home educate herself. She also loves spending time with her beautiful granddaughter who was born in March 2006. Her most recent travels took her to China where she was part of a gifted education delegation for the People to People Ambassador Programs (November, 2006). It was very interesting to learn about Chinese education first hand.