After a jump in enrollment, school head Jeremy Harder reflects on a first year that outpaced expectations
By Annie O’Neill EDITORIAL INTERN
Big Sky has spent the last decade turning itself into a year-round community: new businesses, new housing, new reasons for people to stay put. A new school was, in some ways, inevitable. What wasn’t inevitable was how fast it would fill up. One year in, Big Sky Community School already has a waitlist, and its leader is still catching his breath.
Jeremy Harder didn’t plan to lead a school. He’d just wrapped up 25 years with the Big Sky School District, and retirement, it turned out, was the problem. “I think I lost my purpose or sense of purpose,” he said. So when the opportunity found him, he took it.
The doubt came later, on a hike with his parents. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God, what did I just do?'” Harder said. He credits his years in the district for making the leap possible. “There is absolutely no way I could try to make this work without that experience,” he said.
Growth is the word that keeps coming up. Big Sky Community School opened its first year with 16 students. By the second semester, enrollment had doubled to 32. This fall, the school will welcome 54 students.”I think it’s like 230% growth in one year,” Harder said, still sounding somewhat stunned by the figure himself. It’s a pace he never anticipated.
When he first took on the role, his expectations were modest.
“I thought maybe in five years, we might get to 30 or 40,” Harder said. Instead, the school passed that mark before finishing its first full school year. For Harder, the growth is less a logistics problem than a humbling one. “Hugely, like, humbling to me,” he said, reflecting on how quickly families found and committed to a school that, a year ago, had no track record to point to.
Big Sky Community School pairs a structured online curriculum with extensive in-person support including mentorships, small groups, internships and community partnerships. The curriculum is built on the idea that fewer hours on screens can open up more time for real-world experience. Fridays are set aside for community and outdoor immersion: skiing, art and hands-on projects around Big Sky. Harder pointed to one fifth grader as an example of how the structure plays out. Without classes scheduled for this student on Wednesdays, they spend two hours each week interning at Dr. Syd Desmarais’ Lone Peak Veterinary Hospital, all while training as a competitive ski racer.
The online component, Harder said, doesn’t define the experience. “We’re not just sitting on screens. It’s actually kind of a misnomer,” he said.
Beyond the accredited curriculum, students work with teachers, mentors and community partners, building connections that Harder said extend the school’s reach well past its own walls, from local internships to virtual mentorships with professionals outside Montana altogether. That freedom, Harder said, takes time for students to fully grasp.
“It was typically three to four weeks that this light would come on,” he said. Once it did, students began to see the trade-off clearly: “If I lock in for two or three hours a day in the mornings, that opens up my afternoons. To go to work, to ski training, to internships, to service in the community.”
Harder was quick to note the model isn’t built for every student. “I don’t know if this school is for everybody,” he said. “I think there’s great value in the public school system.” What it requires, he said, is initiative. “There has to be a student who really wants to learn, is excited to learn.”
Rapid enrollment growth has meant rapid hiring. Five new staff members are joining the school this fall. Mel2 Graham will lead humanities and writing instruction after 30 years teaching in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Maine; his wife, Victoria Scanlan-Stefanakos, is joining as a college guidance counselor. A teacher from Kansas City brings more than 20 years of classroom experience. A Bozeman-based sports performance coach will work with the school’s student athletes, while a Big Sky local has been hired to support math instruction.
Behind the hiring is a bigger story, Harder said, one that has as much to do with Big Sky as it does with the school itself.
“It’s a small microcosm of what’s happening in Big Sky,” he said, pointing to the wave of families moving to town as it builds its year-round community. That growth comes with a responsibility to stay accessible, he said, as more than half of the school’s students are on financial aid. “We want to be bedded within the community, not something separate from the community,” Harder said. Even so, the school plans to stay small by design, capping enrollment at around 55 students to preserve the culture and personalization Harder says defines the program.
“I don’t know if I’ve actually wrapped my head around it,” Harder admitted. Then, without missing a beat: “I’m already excited for next year.”
So, it seems, are his students.
