Jefferson Community School

What: Independent, nonprofit 501(c)(3), private school; accredited high school/middle school (grades 7-12)

Where: 280 Quincy St., Port Townsend

Focus: Hands-on experiential learning, international studies

More info: 360-385-0622; jeffersoncommunityschool.com

On the web: See some of the school’s projects at www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mEevFlBKjU

Small school, big dreams.

Nestled in downtown Port Townsend among the boutique shops, cafes and bistros, in a three-story building once used as a Templar Hall, is a gateway to the world. Who knew?

Founded in 2004, the Jefferson Community School has grown in recent years and now boasts about 35 students. An independent, private nonprofit school, it’s the only accredited high school of its kind on the Olympic Peninsula. With a staff of fewer than 10, it’s also one of the smaller schools in the area. What it lacks in size it more than makes up for in geographic vision.

“It’s a cool school; the education is individualized to a large extent,” says Craig Frick, a Sequim resident who teaches history and civics and works as assistant Head of School.

“There’s a lot of free choice in their education, which empowers them,” Frick says.

Head of School Rita Hemsley, Ph.D., came to the school three years ago to oversee a program that had seen enrollment drop to 17 students. Through reaching out to outlying communities and countries — three of the three dozen students this year are from Sequim and two are from China — that number has grown each year.

Next school year, the staff expects to have as many as five international students, Hemsley says, and the school is open to youths across the region. (The school has two buses and transport the three Sequim students daily.)

“That’s looking like a hot ticket,” she says. “Families are really looking at independent (education) as an option.”

The school can issue I-20 forms for visas so international students may study at the school indefinitely, Hemsley says.

“We’re on a trajectory,” she says. “(In growing the school) I thought, ‘Let’s look at the international community.’ And it keeps our mission.”

That mission being, “Community at Home, Kinship Abroad,” Frick says. Each year the entire school makes at least one out-of-country, three- to four-week journey as part of their curriculum. Last school year it was Belize, this year Vietnam and next year students travel to Cuba.

Other excursions have included Guatemala and Cambodia, Frick says.

It’s not all posh hotels and stays either, he says.

“We’re a backpack and boots on the ground (kind of school),” says Frick, who spent 20-plus years abroad and visited or lived in 46 countries.

“Our kids have gone on to do some amazing things,” he says.

Considering the school’s global theme, it’s fitting that much of the staff and student interaction comes in circles. The typical Jefferson Community School day starts with a short conversation with staff and all students in the main meeting room, talking about about what programs are going on or events that are coming up, what people are studying or doing and reviewing the schedule for the day. Then, on most days, students break off into their groups A, B or C — generally broken into grades 7-8, 9-10 and 11-12, though students may move between them depending on academic levels and needs, Hemsley says.

“There’s a lot of blending based on where they need to be,” she says.

The groups split up into various lessons from history and current events to language arts/English or science, with between six and 10 students in each class on average. The school uses the Harkness method, a teaching style usually done at a circular or oval table to discuss ideas with only occasional teacher intervention.

JCS students also learn foreign languages. Each with a laptop, they do much of their learning online from videos testing their comprehension to a scavenger hunt on Amazon.es (Spain), says Spanish teacher Lisa Biskup.

“They’re gaining skills to have enough context and basics,” Biskup says. “We put them into more real situations where there’s a need (to speak Spanish).”

Frick describes the school’s approach as not only “hands-on” but “experimental and exploratory,” and that takes full shape on Wednesdays, the school’s field science day. Many of the school’s students will leave the school to take part in programs such as learning skills in aviation, equestrian, cosmology, acting (through Key City Theatre), sea rescue, SCUBA and more. Students are encouraged to find mentors in the community, then get a kind of internship approved, and then spend one day per week getting a kind of on-the-job training.

All three Sequim-area students are SCUBA certified, Frick says, among the more than dozen certified JCS students.

One lesson in 2014 had Jefferson Community School students build a canoe, then use it and other rented watercraft for an expedition on a trip that included Utah’s Arches National Park.

Local studies

Not all hands-on lesson plans at Jefferson Community School involve big itineraries. Students are developing a rain garden just outside the school. In addition to studying stormwater runoff, the youths are recording the volume of water collected and soil needed, diagramming the space they have and look to complete its construction this spring. They can do the same for other various groups in Port Townsend, Hemsley says.

The school also features art classes (including an on-site kiln), digital photography and video lessons,

Jefferson Community School students also tutor younger students at the Swan School, an independent school for preschoolers-sixth grade in Port Townsend.

A highlight each year, Frick says, is what the school calls the Winter Symposium, a two-week session in between semesters — something commonly used at the collegiate level as an intermediate term — where students take on a project for an additional science credit.

“We’re looking to give them hands-on science,” Frick says.

This school year’s project welcomed 14 middle and high school students and faculty from China and Taiwan as part of the school’s first Science Symposium on marine sciences, focusing on a study of the local eelgrass beds along Port Townsend waterfront.

Using underwater ROVs, JCS students and their international counterparts — about 55 in all — examined the impact of eelgrass on the levels of zooplankton and phytoplankton and, as one student put it, “what the ocean looks like with and without the eelgrass.”

In the Pope Marine Building on the wharf in Port Townsend, students worked side-by-side with local marine biologists and environmental scientists to develop and test their hypotheses.

Their baseline study and winter eelgrass count is something that’s never been done before in Port Townsend, Frick says.

Next year, the goal is to study waterfront restoration and nearshore environments,” he says.

For next year’s Science Symposium, JCS staffers are anticipating as many as 25 international participants and the school’s Cuba visit in May of 2017 likely will include work with a Cuban school studying marine sciences in the nation’s reef systems.

An independent option

Frick, the lone staffer from Sequim who had substituted in on Sequim classes and is in his third year at Jefferson Community School, says there is no typical JCS student.

“We have across-the-board kids,” he says, from those who might struggle at a public school and those who would thrive.

Hemsley, the school’s leader, comes from a varied education background in California, from public to private, charter schools and homeschooling.

“Kids need a personal advocate,” she says. “They need hands-on learning where they can explore their interests.”

Dee Hammons, who teaches middle school language arts and social studies, also works as the school’s learning liaison. She helps run an independent study program to address different learning styles and individual plans for each student.

The school is private and requires tuition, though several students receive some form of scholarship to attend, Frick says. The school is accredited by the Northwest Accreditation Commission and is governed by an eight-member board of directors.

The school hosts its annual auction fundraiser on April 30, held 6-9:30 p.m. at the Northwest Maritime Center in Port Townsend. The “Year of the Monkey Gala 2016” is a live auction and dinner.

Call 360-385-0622 or visit jeffersoncommunityschool.com for more information.

Reach editor Michel Dashiell at editor@sequimgazette.com.