Executive Summary DRAFT. Livingston Christian Schools. Mr. Theodore T Nast 550 East Hamburg Street Pinckney, MI 48169

Transcription

1 Executive Summary Livingston Christian Schools Mr. Theodore T Nast 550 East Hamburg Street Pinckney, MI 48169

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Executive Summary 2 Description of the School 2 School's Purpose 3 Notable Achievements and Areas of Improvement 4 Additional Information 5

3 Introduction Every school has its own story to tell. The context in which teaching and learning takes place influences the processes and procedures by which the school makes decisions around curriculum, instruction, and assessment. The context also impacts the way a school stays faithful to its vision. Many factors contribute to the overall narrative such as an identification of stakeholders, a description of stakeholder engagement, the trends and issues affecting the school, and the kinds of programs and services that a school implements to support student learning. The purpose of the Executive Summary (ES) is to provide a school with an opportunity to describe in narrative form the strengths and challenges it encounters. By doing so, the public and members of the school community will have a more complete picture of how the school perceives itself and the process of self-reflection for continuous improvement. This summary is structured for the school to reflect on how it provides teaching and learning on a day to day basis. Page 1

4 Executive Summary Description of the School Describe the school's size, community/communities, location, and changes it has experienced in the last three years. Include demographic information about the students, staff, and community at large. What unique features and challenges are associated with the community/communities the school serves? LCS is located in Pinckney, MI about eight miles south of Howell, MI, where the school originated. Six years ago the school separated from the founding church and established itself in a different community. Pinckney is a very small town with only one traffic light, located in a mostly farm-oriented area. When the school moved to Pinckney it lost a significant number of families that had long been associated with it. This occurred mostly because of the distance to the new location and the rising cost of gas. Little did we know at that time that gas was going to continue to escalate. The new campus was a vacant Catholic school building built in the 1950s. The Catholic school and church built a new location about 2 miles away and left the building vacant for several years. We initially moved in on a lease arrangement but later negotiated a land contract, which provided more security. LCS began its quest to become a fullfledged K - 12 but struggled greatly developing the high school. Thus far, we have had three graduating classes consisting of four, one, and seven seniors. Fortunately, we expect our next class to matriculate as many as nine students and the classes following to contain eight - fifteen. Growth at the high school level has been difficult as we lose as many as fifty percent of our eighth grade students each year, most of whom attend public schools. Our enrollment last year, including preschool students, was 192 FTE, up from 175 the previous year. A few part-time homeschool students were included in the census. We also had two foreign exchange students last year, which was a first for us. They worked out very well. We are seeking host homes for the fall in hopes of bringing another two foreign exchange students to the school. Over the past three years we have had some changes in faculty, which we had not previously experienced. We lost three teachers to retirement and added some secondary teachers. All teachers are believers in Christ and come from a wide variety of faiths and churches. LCS families represent approximately 30 churches in the area and come from as far as 20 miles. There is a competing Lutheran school in Pinckney that serves students through sixth grade. Cornerstone Christian, in Brighton, MI is the nearest strong competitor. The area of Pinckney is contracting economically and in population. Pinckney Public Schools is closing an elementary school this summer due to a drop in enrollment. Mostly, our families are lower - mid middle class in income. We have needed to extend tuition assistance to a growing percentage of our families over the past three years. The economy and families that would like to attend but haven't enough income to make it possible are two crucial challenges for us. Recently there have been some growing pains associated with high school students and their proximity to the elementary students in the building. While we allow a significant amount of freedom for high school students, elementary students are not provided the same latitude. Not being able to separate the two groups has created some uneasiness among parents and staff. We are working on rectifying it as best we can, but it will continue to be a challenge as long as we are housed in one building. Establishing a strong parent group organization has also been a challenge. Parent leadership has been limited numerically and in availability. We are having to revamp the group this fall with new parent leadership. Page 2

