HARMAN, W.Va. — Members of the Harman Education Association have a monumental task ahead of them. Their plan is to have the old Harman School ready to become a private, community micro-school and accept students by September. The process won’t be easy.
“You can imagine, it’s an enormous task to try and get a school up and running in about two months. That’s almost humanly impossible,” said Dan Bucher, President of the Association.
The former county public school was closed at the end of the school year. The Randolph County Board of Education recently voted in favor of donating the school to the community’s association, but so far that process hasn’t been completed. It’s expected to take some time to get all of the paperwork in order and actually transfer the building into the name of the organization. Bucher anticipated the process would be done by July 1st since he doubted the school board wanted to have the building on its books at the start of a new fiscal year.
But until it’s in their possession, the only planning that can happen is in meetings and discussions, which have been happening.
“We have conducted some surveys in the community and that gave us the rough idea that there could be 40 to 50 students interested in coming,” he explained.
If there will be 40 to 50 students, Bucher said ideally they would like to have four teachers. Several grades would be combined, but the ratio of students to teachers would still be very small and attractive for the learning process. In many ways, the plan resembles the one-room school house in West Virginia from 200 years ago. Bucher didn’t deny the comparison and said such a setting tends to have older students maturing and offering guidance and leadership to younger students while teachers and other adults offer the structure needed.
“There’s a lot of good things that can happen if we return to those practices,” he explained.
Bucher said even without ownership of the building they have a series of committees looking at things like curriculum, staffing, facilities, maintenance and repair, and food service.
“We have a number of people who are interested in helping out and volunteering for specific things like art teachers and other disciplines who are very interested in being part of the program,” he said.
“The teaching will be from a Biblical perspective and that’s a very exciting thing to have in this part of the state,” Bucher added. “God has been behind this thing the whole way and has made so many things possible.”