The Future of Adventist Education?

[Gregory Matthews]

See:

http://spectrummagazine.org/article/2017/04/20/could-looking-beyond-adventist-students-solve-adventist-higher-ed-enrollment-prob

[CoAspen]

I never gave it much thought that our schools were considered 'exclusive', since I had gone to school with non-SDA's since Academy. Granted they were only a few. Other Christian schools market themselves to all seeking a unique christian based education, why not us? Would this not be considered 'spreading the good news'?

[debbym]

i was never aware of exclusivity at our schools.

[Gregory Matthews]

Our schools have often accepted students who were not from a SDA background.

But, we have seldom actively solicited students from a non-SDA background.  So, in this sense they could be considered exclusive.

I will suggest that a change in our focus should be carefully considered.  It's various aspects should be understood.  Decisions should be carefully made as to the changes that we might need to make.

I recall a SDA elementary school, several years ago, that sent a letter to the people living in the city where the school was located.  In that letter they school enclosed a U.S. monetary coin and a statement that they school would pay the people to consider sending their children to the school. Such a blanket consideration does not represent to me careful consideration of the issues involved.

Further, that 8-grade school was located less than 10 miles from another 10-grade SDA school and less than 20 miles from a 12-grade SDA School.  All three schools have needed to make capital investments into the property in order to compete and presently all three are struggling.

My personal thinking is that better choices as to the use of the limited resources available, could have been made.

  

 

[Dr. Shane]

The school my kids attended closed a couple of years ago however it was not due to enrollment issues.  It was a K-12 school with 165 students when it closed.  It closed due to financial issues caused by church politics.  The Conference plans to re-open it soon as a 1-6 school and eventually take it to a k-10 school.

We have another k-12 school in the same county.  The school my kids went to (that was closed) was a majority SDA student school.  The other school is a majority non-SDA school.  The tuition is more expensive and they have more disciplinary problems with the students.

I (along with some other SDA families) moved our kids to a non-denominational school when our school closed.  Its tuition is more affordable than the Adventist school although they do not have busing - like the SDA school does.

From what I understand, Adventist education is growing in other parts of the world where students can work.  Due to child labor laws in the US, our schools have a much more difficult time.  I wonder if we shouldn't focus more on daycare, after-school and youth programs.