5 School's Purpose Provide the school's purpose statement and ancillary content such as mission, vision, values, and/or beliefs. Describe how the school embodies its purpose through its program offerings and expectations for students. The Christian Educational Philosophy, inclusive of goals and objectives, is found in board manual section The Core Values are found in 0140 of the board manual. The Doctrinal Statement is found in 0190 of the board manual. These documents are too lengthy to provide verbatim in this summary but may be found in the board manual. The mission of LCS, in partnership with school families and their churches, is to educate students and encourage parents by examining all of life from a biblical worldview. We are a multi-denominational, Christian school. LCS believes Jesus Christ is the core and completion of all our studies and that He will be glorified through our striving for excellence in all subject areas. We support students as lifelong learners who apply Christian education to future endeavors. Intertwined throughout the documents on which we base LCS is the fact that Jesus Christ is the one who leads the school through those who have been appointed to leadership and that He is to be glorified through all we intend for all stakeholders. We do not embrace any denominational position as being better or right in comparison to other denominations but rather believe that Scripture is God's revelation to us and through it we determine His will for our lives. Therefore, we attempt to utilize Scripture as the basis for all knowledge and teaching. Our employees are chosen first for their belief in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord of their lives and a commitment to live their lives in accordance to God's teaching. In addition, our employees are chosen because of their professional and support qualities and qualifications, which enable them to perform in a K-12 educational setting. We nurture our employees through regular Bible studies and prayer times. We uphold Christ in our interactions on and off campus. We provide a safe and caring environment for students of all ages and provide Christlike models for them. Knowing that all knowledge is God given and all creation is God's, we present every subject with those premises in mind. Some teachers are more adept at integrating Scripture throughout their curriculum. however, we encourage and assist all teachers in making this a high priority. We accept that not all of us are as mature in Christ or mature as teachers as others, so we attempt to use times of collaboration to build each other. We encourage staff members to attend graduate classes for the purpose of maintaining their certification as well as infusing themselves with the latest teaching techniques and theories. Weekly, we study Scripture together as a staff so as to build our biblical knowledge as well as to allow God to speak with us and help us to better teach our students. We desire our graduates to succeed in whatever they pursue following high school. Our curriculum and methods are designed to assure students the opportunity to attend a college of their choice or to be prepared to enter a vocational school or vocation. Regardless of their choice we want them to have established a sufficiently strong relation with God so as not to have it broken, regardless of their after-high school endeavors. Page 3

6 Notable Achievements and Areas of Improvement Describe the school's notable achievements and areas of improvement in the last three years. Additionally, describe areas for improvement that the school is striving to achieve in the next three years. The improvement plan contains ten specific areas that have been our focus for the past years. First - a new discipline policy had been instituted and the goal was to assure enforcement of it. The plan has been modified over the past few years to reflect a changing student constituency and we continue to enforce it. Second - the change of church governance to school governance was completed and communicated to the stakeholders. Third - one of the most difficult has been to develop a financial plan for tuition assistance and improvement of teachers' salaries. The need for additional tuition assistance has increased yearly and our donor support has not kept up with the demand. Three years ago we needed to reduce salaries in order to remain solvent. Teachers and administration accepted a reduction in pay to compensate for the need. Since then teachers have received increases to offset the reduction and an additional increase of four percent or more. The board desires to make improvements in this area and will continue to seek ways to bring teacher salaries to more equitable levels. Fourth - the board created a development director position to drive greater community awareness and pursue increased enrollment. We just completed the first full year of the position and it is too early to determine its success. Fifth - it was necessary to reduce the number of classes the administrator taught so he could spend more time on administrative functions. This has been accomplished so that now he teaches only high school Bible. Sixth - there was a need for a technology plan that included network expansion, future development and acquisition, and inventory and maintenance of software and hardware. This portion of the improvement plan has provided the greatest growth and success. Since arriving in Pinckney we have installed wireless throughout the building, installed a server that controls all internet in the building, installed thin clients in the computer lab so as to accommodate twenty four stations, installed an SIS for teachers and family communications, and will begin a BYOD policy at the high school level beginning in the fall of Seventh - the goal was to better identify students with special needs and provide services for them. We have accepted a wider-range of specific special needs students each successive year and have worked on addressing their needs with increased Boost teachers, from one to one and one half. We work closely with the ISD and utilize their expertise with all students that need special services. Eight - the goal was to consider the need for a public address system, and the current building has one in it. We use it for announcements and communicating to teachers. Ninth - the goal was to acquire a facility in which we would be able to accommodate pre kindergarten through grade twelve and provide appropriate programs and courses for all students. We have accomplished that in our current location, although it is very cramped and we need to hold our music classes across the street in the church building, which we rent. The strategic plan addresses the need to separate the secondary school from the elementary in the future. Tenth - the goal was to create a strategic plan that addresses goals for assessing and reporting student growth in relation to learning goals. The board has recently completed a strategic plan in which specific goals have been included regarding these mandates. The foci of the plan will become effective in the school year. The board has established goals for the next five years that include the addition of a spiritual life director, hold spiritual life retreats annually for high school students, direct secondary school chapels toward a more interactive forum, establish a stronger conduct code to address subtle bullying, increase peer coaching, cultivate professional learning teams, initiate action research projects as a norm, expand accessibility to AP classes for juniors and seniors, continue to train teachers in technology-related methods, develop plan to best segregate high school students from elementary students, provide high school vocal music and drama, eliminate the need to rent and use the church building across the street, and several more. Page 4

