Dear Friend of Christian Urban Schools,
Sometime last year, you provided your email address to FOCUS [Friends of Urban Christian Schools], which was established to advocate for Oakdale Christian Elementary in the face of proposed plans to consolidate all Grand Rapids Christian elementary schools.
Most of you know that in June the Grand Rapids Christian Schools Association approved those plans. We expect all 5 elementary schools in the system to be consolidated by the school year 2010-2011. FOCUS's advocacy has therefore run its course and this is the last you will hear from us.
We thought you would be interested to know that the Oakdale Christian district board has asked a separate group to examine the possibility of an independent, neighborhood Christian school in the area. This independent school group is committed to seeking input from current Oakdale families and anyone interested in their efforts.
If you are interested in helping or simply receiving updates from this group, please contact them at: newschoolgr@gmail.com. We will not be providing your emails to them (or anyone else for that matter). Please forward this email to anyone you know who might be interested in this effort.
If you would like to view the letter sent to all Oakdale parents last month from the district board, you may download it here (388KB PDF).
We at FOCUS ask of you what the district board has asked of its parents:
"...regardless of what you think is the best way to deliver Christian education, please pray for all those seeking to provide it to our children. Together we are the body of Christ, all seeking his kingdom. If we give one another grace in this challenging time of transition, we will remain one in Christ and we will bring glory to God."
Blessings,
FOCUS
What is it that Oakdale parents want? Based on our conversation during the most recent Oakdale District Board Meeting, it would appear that there is no consensus among Oakdale parents with regard to this question. To be sure, Oakdale parents would provide many different answers to this question. However, based on previous parent meetings and conversations with Oakdale parents, I submit that Oakdale parents are certainly in agreement on these central points: a desire to maintain a Christ-centered "small school" that through the staff and students reflects the diversity inherent in the Kingdom of God.
One of the primary reasons my wife and I enrolled our daughter, Emma, at Oakdale was that we wanted her to attend a Christian school where she would not only interact with classmates from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, but also have teachers, administrators, and other staff members who were ethnic minorities and placed in positions of authority over her. Both my wife and I attended Christian day schools in the suburbs of Chicago that were, on the whole, exclusively white. As a result, the racism that saturates our society was not challenged. Rather, it was reinforced. We want our daughters attending a Christian school in which they will be taught to combat the sin of racism. In our minds, Oakdale has the potential to become an anti-racist institution within the Eastown community.
On the southwest side of Grand Rapids, Potter's House provides a useful model it seems to me. Potter's House is a Christ-centered "small school" that is ethnically diverse. Unlike the Grand Rapids Christian elementary schools, Potter's House has a waiting list for its pre-school through first grade programs. The administration maintains a waiting list because they are dedicated to the "small school" concept and want to maintain an ethnically diverse student-body. In order to make Potter's House accessible to the broadest constituency as possible, tuition is based on income. As a result, only 20 % of the $ 3.1 million budget comes from tuition each year. The rest comes from both small and large gifts to the school.
Our hope is that we will be able to continue to send our daughters to Oakdale, a Christian "small school" within our community; one that is dedicated to becoming an anti-racist institution.
]]>Open to the public!
]]>Dear fellow pastors and colleagues in ministry,
I am sending this email note to all active pastors in Classis Grand Rapids East as a challenge to you and your churches to become actively involved in praying for and also participating in the discussions about the future of Grand Rapids Christian schools, especially the future of Oakdale Christian School. I attended the meeting of parents and supporters last Thursday evening (April 24) at the school, and sensing the passion, feeling the hurts and frustrations, and yes, sharing some of the anger about due process, I have come with this appeal. To be up front about it, I am not a neutral observer here: two of my own passions—Christian day school education and racial reconciliation—meet here; my wife and I have two bi-racial grandchildren being raised by us along with their single mother, grandchildren whom Ruth and I presented for baptism and have taken on the responsibility for nurturing of faith and life; the oldest is in the first grade at Oakdale, the second will start pre-school this fall. Our little granddaughter has been blessed beyond measure by her Oakdale experience and it breaks my heart to think that the school could close.
