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The Academy at the Farm near San Antonio mixes agrarian life with school lessons for students.
By CHASE SQUIRES, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 17, 2002
SAN ANTONIO -- As the two o'clock bell approached Friday, Mike Rom was running -- literally running -- up and down the hallway of east Pasco's newest charter school.
As director of the new Academy at the Farm school on the grounds of Lange Farm south of San Antonio, Rom spent the final hours of a busy opening week introducing Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Charles Bronson to a passel of elementary school children and a heard of goats.
Then he ran back and forth up the school's main hallway, congratulating the school's 150 students for marking the inaugural week in school history before leading them in singer Lee Greenwood's God Bless the U.S.A.
The school opened Monday, and Bronson said he was in the Tampa Bay area this week and felt he had to come by to see a new concept in charter schools, mixing agrarian life with school lessons.
"I like the idea of blending the farm into school," Bronson said as he stood in a pen full of goats and giggling children. "It's an intriguing idea. They will understand where their food comes from, and what's important to our state."
Bronson said too many children and even adults go about their lives unaware that agriculture remains a top Florida industry, second only to tourism, with an annual $53-billion impact.
Tom Lange, who co-founded the school on 143 acres around his home, said the goal was to create a new learning place where students in grades K-5 aren't always lumped together strictly by grades. He said the school also strives to bring in students with learning difficulties and mainstream them with everyday students.
Lange also is developing the land around the school into a 37-home subdivision he hopes will be embraced by families who want their children to attend the school, creating a community that revolves around the academy.
For Rom, a 34-year east Pasco educator, the new academy offers new ways to demonstrate the lessons learned in a classroom as they are applied in the real world. Pastureland size must be calculated and grain and food weighed while photosynthesis powers flowers and plants.
"The farm is a means, but what we're really working on is respect, responsibility and recognition," Rom said.
Seeing how hard work leads to direct positive results on a farm can instill a work ethic Rom said is slipping away.
With a crowd of parents gathered outside to retrieve their children at the close of the first week, Rom took to the school's intercom system.
"I wanted to tell you what a great week it was," he told the children. "Now, go home tonight and tell your parents you love them."