The Harkness House

The difficulties of the Covid-19 pandemic highlighted possibilities in education to implement new instructional models supported by existing technologies that have previously been underutilized. Further, the unique challenges to education that Covid-19 has presented brought into sharp relief a level of dissatisfaction with traditional educational systems that were unable to adapt in effective ways to address the needs of remote learning, social distancing, and extended student and educator absenteeism. While the leaders and educators in traditional systems of education seek to “get back to normal” as schools open in the fall of 2021, The Harkness House is planning to provide families with an alternative that creates a new and improved normal.

At The Harkness House, we invite small groups of students to engage in collaborative learning around our Harkness tables. We record and produce these lessons for on-deman consumption by our students and their families, creating a level of educational efficiency and authentic transparency that is unprecedented in traditional systems. In this way, we are able to provide our families with:

1. Improved educational quality (effectiveness) at reasonable tuition cost (efficiency).
2. Freedom from the mandates, restrictions, and political controversy of a publicly funded system.
3. Foresight and agility in responding to current and future crises.
4. Flexibility in the format of instruction to meet the needs of all learners at all times in all circumstances.
5. Classical curricular focus and transparent classroom instruction.

To support our mission and achieve our goals, The Harkness House is seeking donations totalling $500,000 to fund the opening of our school to students in September 2022. Meeting this funding goal will provide The Harkness House with the start-up finances and cash flow flexibility required to design and renovate our unique instructional spaces and hire top-of-industry educators. After our opening, our operating costs of roughly 1 million dollars annualy will be fully funded through tuition of approximately 75 students.