School Initiatives

Written by Denny Vauters

Second semester always seems to run a little bit faster than first semester. The days feel a bit shorter, and we have tons of school life packed into a few months. We are gearing up for re-enrollment and new enrollment with some special events to reach new families in our community. We are already preparing for the Friendship Banquet and Eagle Day, and preparation for the play began last semester! Before we know it, Graduation will be upon us, and will be sending another class of recruits out to serve God effectively based on a foundation of quality academics and spiritual formation from FCS.

All of that is more than enough to be working on, but we are also prayerfully looking to the future and what God might be pleased to do at FCS next year. We spent some time as a school in December working through our 2016-2017 school year initiatives. We will dig a little deeper into these in our staff meeting today and start assigning initiatives to specific staff members who can “own” these goals for our school. We want to put them before us now to challenge ourselves to get to a position over the next six months where we can effectively implement these initiatives.

Our challenge as a staff and school is to not let “average” rule the day. We don’t want to be as good as we’ve always been. We don’t want to be “ok”. We want to meet and exceed parent and student expectations. We want our academic rigor, spiritual formation, and life preparation to be improving, adapting, and increasing as we go forward.

We share these initiatives for a couple reasons:

1. Information:  We want you to be aware of what we are up to!
2. Prayer:  Please pray with us about these changes and growth as a school.
3. Accountability:  We want you to know what we are working on so we have some public accountability.

We are in anticipation of what God will do at Faith Christian School as we diligently steward the time, resources, and students He has given to us. FCS is God’s school, God’s teachers, God’s parents, God’s students, God’s bricks. Pray with us, come work with us, partner with us to help us diligently steward God’s school at FCS.

2016-17 Faith Christian School Initiatives
(Click here for a PDF version)

Spiritual

1. Establish a 1-week small group roundtable for high school students and teachers to discuss how the Bible relates to various topics.
2. Develop a school staff who is intentional and effective in their love of Jesus Christ and the students and families that we serve.
3. Add a Bible Teacher/Student Life Counselor.
4. Develop and strengthen elementary chapels.
5. Utilize a small-group model to better grow relationships with a favorable teacher/student ratio.
6. Instruct faculty, staff, students, and families on how Biblical principles (compassion, communication, responsibility, hard work, encouragement, resolving conflict, etc.) apply to students.

Academic

1. Expand, develop, and assess the transition toward electronic curriculum and instruction.
2. Develop AP English Composition and Language in the 11th grade.
3. Add one AP class and one Dual Credit class (possibly Statistics, Physics, and Honors Chemistry).
4. Integrate an additional foreign language class.
5. Add an elementary interventionist.
6. Add an adequate number of staff to appropriately meet the needs of staff and students.
7. Develop an appropriate upper elementary and middle school sex education curriculum.
8. Develop a library of RTI offerings that teachers can use in speech and reading.
9. Purchase new middle school science curriculum and add additional middle school electives.

Extra-Curricular

1. Strengthen feeder programs in the elementary and middle school.
2. Increase funding of athletic program through partnerships, boosters, and outside resources.
3. Increase compensation and support of coaches.
4. Offer highly developed after-school programs specifically for After Care students that especially seek to strengthen and support the student’s academic progress.
5. Offer summer camps for technology, fine arts, and athletic programs.

Relationships

1. Consider ways to effectively strengthen partnerships with local churches.
2. Provide Parent “Basic Training” partnership at the beginning of each school year.
3. Refine and improve the high school society program.
4. Continue to take steps to strengthen alumni relations in and through the school program.
5. Provide ongoing parent technology training and support.
6. Conduct annual parent evaluations of teachers.
7. Continue and strengthen the senior living program.
8. Institute a Student of the Month for elementary and middle school.

Stewardship

1. Seek ways to implement technological improvements in classrooms to include instructional technology.
2. Plan and develop south end building renovation funding and renovation plan.
3. Evaluate the need and viability of providing additional bus transportation for families.
4. Implement definite and identifiable security measures from the security committee.
5. Model a program after the “Watch Dog” program which allows dads to volunteer time for building relationships and assisting in different areas around the school.
6. Hire a school nurse.
7. Effectively strengthen partnerships with local churches, including providing wish list of needs that they can adopt to directly support a component of the school program.
8. Evaluate our compensation and benefit plan for faculty and staff.