"Kingdom Education"--Christian Schools

Glen Schultz of Lifeway has an excellent book called Kingdom Education: God's Plan For Educating Future Generations. The Christian school where my family is involved gave us a copy of it a couple of years ago, and I find agreement with most of what Dr. Schultz has to say.

However, I think Christian schools, especially the evangelical ones, are headed for a train wreck if some other, creative means of financing them, other than charging tuition, are not found and soon. My wife and I are raising my two younger brothers and her younger brother in addition to our 10 year old son and are fortunate enough to have the means to send them to a Christian school, though we have had to make some adjustments and accomodations to do it. With three boys in high school and one heading for middle school, all involved in at least two sports and two in band, two in drama and speech, we will pay over $10,000 apiece in tuition and fees next year. When we started there six years ago, it was around $5,500 apiece.

I've noticed that there are some changes at the school as a result. The enrolment drops whenever there is an increase in tuition and fees. Financial aid is provided, but only about 5% of the families receive it, and it is $1,000 per child per year. 90% of the budget comes from tuition, with contributions and additional fundraising only accounting for 10%. The number of families who are active in their church has declined, and they are replaced by more affluent people who are looking at the academic side of the school and not the Christian emphasis, and there has been an increase in disruptive behavior and negative behavior. The school administration seems to be more likely to respond to things based on what I call the "money factor" over the "moral factor." I'm wondering if it can be called "Kingdom Education" if 80% of the people in the "Kingdom", the churches, can't afford to send their kids there?

We've looked around at alternatives, and found that Catholic schools are about half the cost for non-Catholics, and even less than that for Catholic students. In addition, Episcopal and Lutheran schools run quite a bit less. The other evangelical schools we looked at, at an Assembly of God church and a non-denominational school, were higher than ours, and the Church of Christ school, even higher than that. It would seem that Baptists and other evangelicals might need to get together and see what they could come up with to work together to make this a more efficient operation. Within a couple of years, I'll have three boys in college, and I'd rather not spend their college money on high school. Anyone else feel the same way?

 

Well, after doing a little research, these are some things I found.

The largest single expense of the RCC in the US is Christian Education, and the lion's share of that budget goes to its K-12 schools, 80% of it. Comparatively, for every dollar the Catholic church spends on Christian Education, the SBC spends a dime, with the lion's share of that going to the various state convention supported colleges and universities, and the seminaries. Only a handful of K-12 day schools are related to state conventions and most of those are old-fashioned, out of date military style academies. According to the SBACS (Southern Baptist Association of Christian Schools) only about 4% of SBC churches have a Christian school as a ministry of the church. It would seem that if secular, public education is a philosophical danger, the best place to invest in Christian education would be at the younger end of the spectrum.

At the Catholic school we looked at, the tuition was $5800 for non-Catholics, with a 10% discount for each additional student you enroll. Catholics start with the same tuition but are eligible for a payment from the diocese based on their income, covering up to 100% of tuition and fees, if necessary. The philosophy of the principle, who was a Jesuit priest, was that the education needed to be there to any Catholic family who wanted to take advantage of it. The idea that those in the church community who were able to pay their own way in order to make funds available for those who couldn't didn't seem to bother him. If daily mass attendance and religion class had been optional instead of required, I might have considered it.

Wonder what it will take to get Baptists moving in the same direction?

 

The school my guys go to has a $5.5 million dollar per year operating budget. I don't know of very many churches that could come close to that kind of money. However, this school has its own facilities. If you had a group of churches in a particular community who worked together to underwrite a school at a church that had a large enough facility to accomodate it, that might work. Or, if several SBC churches got together and supported an elementary school in one location that fed into a nearby middle school in another, and then to a high school in a third church building, that would save on indebtedness, which is a major expense where we are now. They owe $12 million on buildings and property, and have to come up with better than half a million a year in payment.

Teacher salary is another concern of mine. God does provide good teachers, though they make less than their colleagues in public schools, and even some other private schools. Of course, if you increase salaries, costs go up.

 

Well, as far as I am concerned, the government funding a Christian school is OUT. And that includes a voucher system, because, no matter where the money came from, tax money is government money and will involve government control, because not all of the contributors are Christians.

The school we are involved with now is an independent school, with no church or denominational affiliation. It is governed by a parent board. All the parents on the board must be active members of a local "evangelical, Bible-believing" church which, in practice, is interpreted by the school as "no Catholics." According to the school profile, the student body of nearly 1,000 is broken down into 602 families representing 127 different churches, including 21 different denominational groups as well as non-denominational congregations. They do have some corporate funding, and do "outside" fundraising events, though the participants in both of those categories are members of the school community.

The school is well equipped, the teachers all have degrees in the field in which they teach, and about half of them have a masters degree. The facilities are excellent. If you divided up the operating cost by the number of churches that have families in the school, it comes out to about $44,000 per church. Some churches wouldn't be able to come up with that much per year, but others could do twice or three times that amount. Families who could afford to do so should pay their own way to help out. It depends on how serious churches are about true Kingdom education.