ELIZABETHVILLE, Pa. (WHTM) – Housing and education: two of society’s big needs are coming together in the Midstate in a way you won’t see almost anywhere else in America.

It’s as impressive as any home remodel.

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“When you look at the pictures, that tells the tale as far as what we started with and what we finished with here,” said Jim Davis, Upper Dauphin Area High School building trades teacher.

“Other people, they’ll come in and look at this and they’ll be like, they can’t believe this is built by high schoolers,” Tegan Engle said.

He is one of them.

“We have a unique program at the Upper Dauphin Area School District, at our high school, where our students build homes and sell them at the completion,” said Jared Shade.

“It takes like three years for the kids to build a home,” said David Barder, former building trades teacher an current school board member.

Jared Shade, formerly the high school principal, is now district superintendent.

“I was sitting in my office and I’d come in and out of work every day,” Shade said. “I saw a sign sitting here saying, auction, public auction coming up for sale.”

His idea?

“Make a purchase on this house as a project for the kids,” Shade added.

“My father and his crew taught me, so I’m teaching them the same way I was taught,” said Davis. “Most programs build stuff and tear it down. we build stuff, and then they get to have this in our community the rest of their life.”

You might think, quite an accomplishment, and it is, but its also just the beginning of something much bigger.

“Twenty-nine lots, behind, in the field,” Barder said.

He had his eye on the land for a decade. Then, it became available, the school board bought it.

Generations of high school kids will develop a whole community.

“I plan on starting my own carpentry business,” Engle said. “I’m going for business management.”

“I always tell them, I mean, you’ll have a family someday, drive down the road, and say, hey, I worked on their house,” Davis said. “And that means something.”

“It’s really special to me to see the finished product,” Shade said.

An open house, as real as any other, will be Thursday night from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. The home is at 197 North Church Street in Elizabethville, across from the high school.

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