The Free School in Albany, New York has run for more than thirty years on a simple premise: children decide for themselves how to spend their days. There are no mandatory classes, no grades, no tests, no homework. The film follows students and teachers through the daily reality of that arrangement, showing kids choosing to read, build, argue, or do nothing in particular, and it lets the school's rule-making meetings play out on camera, where students and staff vote together on the policies that govern them. Unlike many alternative schools that end up serving mostly affluent families, this one draws a genuinely mixed population across race and income, and the film treats that as one of its central claims of success. Founders and longtime staff explain the reasoning behind the approach, arguing that motivation and engagement grow out of autonomy rather than compliance. The film's case rests on watching that theory operate in practice over decades rather than a single semester, using the school's own longevity as its evidence.