This fall, Scott Voorhees from NewsRadio 1110 KFAB and I Heart Radio, sat down to speak with our Heads of School, Mrs. Kelly Pedersen and Mrs. Buffy Baca. They discussed how the school was founded, their visions for faculty and students, and how we are impacting the community around us. Take a listen. Legacy’s interview starts at the 11-minute mark. Full transcript is included below.
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You’re listening to Community Matters and happy back to school time. There is a unique school here in Nebraska called Legacy School and we have here the founders and heads of Legacy School.
We have Buffy Baca here as well as Kelly Peterson and Kelly we’ll chat with you first Welcome both of you to Community Matters. It’s great to have you here. Tell me about Legacy School. Legacy School is a private school.
We service children from preschool through fifth grade. We pride ourselves on our small class sizes. We have some of the best teachers in the Omaha area. They’re just an amazing group of people.
We have a teaching assistant in every classroom. So That allows for us to differentiate instruction for our students, provide a ton of small group work, and just give a more progressive education for each student. Now, I say this a lot in our conversations, but pardon my ignorance, but I use that phrase a lot. Do you find that you talk to a lot of people like me who say, oh, legacy school, is that brand new? Is this your first year? And you say, no, we’ve been doing this for almost 20 years.
Yes, absolutely. So I’m not the only idiot in town. No. How many times have I driven by Legacy School and not realized it? Probably quite a few.
Where is it? If you ever drive in the Bennington area, we’re off of 166th and Ida. Okay. Yeah. Oh.
Well, yeah. I mean, that’s not far from my house, actually. So, okay. Now I know where you are.
Right. I guess I thought that was a preschool. No, it isn’t. And a lot of people do have that misconception.
When Buffy and I left the public school setting to start Legacy School, We started out just in early childhood and then kind of grew from there. And parents were like, no, you have to do another grade. You have to do another grade. And we did not know that this was the outcome of our vision.
And it’s what it became because people in the Omaha area want something different for their children. And so that’s how it just kept growing and has grew to fifth grade. It’s amazing. Tell me about it.
Take me back to that conversation with you and Buffy, who we’ll bring into this conversation in just a moment. We’re talking to each other about we need to do something else. Absolutely. Where we disgruntled employees in a public school system.
Like a lot of people said, I could do this job better than my boss. Let’s go do it. Not disgruntled, frustrated. Just frustrated with we could see the trends and how education was going, where it’s just a one-size-fits-all kind of mentality thing.
We really prided ourselves on how we ran our classrooms. And we were seeing that being taken away from us. And we were just like one day sitting down, listing out what would make a great classroom. And that’s really how it started.
Small class size, a full-time teaching assistant, curriculum that is usable yet flexible. You know, all these things. And we just kept making that list. And then we looked at each other and said, what are we doing? We already know how to make a great school.
Let’s start over. Let’s talk about some of these things here. Small class size. Yes.
How small? What’s our average? We limit each class no larger than 18. Okay. So they run anywhere between 16 and 18 students, just depending on the grade and the class. How much involvement do the parents have in, obviously we want them to be part of parent-teacher conferences and all that, but I don’t know if you’ve realized parents today when it comes to education, they want to come in there and tell the teachers how to do their job and how dare you give my kid this grade and call my son down and send him to the principal’s office or not play him on the football team.
So how do you deal with that dynamic? From the get-go, Buffy and I tour each family almost uniquely individually, except for our information night that’s coming up in November. And it is a parent relationship. from the beginning. If there is an issue, if there is a concern, if a parent is upset, that’s a phone call.
That’s a face-to-face. And we work as a great partnership with them. I mean, have there been problems? Of course, not everybody’s always going to see eye-to-eye. But I really pride ourselves and our staff.
We have daily communication with parents. The teachers build really good foundational relationship with all of their parents. These parents are there for a reason. They chose to come here.
You know, you could choose to go wherever you want to go, but they made that choice to come here. So we put ourselves out there to be with our parents for sure. If a parent and a student go into Millard Public Schools and there’s a problem, you know, Millard Public Schools can’t look at them and say, well, maybe this isn’t the district for you. Move on.
Right. You can fire people. Yes. You ever had to do that? Yes.
Buffy and I, that is a really cool part of our school, too, is that we handpick our teachers. We are in every interview process. We vet them. We make sure they understand what flex seating is, which we incorporate in our classrooms, that they really understand what it means to analyze data and to apply that to their students and what differentiation means and how have you done that in your classroom.
You know, a lot of people can do the lip service of the lingo of any industry, but we make sure that they really know how to implement it. But, yeah, unfortunately, yes. Do the public schools ever come to you and say, we want to implement some of the things that you’re doing there? Can we gain some of your knowledge on how best to do this? Or do they treat you like, hey, you go ahead and do your thing? No, not necessarily. They admire what we’re doing.
