Program director among several changes at Five Acre School
Published 1:30 am Monday, May 18, 2026
SEQUIM — Five Acre School has seen leadership changes in recent weeks, including the firing of its program director.
The nonprofit independent school in Dungeness dismissed Sarah Bones on May 5, according to emails obtained by the Olympic Peninsula News Group.
According to the school’s website, Bones had been involved in some capacity at Five Acre School for 14-plus years. The school’s program director position has been listed on its website as open.
Other open positions include an operations coordinator, administrative coordinator, Explorer Class lead teacher, Bright Days Summer Care teacher and a substitute teacher.
Board secretary Julie Novak said the school’s volunteer board is in the process of interviewing and onboarding new members. Five Acre School has slots for up to nine board members but had just three listed on its website.
Earlier this year, the school announced plans to hire a development director, Merissa Koller of Mission Consulting, LLC, on an interim basis to oversee campaign strategy and long-term development efforts to purchase the school’s site at 515 Lotzgesell Road.
Bones said at the time that the school was moving toward a dual-director model with the development director focused on tasks such as fundraising and strategic planning and the program director focused on school culture continuity, curriculum, mentoring teachers and programming.
Five Acre School was established in 1996 by William “Bill” Jevne and Juanita Ramsey-Jevne with a dedication to foster curiosity, resilience and a love of learning in children through a whole-child approach. Bill died in 2017 after a long battle with prostate cancer.
Ramsey-Jevne and her son William Jevne decided last summer that they were ready to sell the property, Bones said earlier this year, and Five Acre’s then-school board began actively discussing and working toward the property purchase. They had set a goal to purchase it by the end of this June.
Will Jevne said via email that he and his mother were working on thorough responses to questions about the sale.
Five Acre School’s 6,400-square-foot building sits on 5 acres next to the Dungeness Wildlife Refuge. It became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2019 and earlier this year was said to serve 85 to 100 preschool through sixth-grade students.
For more about the school, visit www.fiveacreschool.org.
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Matthew Nash is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. He can be reached by email at matthew.nash@sequimgazette.com.
