Harmony School

Harmony School is an independent, nonprofit, democratic school at 909 E. 2nd St. in Bloomington’s Elm Heights neighborhood, near Indiana University. It teaches children from age 3 through high school in a single building: a play-based Early Childhood Program for ages 3 to 6 (kindergarten is the last year), elementary classes for grades 1 to 6, a middle school, a high school and an international student program. It is accredited by Cognia, and it runs a summer camp, Camp Rhino, which started in 2025.

The school says its mission is to prepare young people to live in and contribute to a democratic country made of many kinds of people, balancing individual growth with responsibility to the community. Classes are small, groups mix ages, and students and teachers practice that balance in Family Meetings. The school’s ethos, hung on a banner in the center of the building, asks everyone to keep each other’s bodies and feelings safe and to settle conflicts by talking, first between themselves, then with a peer, then with an adult. It describes its learning as three pillars: social-emotional, academic and environmental. The school says more than 90 percent of its students receive scholarship support, and that it picks students to interview for diversity of age, background and gender, not for ability to pay. High school applicants are interviewed by a Student Selection Committee of five elected students and two teachers.

Steve “Roc” Bonchek founded Harmony in January 1974 and it opened in February with four students aged 12 to 18, at 315 N. Grant St. Over the next decade it rented space in churches and a Salvation Army building. In 1983 the secondary program moved into the Elm Heights School building, and in 1985 the public school system sold the building to Harmony for $10, which every student and teacher paid a dime toward. A $450,000 renovation finished in 1986, and for the first time every program was under one roof. The school celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2025 with a reunion in June.

Elm Heights School was built in 1926 as a public elementary school. Bloomingpedia says it was designed by Alfred Grindle and cost about $150,000. It is a two-story buff-brick building with limestone trim, carved limestone panels and a Gothic-arched front doorway, and it sits in the locally designated Elm Heights Historic District. Harmony’s sculpture garden includes a rhino that arrived in 1987 and a totem pole added in 1996. The National School Reform Faculty has had its office in the building since 2000. The school rents its gym and stage, kitchen and classrooms for events; call or email the office for rates. Find out about admissions and open houses on the school’s admissions page, see the building on the 3D map.