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“This is a comma, not a period,” Rebecca Taylor, cofounder of Buffalo Creek Boys School, told The News-Gazette in an interview recently. “The fact [is] that we’re taking a year off to pray and talk with Augusta and Rockbridge County and perhaps home-schoolers … and the people and volunteers and [see] like what would they like to see happen …” In January, Taylor began suspecting that she and her husband and fellow BCBS cofounder, Lee Taylor, would not be able to sustain their vigorous education for boys at Buffalo Creek Boys School with what little demand they were noticing from the community.
“It pretty much comes down to – and I’ve been feeling it since January – there’s just not enough interest from the community and boys, and it costs as much to run school with nine kids as it does 30 kids to provide all of those different [grade] levels,” Taylor said.
She continued, “We just weren’t seeing people come and we actually had nobody signed up for enrollment next year, except for returning students. There’s just not growth and I mean after six years, there’s got to be growth or there’s no demand.”
Establishing the Buffalo Creek Boys School in 2017, the Taylors sought to create a learning environment for young boys striving to connect the mind, body, and spirit through a classical Christian education. Classical Christian curriculum is multifaceted and very complex, which is an element that might deter prospect students from enrolling at Buffalo Creek Boys School, said director of operations Jenny Hartsock.
A classical Christian curriculum has three primary components to what is taught – grammar, rhetoric and logic. Apart from their academic lessons, the Taylors offer multiple exploratory lessons, including wood-fired pottery, auto mechanics, tinkering, chess, carpentry, archery, fine arts, cooking, and stitchery. “I don’t know that anybody offers what we do academically or experience [wise] … We’re so unique that we offer something completely different from the other private schools,” Taylor commented.
What makes BCBS particularly unique is its element of “adventure with purpose.” At their “End of the Year/Look Back Over the Years” celebration held on May 23 at Lexington Baptist Church, the BCBS students and teachers reminisced on many of the adventures they embarked on this past year.
Some of the boys recounted long hiking treks in West Virginia and five day-long biking trips. Student leader, or “ranger,” Colton Hartsock summarized just some of what the boys attending BCBS did this school year.
“This school year we have had a hard challenge, not just academically, but physically too. In the first quarter, we started out easy and progressed as the year went on. We went to Lake Moomaw in western Virginia as our first overnight camping trip. It was a six-mile hike there and back. The second quarter, we went to Spruce Knob in West Virginia. We hiked roughly 16 miles over the course of three days. The first day we got there, it was snowing hard and below freezing weather. We hiked in with about 30 pounds with food, water, and all the essentials we would need over the next several days. We ended the first semester with a Christmas recital,” he said.
Hartsock continued, “We started the second semester with a St. Patrick’s play … In early May, most of the school went on a five-day-long bike camping trip. The trip started in Maryland and went to D.C. over the course of several days. Several of us biked over 100 miles in just five days…” Throughout the evening’s celebration, the students demonstrated what they had been working on at BCBS over the course of the year. Joined by their teacher, Barry Hause, a few of the boys took the stage as a guitar ensemble to perform a number of classical songs. These students began the year with little to no guitar experience but had quickly learned the instrument, which is “quite profound to go from a nonplaying performer to this,” Jenny Hartsock told audience members.
Following this performance, students recited a table blessing and Nicene Creed they had memorized in Latin. While the creed presented a good academic challenge for the boys, Hause noted that it also strengthened their faith and affirms their relationship with God.
Jenny Hartsock commented, “In the six years, several students have attended Buffalo Creek and have been blessed by this experience where boys could really thrive academically, physically, and most importantly spiritually.”
As a testament to her statement, Hartsock welcomed members of the BCBS community who have moved on from the school, but will not soon forget how the school impacted their lives.
Thadd Kendrick, who is now a rising senior in high school and a candidate for Virginia Military Institute, attended Buffalo Creek Boys School from the fall of 2017 to the spring of 2020. He was the Taylors’ first student at the school, and he believes he received the Taylors’ undivided attention, giving him a “Godly example of true man.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Taylor poured themselves into me. They turned me into what I am now,” Kendrick said. “The Taylors lost time and money to be with me. They lost time and money and energy and effort to do God’s will.”
Matt Niebur, plant manager of Modine, also commended the work of the Taylors and BCBS for their dedication in the education of his son, Graham.
Niebur said, “We were introduced to Buffalo Creek probably in 2018-2019 at the community festival and we were doubtful. We were reluctant as many parents probably were. Normal was comfortable even though it wasn’t good for our son, even though it wasn’t the best for our son, but it was comfortable, so we stayed [at public schools].”
He continued, “Then Covid hit and we were faced with some harsh realities of how [Graham’s] schooling was going to go and we immediately thought of Buffalo Creek … I can’t express my gratitude for the work – the good work – that the teachers and the staff of Buffalo Creek Boys School did for Graham and our family in those years.”
Part of what inspired the Taylors to cater to the educational needs of young boys is that they felt that public schools are seemingly failing male students, who “fall in the cracks” of female students, who biologically mature two years quicker than boys, Hartsock told The News-Gazette in an interview.
They’ve based this mission off research of which they shared at the local private school fair in February, “Too Many Boys are Failing in American Schools: What can we do about it?” Some of the statistics they found suggests that “boys suffer hyperactivity and stress nine time more frequently than girls, boys receive greater behavioral penalties, boys comprise of 70 percent of school suspensions…”, Jenny Hartsock said in her interview.
Rebecca Taylor believes that providing boys with a safe, open learning environment separate from female peers gives them an opportunity to be young, goofy boys while being guided by an assertive and directive education.
“Our mission will always be aimed [towards] boys … not saying we won’t include girls in some things but that will always be a part of our focus is to have those things that boys need, whether that’s hands-on building or outdoor [components] but just building Godly men,” Taylor told The News-Gazette. “No matter what we do that will always [be the focus].”
Looking forward, the Taylors and BCBS board hope to continue working towards this mission – and in a new location. The Buffalo Creek Foundation purchased 36 acres on Steeles Fort Road in Raphine, where they have the facilities to cultivate a functional school environment. There are many woods and a natural spring located on the property as well.
“Right now, we’re investigating how to make that spring profit us – bottled water, whatever – we just have that on hold and see where that might take us, but for now, we’ll investigate, pray, and see where the Lord leads. We have no idea what that might look like right now,” Taylor commented.
As the Raphine property is centrally located near the border with Augusta County, BCBS will be communicating with “Boomerang gangs,” networks of home-school families and communities from each county, to establish what their educational needs are and how BCBS can build a school that accommodates for those needs.
Taylor said, “We want this to be a community build and if the community is not behind it and supportive in all kinds of ways, then we won’t do anything … There’s no use building this wonderful program if people don’t want it …” She continued, “[We’ll] just be kind of talking to people and praying and brainstorming and seeing what happens … [and] be open to new ideas.”
Hartsock said that all of the BCBS students were extremely disappointed with the announcement that the school was closing. Next year, as BCBS leaders evaluate the school’s future, some of the students will be attending other private schools, some will be transferring to public schools, and some will be home-schooled, Taylor said.
