Local Community Profile

Olney Friends School educates students for lives of service in the local community and in the world.

In this year‘s student body, seven are from Barnesville and the surrounding area, and about a quarter are from Ohio. Sixteen different states and 10 different countries are represented. The group is socioeconomically diverse. About 60% of Olney students come from all over the country, and about 40% come from all over the world.

Community service is an integral part of the Olney curriculum. Collectively, students have logged 500 hours of community service from August through December. Perhaps the students‘ single biggest accomplishment was to assist the Barnesville street crew with cleanup following the Pumpkin Festival. Other service projects this fall have included tutoring at Barnesville Middle School, assisting at the local Head Start program, scaring visitors to the Halloween haunted house and haunted trail at the Barnesville Memorial Park, picking up trash and running the concession stand at local Pee Wee football games, and directing runners at a Barkcamp State Park trail run to raise funds for cancer research.

At Olney, service is understood even more broadly. Taking care of the natural world comes as an outgrowth of a strong education in biology and environmental science. The school‘s location on 350 acres in the foothills of the Appalachians presents many opportunities for hands-on learning in science and conservation. Ongoing student projects include reforestation, assisting local authorities with water quality monitoring, and growing organic produce for use in the school‘s kitchens.

We aim to graduate critical thinkers and researchers, skilled citizens, and conscientious stewards of the world‘s resources. Olney students have gone on to succeed at such well-regarded colleges as Haverford College, Grinnell College, and Earlham College. In each of the last three years, an Olney student has been recognized by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation for academic achievement. Olney Friends School alumni are teachers, social workers, physicians, scientists, researchers, artists, and businesspeople.

Olney teachers are dedicated and accomplished in their fields of study. Two of them have been honored this fall with awards for their teaching. Biology teacher and lifelong area resident Leonard Guindon has been named Ohio Conservation Teacher of the Year by the Ohio Federation of Soil and Water Districts. Humanities teacher Abigail Chew received the George G. Skinner and Lela Skinner Bailey Teaching Development Award for professional development. The award is given each year to a teacher in the Barnesville school district to acknowledge those who go “the extra mile.”

Olney‘s administrative leaders take an active role in the national K-12 educational scene. Head of School Richard Sidwell serves on the boards of both the Ohio Association of Independent Schools (OAIS) and the Friends Council on Education (FCE). In addition, the school‘s staff and administration are leaders in the local community. Sidwell is the president of the Barnesville Area Rails to Trails Committee and a member of the local Rotary Club. Olney‘s director of development, Mary Sidwell, is a board member of the Watt Center, a local educational museum and arts center.