Heritage Christian School launches fund drive

Topeka Capital-Journal, The, Mar 27, 2003 by Capital-Journal

Terri Current conducts a story hour for first graders at Heritage Christian School. The 6-year-old school now has 175 students in preschool through grade 12, and 25 full-time or part-time teachers.

Principal Larry Anderson shows artistic portrayals of the cheerleaders that adorn a hallway in Heritage Christian School. This is Anderson's third year at the school.

Photographs and story

by John E. Chambers

Special to The Capital-Journal

NORTH TOPEKA --- Heritage Christian School opened just 6 1/2 years ago in a leased building but is ready to start a fund drive for a new building in earnest.

Equipped with a federal 501(c)3 status that guarantees tax- deductibility to donors, the school is ready to seek out gifts from charitable foundations, businesses, churches and individuals in earnest to add to money it raises from social activities, auctions and other sources.

Two years ago the school bought a 25-acre site at the northwest corner of 62nd US-75 highway northwest of Topeka. The school has professional drawings of proposed campus with its site development and building.

Anderson said the school will be built in at least three phases, with a goal of ultimately providing for an estimated 800 students. The cost of the completed project he estimates at $1 million to $2.5 million.

A benefit Golf-and-Walk last fall grossed $30,000. An auction scheduled for Friday, March 28, is expected to bring in as much or more, Anderson said. The fund-raisers are intended, first, to buy computers to replace the school's aging donated computers. The plan is to obtain seven to 10 Internet capable computers. Any overage raised will be applied to the building fund, Anderson said.

The first construction phase, which Anderson expects will be completed within two years, will be a gymnasium and classroom space for the junior and senior high school students. When that facility opens, the school will have a temporary split campus between the northwest site and the present leased space in a building at Northland Christian Church, at N.W. Topeka and Menninger roads.

Preschoolers through eighth-graders will remain at the present campus until after the completion of the second phase of the project. Other stages include expansion of the first two phases, and landscaping.

Heritage Christian School was opened in the fall of 1996 as a K-6 school with 31 students taught by three teachers. For its second term, it expanded to include seventh- and eighth-graders. Now the school has 25 full-time or part-time teachers and 175 students in preschool through high school.

the school graduated its first class of nine students last spring. All nine are continuing their education this year, at Kansas State, Emporia State and Washburn universities, or out of state Bible and ministerial schools.

Principal Anderson, in his third year at Heritage, teaches some science classes: chemistry, physics and biology. The school has all certified teachers in all the core areas and in elementary classes; and is working on accreditation within the next two years with the Association of Christian Schools International.

Also part of the school staff are two office secretaries.

The school uses parts of curricula from five organizations. It selects the best parts of them for their strengths in those particular areas, Anderson said.

In addition to the academic subjects, all of which have a religious slant, Heritage teaches Bible daily, holds weekly age- appropriate chapel services on three grade levels; and conducts physical education classes in the church gym every day for all grades through the ninth. Music classes are provided, and a variety of field trips are taken with parents providing transportation in private cars.

Parents also car pool to transport their students to and from school. Although the school has no buses now, Anderson is sure there will be busing in the future.

Preschoolers meet from 9 to 11 a.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Anderson came to Heritage after serving as a public school principal for 22 years in southeastern Kansas and three years as an administrator at the K-12 Wichita Baptist Tabernacle School.

He holds bachelor's and master's degrees from Pittsburg State University and an education specialist's certificate from Wichita State University.

The Heritage school board of nine members is elected from the school's constituency. No more than three can be elected from any one church. Dan Snyder is the board president. The building committee chairman is Lynn Harrison, who also is a member of the school board.

As a private school, Heritage must charge students' families tuition to meet costs. The tuition schedule is $3,456 a year for a high school student, $2,976 a year for a grade school student, and $109 a month for a preschool student.

Heritage Christian School has a formal, written Vision Statement, Philosophy, Mission and Statement of Faith, plus a list of Core Values that establish its principles for Christian development of students and qualifications of the teachers, principal and school board members.