Could I ask you to consider something? Here's a conviction of mine: Christian Reformed Churches thrive when they are in good relationship with a good Christian day school. Now, in SE Grand Rapids, there is another very important component to this. Our CRC inner city churches have a very intimate relationship with Oakdale Christian School. For decades the CRC has been serious about urban concerns and racial reconciliation, and has created and supported a number of ministries. I am truly grateful for all that has been accomplished; I am grateful for ICCF, for church food pantries, for youth programming that targeted the immediate neighborhood of churches, for efforts to partner with inner city African American churches, for tutoring programs in the public schools, and more. Now, as a member of Plymouth Heights CRC and sensing the realities of demographics, it concerns me that the possible closure of Oakdale would be exactly the kind of signal that will reverberate loudly in our churches. It is not just the future of Oakdale that is at stake here; I have a sense that for the churches that you minister in and with, your identity as a church concerned about racial reconciliation, your efforts to reach out to your communities in the name of Christ, all this cannot be separated from the role that Oakdale plays in our midst as a place where we draw from beyond our own walls and provide quality, safe education for the children of Grand Rapids. Simply put, is not the future of our churches and their ministry in the City of Grand Rapids linked closely to Oakdale school?
I am only asking that you give this prayerful consideration, that it be a matter of prayer in public worship, that it be a topic of conversation among your elders, deacons, and members. Encourage it, talk it up, lead the way in placing the challenge of keeping Oakdale Christian School open (I really hope that we can keep Creston open too. Somehow, fixing our illness by cutting off our limbs one by one does not strike me as good medical practice.)
I am well aware that there are many good causes and needs competing for your attention—mine too. This however happens to be close to home; if we don't meet this challenge for the sake of social justice, for the sake of racial reconciliation, for the sake not only of our children but also the children of our community, will we be able to meet future challenges?
Thank you for your attention and all the good ministry that you are doing. I only ask that we all together think and pray and act in response to this challenge which is upon us, now. Feel free to pass this on to whomever you please—get the message out.
Yours in our Lord's service,
John Bolt
As I recall, it was thirty seven years ago the Grand Rapids Christian School Association was considering a similar plan to phase out several of their schools. The first on the list was the Central Christian High School located on Franklin Street and Madison Avenue. The second school scheduled to be phased out was Oakdale. Next was Mayfield. Baxter was already closed.
Nine churches in Southeast Grand Rapids banded together in what was called the Inner City Planning Committee. Their agenda was to help those nine churches know how to face the problems of racially changing and increasingly hostile neighborhoods in which they were located. The ICPC was a committee consisting of two Consistorial representatives from each of the nine churches: Calvin, Eastern Ave, First, Fuller Avenue, Grace, Oakdale, Madison Square, Neland Avenue, and Sherman Street. The Christian Reformed Board of Evangelism called me at that time to serve as the Missionary-at-large for greater Grand Rapids and I was assigned to work as a Consultant to the ICPC.
The ICPC made a small and failing attempt to save the Central Christian High School from being closed down, but dug their heals in firmly and successfully for retaining Oakdale. Although it may not be available in the official records of those days, I do remember that it was clearly understood by some of us that if Oakdale would be phased out, we would be the first in line to claim or buy back the building in order to retain a Christian School in southeast Grand Rapids. I am convinced that the fact that all nine of those churches are still ministering effectively and fruitfully in their neighborhoods in spite of many unexpected changes and challenges over the next thirty-five years is largely due to the fact that these churches were not willing to give up their inner-city Christian School. I also believe Oakdale Christian School is essential to a healthy future of these nine churches in the decades to come.
All this was many years before the beginning of The Potter's House Christian School in southwest Grand Rapids. When Grandville Avenue Christian School was closed, that building was first sold to the Public School, as I recall, and later was purchased by The Potter's House Christian School. Oakdale Christian School has much in common with Potter's House. Perhaps, Oakdale needs to develop a closer alliance with The Potter's House, rather than to continue with the Grand Rapids Christian School system that has become increasingly focused on serving wealthier suburban, sprawling communities. As GRCSA responds to its geographically more scattered students the need for Christian Education in the southeast inner city of Grand Rapids becomes in greater jeopardy.
The nine southeast Grand Rapids city churches could easily support and sustain a good Christian School in their primary ministry neighborhood apart from GRCSA. A sister school relationship with The Potter's House would not necessarily mean a union of the two schools with one Board of Directors. They would probably each be better served if owned by and governed by their own local support communities, but enjoying many cooperative and cost-saving ventures that could be worked out between them.
I pray that your FOCUS Committee may be guided by wisdom from God as you seek continuation of quality Christian education for southeast Grand Rapids!
]]>I write now for various reasons, partly to say thanks for continuing your support and for spreading the news about our mission, and to give an update on what FOCUS has been doing and what our District (Oakdale) Board is working on to further the cause of a better Christian urban school. The rest will follow!