7 Additional Information Provide any additional information you would like to share with the public and community that were not prompted in the previous sections. In 2005 Howell Nazarene Church, the founder of Livingston Christian Schools, announced that the school had to vacate the property in less than one month. The school board asked the local court for a restraining order on the church's demand and it was granted for one year. In the months that followed the board searched Livingston County for a new location and eventually chose the only available building, in PInckney. Since then, we have maintained our presence in the small, lower to middle class community of Pinckney. There have been many challenges since the board determined we would relocate to the abandoned Catholic school building in The first was finding enough money to allow us to meet the state requirements for bringing the building up to code. What was originally thought to be $20,000 to $30,000 for renovations turned into almost $150,000 before the state approved the building. We still are amazed by how God provided the money because we had very little of it when the decision was made to proceed with the transformation. Throughout the process the Catholic church owners were extremely cooperative. When we opened in September 2006 we had to delay our preschool opening while we awaited the state inspector. Eventually everything came together and we were able to offer a full range of classes. Over the successive years we found there would never be more money than we needed and at times we would not have enough to provide salaries that were commensurate with what was deserved. At one point it was necessary for employees to agree to a two-year salary reduction and it was only after that were we able to restore their salaries and provide salary increases. Throughout this process God continued to provide enough to allow us to continue, but no more. We have grown by more than thirty students and the high school is beginning to stabilize in numbers. We expect small growth this coming year and are dependent on God for whatever He chooses to provide. Each year when the budget is established we acknowledge we won't have enough money to make it through the year and yet, without fail, we have never ended a fiscal year without sufficient funds to pay for the expenses of that year. LCS has been and continues to be a miracle, in existence only because God has been gracious and provided the leadership, staff, and funds to allow it to continue. We have had several students accept Christ as their Savior and those have been the most exciting and encouraging outcomes during our entire time in Pinckney. We've had three graduating classes, small, but the students were well equipped for the next step in life. Most of them continue to visit us often when home on breaks or for the summer. They maintain a healthy level of interest in LCS because they feel, as they should, a part of a family that will always care about their lives' adventures. Of the seven graduates from last year, six went to a college of their choice and one joined his father in his business. All six of the college-bound graduates received substantial scholarships. One chose U of M's Honors program, another chose John Brown's Honors program, two chose Cornerstone University, one selected Taylor University, and the sixth attended Hillsdale College. We are proud of the choices and the success each has enjoyed during their first college year. Page 5