Stevens County town reaches final phases of completion for schoolhouse restoration

A white building that once served as a schoolhouse on top of a hill in Valley, Washington, was relocated four years ago after nearly facing demolition.

Now in its new location, the building is on its “inside job” stage, one of the final phases of restoration.

“The great thing about that is once that is done, we can start moving things inside,” said Melissa Silvio, vice president of Valley Historical Society.

Built in 1916, the Little White Schoolhouse is only a few phases away from becoming Valley’s first museum and an art gallery. The Valley School District, Valley Historical Society and the community came together to preserve the building and history following an “endangered historic place” nomination in 2017.

“The main goal is to teach our youth our history here,” said George Craig, the restoration assistant director. “And we got so many new people moving into the community also that have no clue what our local history is and why the town was put here.”

Like Craig and others in Valley, many of them attended the schoolhouse in one way or the other – whether it was for a class or even for housing.

“I grew up in Spokane but my grandparents lived here – my grandmother taught in this school,” Craig said. “She taught English.”

“It was actually used at one time too, for housing for the janitors, I think at one time, a superintendent in the 30s or 40s, and then it went back to being a classroom,” Silvio added.

Jesse Klemish said he attended the Little White Schoolhouse for grade school.

“I had music here, and then the basement was our locker room. It was called the Eagles Nest,” he said.

Klemish is the co-president of the group and grandson to Jackie Franks, the founder of the Valley Historical Society.

Franks, 93, who attended the school as a kid, started the group back in 2008 and began working to restore it. She donated land in 2015 at the fairgrounds so it could be relocated.

This was before the schoolhouse was nominated in 2017 by the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation as one of the Most Endangered Historic Places.

“She always had in mind the Little White Schoolhouse being preserved as a museum, even from the beginning,” Silvio told The Spokesman-Review. “So I think that was a big motivation for them starting the Historical Society back then.”

On July 15, 2020, they successfully moved the schoolhouse to the town’s fairgrounds and have been working year -round to restore and rebuild parts of the building.

“We just finished the roof. We had a ‘Raise the Roof’ fundraising campaign that we just finished,” said Silvio, who, through outreach, helped raise $50,000 funding through grants and donations for the schoolhouse.

The Valley Historical Society will open the Little White Schoolhouse to the public from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Aug. 9 and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Aug. 10. Community members can walk in and read through history as well as donate and participate in their raffle.