We at FOCUS have never pretended we have one solution, or that our ideas are the only ones worth pursuing. The few who started FOCUS saw the need literally to jump-start a general movement that has eventually -- and naturally -- begun its evolution into something much bigger than we could have imagined. The ideas you've seen in the emails and website are not just ours: they come from you. Truly, it has been a communal effort, and must continue to be. Our desire at FOCUS has always been to do our best to represent the majority of opinion in our Oakdale community, never to co-opt the work. If you want to have a voice, just speak. We all need to listen to each other.
We've noted from the start that one of the main differences between a good school and a superb one is parental involvement. That involvement must happen now and it must continue for success.
We're staying in touch with the GRCS Administration. We hosted a meeting last week to discuss the importance of Oakdale's existence, and to make them aware of the incredible energy shown by all of you and those who signed the website letter (btw, we're awe-inspired by the networking especially of alumni in spreading the word!). Our hope is that the Administration will see this passion as something to be capitalized on, for the good of the whole Grand Rapids Christian School Association. We will continue to press for "Innovation, not Consolidation," for all the GRCS schools. We will be having another meeting with the Administration in the next two weeks.
Related to the "Innovation, not Consolidation" idea, and in light of the possibility of a 700+ student school, many parent volunteers are researching the advantages of small school populations.
Some parent volunteers are strategizing ways to hold small-group prayer meetings with parents at the other schools. We recognize the need to build bridges and find the best ways to listen to each other (similar means/ends in mind or not).
We'll be participating in an Association-wide prayer time the week after Spring Break. FOCUS will let you know when that takes place, so that you can join all of us at the same time.
We joined a meeting with staff at Oakdale that the District Board hosted just recently.
Many sense a particular need to contact all current Oakdale parents with updated factual information, and to fulfill this need our District Board will be hosting a Community Meeting in the next couple of weeks for the Board and Mr. Bryant to answer parent questions.
Some parent volunteers are working with local CRC churches (with plans to contact area non-CRC churches very soon). Last week we hosted a community/neighborhood meeting of local church people, some of whom have Oakdale alumni children. We charged them with talking to other church members, Christian education and social justice committee folks to see how we might all form partnerships (sponsoring a few students each year, helping to recruit, and such).
We have parents involved directly with our preschool teachers to host a recruitment-for-kindergarten day. Our current kindergarten enrollment is looking promising, but we can do so much better.
Some parent volunteers are studying the workings of other exemplary urban Christian schools for ideas that can benefit Oakdale now and long-term.
And again,
Please seriously consider joining a subcommittee, if you haven't already:
With deepest sincerity for all of your concerns and actions,
Tracey
]]>We are not expecting any report from the School Program task force regarding consolidation at this meeting.
A representative of FOCUS will be present.
]]>The meeting was held at the Grand Rapids Christian High School DeVos Center for Arts & Worship.
The next Board of Trustees meeting is scheduled for Monday, April 21, 2008 at 7:00 p.m. at Creston and Evergreen Christian Elementary Schools located at 1031 Page NE, Grand Rapids.
| 2003 | (1.2) million |
| 2004 | (300,000) |
| 2005 | (500,000) |
| 2006 | $17,000 (due to the Get Healthy campaign) |
2007-2008 – not as many students as projected but didn't have as much impact as the year before. A positive cash flow is expected operating whole year without needing to borrow money.
Enrollment – 3.5% less in K-12 is projected for 2008. Preschool is too complicated to mix into the numbers due to all the different options being offered.
| Grades | Projected (2008) | Actual (2007) |
|---|---|---|
| K = (4)% | 124 | 129 |
| 1-5 = (3.5)% | 687 | 712 |
| 6-8 = (9.5)% | 429 | 474 |
| 9-12=(0.6)% | 1000 | 1006 |
Custodian line item showed a great increase – this is due to new facilities requiring additional expenses.
When does Tom DeJonge see enrollment stabilizing or even increasing? It takes 13 years to get a group of students through the school system. 10-12 years ago GRCS enrolled its smallest group of students. This was around the same time the charter schools started up. Within the next couple of years we will have moved that group through the system. Project less of a swing and more stable enrollment in about 2-3 years.
Tom DeJonge touched on the School Programming task force. The sub-committees meet almost weekly. Operations task force has 13 scenarios on the table right now. They are narrowing it down to present to the board.
The proposed budget was passed and the two at-large members were endorsed.
]]>