A century of learning
The one-room schoolhouse that now houses Highland School was constructed in 1875.
From left, Highland School owner Colleen Donahoo sits on the Marianna preschool’s porch with Jacob, 4, Brady Church, 3, Spencer Iddings, 3, and longtime daycare teacher Sarah Ames.
Ocean- and farm-themed decorations, made by children, line the walls and ceiling inside Highland School in Marianna.
Three youngsters play inside a yellow submarine that students at Highland School in Marianna helped construct.
Sarah Ames, whose father-in-law purchased the 19th-century schoolhouse that eventually became Highland School, reads to three children Wednesday.
MARIANNA – Some may not know it’s there, but along rural Highland Ridge Road in Marianna, right at the intersection of past and present, is a preschool inside a refurbished one-room schoolhouse.
The walls inside are lined with aquatic- and farm-themed decorations made by the youngsters, ages 3 through 5. But underneath the painted paper, a blackboard is filled with signatures of students who attended the school from 1875 through the 1950s.
Sarah Ames, 77, of Marianna, taught there for 25 years, since the opening of Highland School Children’s Learning Center. Ames worried the preschool and nursery would shut down because of her impending retirement, but she decided to hold out a little longer.
“I was ready to retire and my husband said, ‘You can’t close that school,'” Ames said. “I enjoy it, and I’m not ready to quit. My new retirement age is 80.”
Ames owns the building and since found a replacement, Colleen Donahoo, 35, of Marianna, who now owns the actual preschool and nursery.
“It was what I wanted to do when I started college,” said Donahoo, who previously worked at SmartKids preschool in Washington.
Donahoo has owned the school since 2007, when she moved back to the area from Georgia.
And the kids keep coming back each summer and fall for preschool programs including art, math, games and more. Ames said the 3-year-olds even begin to learn letters and numbers.
She said it’s hard to believe the school got its start with a $300 purchase. The school was constructed on land owned by her father-in-law, Paul S. Ames, and he later had the opportunity to purchase the building in the 1950s.
The last class of students was in 1953, and over the years, the building was used for storage, family functions, school reunions, dartball games and roller skating.
Ames, whose husband attended school there, said a reunion was “hilarious” because of the stories that were told.
“The boys were bad, and they threw the bell out of the tower,” Ames said.
“One boy threw a chair out the window,” Donahoo said, adding her left-handed uncle was often cracked with a ruler.
It wasn’t until much later that Ames and her husband, John, invested $100,000 into the building to make it a school again.
The building was raised, and a modern lower floor with a kitchen was added for the nursery. There were many changes, but the original tin roof and a nonfunctional pot belly stove were left intact, not to mention the chalkboard.
Times have changed since children walked to school in two feet of snow, but the tradition of teaching young children lives on at Highland School.
“Most of the kids I had here, when I opened, are through college (now),” Ames said. “I just hope it goes on forever.”