Longboat Key Education Center celebrates 35 years of learning

When Longboat Key Education Center founder Laura Taubes asked executive director Susan Goldfarb if she loved what she did, Goldfarb knew what she was suggesting. 

It was about 1995, and Goldfarb was a real estate agent and had her own marketing and PR business — a good living, but not a passionate one. Taubes was retiring after running the Longboat Key Education Center for 10 years and needed someone (like her longstanding part-time marketing expert) to take over. 

By now, Goldfarb's answer should be obvious. She's been the executive director for 25 years, growing the center from a modest business with 35 offerings into a robust school with 175 programs and leading it through a pandemic into its 35th year. She’s taking time to celebrate 35 years of learning on Longboat Key, albeit not in the manner she had expected. 

“I bought all this champagne, and we were going to drink champagne, and we were going to celebrate,” Goldfarb said. “I mean, we still might have a small gathering of maybe a dozen people. But normally the room that we have these things in holds 85 to 90 people.”

It’s difficult to separate the stories of the Longboat Key Education Center and of Goldfarb’s life. Since the early days, Goldfarb did PR and marketing for the center and taught yoga once “Yogi Ed” (Ed Schetter, father of Lynn Christensen) rolled up his mat for the last time. By the time Taubes asked her to take over the school, Goldfarb was all in on the Education Center. 

“I really became very attached to the school and everything that she (Taubes) was doing here,” Goldfarb said. “The people, the teachers, just the whole mission of keeping the mind active and spirit young, just seemed to me a beautiful thing. I have several degrees and it just seemed like the perfect manifestation of all of that I had ever studied and loved (like) music, art, theater, literature.”

Classes of that nature have long made up the bulk of the center’s offerings, with film discussions, painting classes, creative writing workshops and the like being snapped up year after year. Sarasota artist Kevin Costello was the first teacher hired at the center and he’s seen every type of teaching tech, from slides on a carousel to PowerPoint to now, Zoom lectures. He’s been there since the beginning — arguably before the beginning, given how his interview went. 

“I was being given an interview by the Education Center and she (Taubes) was sitting at her desk, because that was all that was in the room … As the interview progressed, they were delivering furniture,” Costello said. “So the interesting thing is, I began my interview with an empty room and finished it in a furnished room.”

That room was across the street from Harry’s Continental Kitchens, in the building which now houses Longboat Key Builders and the Longboat Observer. Taubes and Goldfarb operated there for about three years, until they had an opportunity to become the first tenants in the Centre Shops. 

Costello was the first teacher on the center’s “faculty,” which now includes over 100. Devoted students run the gamut of classes every year with plenty of movie, history and art classes alongside astronomy and nature science classes, but are perennially shocked by the deep community contacts Goldfarb works to bring in teachers. 

“She is just something else, organizing everything and putting it together,” 15-year student Esther Emmerman said. “Her contacts are incredible with the people she gets. So many wonderful people come down here to retire.”

Students such as Emmerman have a tough time deciding on their favorite classes from over the years — you could be there all day long, she said, and her husband is taking 13 classes this season. The center’s slogan, “Like college, only better,” rings true for students. With no exams or curriculum requirements, their minds are free to roam. The money spent is worthwhile, Emmerman said. 

“When you aren't retired, when you are busy working, you sometimes don't give yourself the luxury of being able to educate yourself in other fields other than what you were really trying to make money off of,” longtime student and donor Paul Steinwachs said. 

Goldfarb and the center have leveled up their expertise over the years, with no small amount of help from the staff. Countless hours and plenty of funds have been invested in Zoom over the last few months, the only way to try to get the center to survive the pandemic. Zoom classes and long-distance learning will likely continue even after it’s not the primary need. 

It’s tough, as Goldfarb said they’re only bringing in about a third of the money they normally would at this time of year. Thankfully, Goldfarb said, devoted members have paid their annual dues and sometimes even more, hopefully ensuring the center sees its next milestone anniversary and beyond. 

“What I'd like in my dreams is to go back to the way we were when we saw as many as 500 people a day coming through our doors,” Goldfarb said. “Will that ever happen again? I don't know. But that would be my dream.”

++++Sidebar: 

++++If you go: 

++++The launch of Longboat learning