The Five Acre School Parent Organization is reaching out to the community that helped build the school over the past 18 years to include them in a Grand Transition Celebration.

School officials are inviting all students who attended (for any length of time) Five Acre School, plus their families and friends and individuals and business members in the community that supported them.

The celebration is set for 3-7 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 26, at the Sequim Prairie Grange, 290 MacLeay Road.

A group photograph of all current and former students is scheduled for 4:30 p.m.

Bill and Juanita Jevne, founders of Five Acre School, are retiring and welcoming Autumn Piontek-Walsh and Brian Walsh as the new owners. School officials say that, with backgrounds in education, child development and program management, Walsh and Piontek-Walsh offer an “extensive array of qualifications and skills that are a great fit for the ongoing vision and growth of Five Acre.”

Five Acre School is a community school located adjacent to the Dungeness Recreation Area that serves 100 preschool-through-sixth-grade students. Established in 1994 by the Jevnes, it was the first commercial straw bale construction building in Washington.

An independent school receiving no government funding, it provides a program that uses individualization, active learning and a high degree of accountability to successfully educate all students, school officials say. The curriculum integrates traditional school subjects with music, theater, art, animal husbandry, conservation management and extensive educational field trips.