From the Desk of Tom Dykhouse

Focus on the Future!

Monday, 23 November 2009 09:48

Eastern Christian's Board of Directors announced this week that it is proposing a number of changes in the Eastern Christian School Association's by-laws in respect of Board structure and term. The proposed amendments result from a strategic planning process undertaken during 2008-09 and are designed to strengthen the governance and strategic focus of Eastern Christian.

The structural changes proposed by the Board include revisions in the number of trustees, trustees' term of office, and the standing committee structure. The proposal calls for the Board to consist of 9-13 members, whereas the current by-laws set no minimum number of trustees. If adopted, the revised by-laws would allow trustees to serve a three year term subject to reappointment for two additional three year terms. The current by-laws limit the term of service to a single three year term with one year extension permitted. The proposal also proposes revising the Board's committee structure to include seven standing committees by adding Audit, Governance, Strategy and a Committee of the Trustees to the current Executive, Finance and Endowment Committees. Under the proposal the current Education Committee would be absorbed into the Strategy Committee and the Personnel Committee would be absorbed into the Governance Committee, which will also be responsible for the development of Association policy. The work of the current Financial Development Committee will be assumed by the Foundation for Eastern Christian, which was formed in 2008 to spearhead all fundraising activities of the school. The Board believes that this revised structure will result in more effective governance of our school and an increased focus on issues of strategic importance.

The changes proposed by the Board are a result of the integrated strategic planning process undertaken by Eastern Christian during 2008-09. This process included the work of more than 40 Eastern Christian parents, students, community supporters, and staff members preparing for the re-accreditation for ECHS, the initial accreditation for ECES and ECMS. This work, carried out in conjunction with the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, will help to establish Eastern Christian's educational strategy for the next seven years.

While developing the educational strategy, the Board simultaneously worked with consultant from Christian Schools International, an international association of Christian schools based in Grand Rapids, MI, to develop an operational strategy to support our educational mission. This strategy is wide ranging and included a review of Eastern Christian's efforts to introduce the option of Christian education to new families, to raise funds to reduce tuition, to recruit and retain the best Christian teachers, and to manage our finances, facilities and operations in the most efficient and cost effective manner possible.

The Board believes that the strategic planning work undertaken during 2008-09 will be a great help to our entire school community in sharpening its focus of the on the future of Eastern Christian.

 Click here to read the full report.

Partnership - It’s a Big Deal!

Tuesday, 22 September 2009 15:19

Partnership is a key issue in a Christian learning community like Eastern Christian. Partnership is such an important issue that it is featured in the very first sentence of our foundational Mission & Belief statements. Partnership between school, home and church has been a key part of Eastern Christian’s existence for 117 years.

Occasionally, we are asked whether this partnership is a dated concept – whether it is really all that important in sustaining our school in today’s society. The unequivocal answer is that our partnership with homes and churches is more important than ever!

The evidence of the partnership sustaining our school is overwhelming. Think about:

• Teachers partnering with parents to meet the parents’ God given mandate to raise their children into lives of mature faith and discipleship.
• Community members who partner with our school by acting as volunteers and providing literally thousands of hours of their time and talent each year in dozens of different capacities from classroom volunteers to Board members, PTO members to special event coordinators and performers.
• Donors from around the country who partner with us to provide financial support and help us achieve the goal of keeping an Eastern Christian education affordable.
• Business owners and professionals who partner with us by donating or dramatically discounting their services – from paving to legal advice, tree trimming to web-design – so as to reduce the operating expenses of our school.

Our partners are a critically important part of the Eastern Christian community. It is truly not an overstatement to say that we could not exist in our current form without them!

Eastern Christian is a school that strives to provide educational excellence at a cost below that of our peers. We do that by making the most of all of our resources – especially our people resources. We are thankful that the Lord has always provided for our needs. He has most frequently provided through the gifts of the people that he has associated with our school.

So what should your role be in the future of Eastern Christian? Can you share your time and talent with us in support of this critically important mission of preparing the young people of our community to live lives of service to the King? We need you - your ideas, your skills, your influence with your friends and neighbors, your financial support, your time.

You can make a difference for the children and young people of our community. You can make a difference for the cause of the Kingdom!

Partnership – It’s a Big Deal!

New School Year

Monday, 31 August 2009 09:59

Today we stand at the starting line of a new school year - a time of great anticipation, enthusiasm and promise. It has been a good summer, a good time of refreshment and relaxation, but now students, parents, teachers and the broader Eastern Christian School community alike know that it is time to start school anew.

As we stand at the starting line, I want to reflect on the incredible partnership between parents, the broader Eastern Christian community and those of us who are privileged to work with students at Eastern Christian as our life's calling. God has given us an awesome responsibility, a gloriously high calling, and an incredible opportunity to be an influence for His Kingdom such as few others will ever have.

2009-10 represents the second year of our accreditation review by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. Last year a team of parents, students, community members and faculty members working on this project spent a lot of time thinking about our mission and vision. Members of the team spent many hours drafting a very carefully worded document that captured the essence of our mission. Our beliefs were organized around our aspirations in three areas - engaging the minds of our students, nurturing their spirits and, through that process, transforming the world. Click here to read our mission statement.

Every day in our school, we think a lot about how we engage the minds of our students. Last spring, we worked to develop a set of challenging goals for each of our students in literacy, numeracy and leadership. We have developed a profile of the attributes that we aspire for our graduates to demonstrate as they conclude their education at Eastern Christian. More importantly, we are constantly challenged to ask our students the essential questions that help them explore learning and knowledge in the context of the eternal perspective of the Creator and author of all knowledge.

Through our work, we have an impact on our students' minds.

We know that there are few things that have a more profound impact on young people's spiritual development than the example set by people that they respect. We have an awesome responsibility in this area- over the next ten months, our students will spend 30 hours or more each week with their teachers - frequently more time than they will spend with their families, their pastors, their youth leaders, or just about anyone else.

In his excellent book on Christian education, Between Memory and Vision; The Case for Faith Based Schooling, author Steven Vryhof quotes from a speech by John Westerhoff in which Westerhoof observed, "By the time children are twelve years of age, they have spent more hours in school than they have spent with their families and religious community combined. Indeed, it would take seventy-five years of attending church and church school regularly to equal the school's influence in the first twelve years of a person's life."

What an awesome responsibility! There is no doubt that, through our work, we have a significant impact on our students' hearts.

Lastly, we think a lot about transforming the world - talk about an incredible influence! At first glance, this is an incredibly audacious goal - but also a goal that is entirely Biblical, succinctly stated in Ephesians 2:8-10, our spiritual theme for this year. Our mission is indeed to transform the world by preparing the students that God has entrusted to us to be the hands of Christ in a broken and bleeding world. We have seen examples too numerous to count of the work done by our students and graduates to transform the world - in areas as diverse as caring for the poor and weak at home and abroad, leading institutions of great influence in our society, and in preparing future generations of young Christians to do likewise.

Truly, there can be no higher calling, no more critical mission, than preparing the young people that have been entrusted to us to lead lives of service that will transform the world!

Thank you for empowering us to act as your partners in this critical mission of preparing your children to live lives of Christian vision and influence. Thank you for joining us in this awesome responsibility, this gloriously high calling and this incredible opportunity to be an influence for God's kingdom.