We have had tons of compliments recently. from the area public schools around us, they know who we are. They get a lot of our early childhood students because some of our early childhood students stay with us through elementary and then some come to the public schools. Many compliments.
We always knew this was a legacy student. We look forward to getting the students that come from legacy because they’re that prepared. They’re very complimentary of us. They help us with curriculum issues when we have them.
They help us with professional development with our teachers. So, no, it’s always been complimentary back and forth. All right. Well, that’s Kelly Peterson.
Let’s talk with Buffy here. These are co-founders and heads of school at Legacy School, which, by the way, is online at LegacySchoolNE.com. LegacySchoolNE.com.
Buffy, Kelly said that you guys kind of had the same idea about the same time. Whose idea was that? was at first. You didn’t look at each other and go, this is a legacy school. Oh, I think it was both of us still.
I mean, we were on the same page from the very, very beginning. When we taught in the school system, we job shared a classroom. So we kind of started that partnership that turned into business partners as we are now and have been for, you know, going on 19 years. What do you like most about legacy school and what you guys are able to do to provide education to these young students? My favorite thing that I get a lot of feedback from families and especially new staff members when they come in is the environment.
It is the most warm, friendly, comfortable, happy place. I can walk through our halls and just kids are skipping and they’re happy and staff are enjoying their days. You know, when families come in, because we do partner with our families, they are a big part of our day to day and they are happy being inside of that building. It’s just, it’s a place like no other, no other school I’ve ever been at.
And we get a lot of feedback from new staff, especially that it’s a great environment. And it goes from what age grade to when? Sure. So we start at preschool and that’s just a little Tuesday, Thursday morning class. So age three, and then we go through fifth grade.
And we used to go through six, but most middle schools have pulled up six now. So is there any thought to maybe we can expand this, go middle school? No, we’re asked that a lot. Yeah, yeah. All the way through college, no.
Doctorate seeking degree. Right, right, right. We’re asked that often by parents. And really, you know, Kelly and I, we are in there and we are involved in everything that happens in that school.
And our expertise is in early childhood through elementary. Neither one of us would be comfortable trying to act like we know how to run a middle school. So no. Well, you’re also really involved in the community outside the classroom throughout the year.
Is this something when you’re doing, whether it’s a food drive or a toy drive or something like that, are the faculty or the students involved or is this just something that you and Kelly do? Yes. So we started year one with what we call the Giving Tree Project. and have had several projects every year. It’s different every year.
I mean, our staples are we try to do some sort of food drive around Thanksgiving and some sort of toy drive around Christmas. But from there, I mean, we have built a well in Africa. We raised funds for that. Way in the beginning.
It’s a heck of a field trip. Yeah, right. You set the funds so that someone. Could get it.
Yes, yes. We run another program that we do a serial and sock drive for Heartland Hope. We sit down as a staff and with parents and decide on what kind of missions we want to accomplish and then involve our students. So whether it be students are going out with mom and dad and purchasing certain items, or we’ve had giving tree events at night where families come up and we have made blankets.
We have made dog toys for the Humane Society. We have put together homeless shelter baggies full of different supplies and so forth. So yes, it’s 100% teaching our kids how to give back to our community and have empathy and caring into the larger Omaha area. That’s a beautiful thing.
So whether it’s something like a food drive for Food Bank for the Heartland or the toy drive for Toys for Tots or something like that, the students are involved. And what feedback do you get from students and faculty about their being involved in this? Because we public school parents, we get a lot of requests for stuff, but usually it’s go out and sell these, uh, you know, free appetizer at a restaurant and stuff. So your kid can have shoulder pads for football season or something like this. This is a whole different deal.
What feedback do you get? Yes. Especially from the parents. Um, where they’re trying to help teach these values of giving back and understanding that not everybody has what you have. So most of the parents are just so grateful that we’re teaching that part.
To our students. I think the really coolest thing is even once we’ve gathered supplies or whatever it is that is our outreach project, our students even come into the hallway and into our lobby and pack up everything and carry it out to the van. Or, you know, if it’s a food drive, they’re carrying the food out and putting it where it needs to go. And most times we do have parents that also will be there and helping with that, or we’re loading up that parent’s car and they’re driving down to open door mission or whatever it is.
So It’s like we’ve built our own community to give back to the community. That’s a wonderful legacy to pass along. Hence the name. See what I did? Yes, thank you.
Not just for the students, but for the faculty. I’m sure that they appreciate being involved with things like this as well. You can learn more about Legacy School online at LegacySchoolNE.com. We’re already underway with the school year.
It’s been a great start. Yeah, we’ve got Just positive staff and happy kiddos and really great, great families. So it’s been a really good start. That is Buffy Baca, also Kelly Peterson here, heads of school and founders of Legacy School, again, online at LegacySchoolNE.com.
Thank you both so much for telling me about this unique educational system here in our community. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Enjoyed being here.