Friends School of Harford County is set to build an agricultural education center next summer to help teach students best practices for land stewardship.

Plans for the center were submitted to the county in August. They show a pavilion that can hold 229 people, outfitted with restrooms, on the school’s campus on the Falls Creek Farm property off of Conowingo Road in Bel Air.

Friends School of Harford County is an all-volunteer nonprofit founded in 2005 in Darlington. It moved to Falls Creek Farm in 2015.

The addition of the agricultural education center to the campus’s current layout of a farmhouse, a barn and a few smaller structures stems from planning that began in 2018. The plan was aimed to improve the school’s approach to agricultural education and reach more students.

Two years after planning began, the school adopted a new mission statement that expanded the student base from K-5 to K-8. Friends School of Harford is partnered with the North Harford Natural Resources and Agricultural Science Magnet Program; Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay; Interfaith Partners of the Chesapeake and ARC Northern Chesapeake program, with several new partnerships in the planning stages.

Having the new pavilion will allow the school to offer more educational opportunities to a larger number of students.

The school’s board chair, Beth Babikow, said, “The goal of the new mission statement is to demonstrate best practices for land stewardship through educational classes, field trips, tours and our website.”

Babikow also said the board put a lot of effort into the agricultural education center plans and after they submit revised drawings of the pavilion, they will receive permission to apply for building permits to complete construction.

Anyone interested in Friends School of Harford County can visit them at friendsschoolofharford.org.

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