Where we came from

Casa Mia was opened in 1999 by a group of homeschooling families to teach a small group of 14 children. In 2009 they took on their first principal and started to transition to a school with a governing body, Government registration and trained Montessori staff. The school slowly added the Karak and Maali classrooms over time. When the Casa Mia site was first leased to the school, it was on a recurring one year basis. This lease included a portion of land that the Town of Bassendean owns (the side of the property with the classrooms on, also known as 11 Hamilton street) and a parcel of land that the State Government owns (the playground side). The state land forms part of the wider BIC reserve, which is intended for recreational use by the Bassendean community. When it was first included as part of the Casa Mia site lease, it was intended to be for temporary use only. When our previous principal Janet started in 2016, she worked with the Board and Town of Bassendean to change the Casa Mia site lease to a 5+5 lease (meaning a lease of 5 years with the option to extend for 5 years). The current year (2023) is the first year of our 5 year extension.

At the end of 2022, a proposal was put forward to the Town of Bassendean to purchase the town owned portion of the Casa Mia site (11 Hamilton Street). The school was notified by the Town that their proposal was unsuccessful, and that at the end of the current 5 year lease (Dec 2027), 11 Hamilton Street would be put on the market for open tender. Follow up discussions with members of the Bassendean council suggest that the proposal was unsuccessful due to the schools ongoing need to access the Government owned parcel of land that forms part of the BIC reserve. Without a guaranteed lease on the BIC reserve portion of the site, Casa Mia would not have enough space to operate regardless of the status of 11 Hamilton Street. This encouraged us to think of an alternative strategic direction going forward.

Due to the nature of the Montessori classroom structure, Montessori schools around Australia (and in particular Western Australia) typically begin on small parcels of land that they soon outgrow. Similar to Casa Mia, many start from inside a house, and then expand by adding new buildings or by moving sites altogether. We feel that as a school, we are at the stage where we have outgrown our current site.

Where we are heading

2023: The Board have been liaising with a range of councils (Town of Bassendean, City of Bayswater and the City of Swan). The process for all councils is to contact their planning team, once we have a site in mind, and they will be able to give us more information regarding pricing, site zoning, re-zoning and the potential for sub-divisions or leasing. We are also in touch with Commercial real estate agents to review possible lease sites, as well as looking at private land sales/sales through developers.

The Board has engaged Chris Engelbrecht as an experienced project manager to lead this exciting project manager. He will be working with the Principal and School Board to support us through this massive project.

At our community meeting in 2023, we discussed the opportunity to find a site big enough to enable us to expand, but all agreed that what makes Casa Mia so special is the small community feel and we do not want to lose that. The Board agreed that we would be looking at an expansion no larger than a total of 150 students, enabling us to have two classrooms of each cycle, which would support the possibility of expanding into an adolescent program at some stage in the future if it aligned with the strategic direction.

2024: Future Site Location announced EVELINE ROAD, VIVEASH, part of the Hesperia ‘RIVERMARK’ Development.

2025: Following updated costings from the Quantity Surveyor of over $10 million — well above our $7 million total project budget — the Board has been exploring alternative approaches to ensure the relocation remains viable. This has included working with Hesperia and builders on options such as staged construction and pre-fabricated solutions, with encouraging indications that the project can be delivered within budget. We have also engaged GRA Partners to work with the Town of Bassendean on securing a four-year lease extension to 2031, giving us time to complete the move in stages while accessing multiple rounds of capital grants and loan options. In August 2025, the Town of Bassendean granted Casa Mia a two-year lease extension, which will see the school remaining at our current site until December 2029. In parallel, the contract for the Viveash site has been executed and the school will now enter a due diligence period.