by Leslie Moeller

Thirteen year old girls don’t take women seriously who wear ugly shoes.” At least that was the argument I gave my husband when he commented on the sudden increase in my shoe collection shortly after I started teaching middle school literature. While I’m not above stretching a bit to justify a great pair of heels, I was only half-kidding in this particular instance.

I, like many of the writers in this edition, find the concept of “spiritual formation” a bit difficult to nail down. If we’re talking about the desire in all of our hearts to see our students mature into, instead of away from, Christ while simultaneously sharpening the minds with which they serve him, then I offer yet another question or two to contemplate. What is drawing them away from Christ? And are we presenting a compelling alternative?

As much as we would like our students to pick their role models based on logical analysis filtered through biblical standards, we know they don’t. In fact not many of us do. Take a good look at what kids today find attractive, cool and worthy of imitation and then take an equally objective look at what the church, and our Christian schools by extension, offer instead. I see two primary alternatives. There are the churches where the worship team’s jeans are just as faded, music is just as loud and videos just as slick as those on MTV. The unspoken message is that Jesus is cool and Christians can be too. At the opposite extreme, are the churches that seem proudly, even aggressively uncool, unmodern, and suspicious of anyone who isn’t equally so.

I see very few healthy, appealing role models for young women today inside the church or out. It’s one thing to tell a young teenager that the appearance and behavior of the latest wild child pop star are unhealthy, unbiblical and inappropriate. It’s entirely another to make sure she has an alternative that she just might want to emulate. Every time I step on campus, I am aware that I, like every teacher or administrator, have the opportunity to offer one potential alternative. I have an opportunity to present womanhood as the high calling that my own strong, educated, elegant, Christ-centered, southern mother demonstrated for me.

Stilettos aren’t the cure-all of course. I pray that my students will occasionally see in me a woman who enjoys sharpening her mind as much as her wardrobe and whose standards and expectations are just as high as her heels. Most of all, I want them to see that femininity, intellectual capacity, attractiveness, and joyful Christianity are not mutually exclusive and are all unearned gifts from God. Just maybe a few of my students might want to follow in my well-shod footsteps.

Leslie Moeller is an attorney, a former middle school language arts teacher, former Head of School; and
current Chairman of SCL.

by Charles T. Evans

Serving schools in two cities affected by the tech bust eight years ago, I saw the effect that a tight economy has on parents’ decisions about private school.

First, it becomes evident very quickly that private school tuition falls into the discretionary spending category for most families. Tuition doesn’t compete with groceries and the mortgage, but it does compete with vacations, college savings, and charitable giving. Families who can still afford private school, but whose income prognosis is uncertain, may instinctively want to redirect tuition money to savings.

Second, as incomes go down and the cost of necessities goes up, many parents expect that tuition should not go up, too—at least not as much as other things they buy everyday. As everything that contributes to the expense of running a school goes up, parents might actually expect the cost to themselves to go down.

Third, whether they truly can afford tuition or not, many parents in a tight economy will feel as if they can’t—that private school is a luxury they are nobly providing for their children’s futures and the school’s benefit. One result is that during tough times, parents expect greater value in proportion to the feeling that they are sacrificing more to pay tuition than they used to.

So, how do we respond to the psychological and economic realities of a downturn while still strengthening the school’s financial base? Our financial management policies should communicate two things to our families: 1) we are confident in our school’s ability to weather a financial storm, and 2) we understand how stressed our families feel about their finances.

1. Avoid lowering or freezing tuition. Lowering tuition reinforces the assumption that the school’s finances are immune to regular economic forces. Schools are labor-intensive services that cannot create cost-saving efficiencies as effectively as other industry sectors. The result is that our costs increase about 2% a year more than the average rate of inflation. So, if inflation this year is 4%, then our costs will rise 6%. A tuition increase of less than 6% leaves fewer dollars per student in our operating budget than the previous year.

2. Keep current families by temporarily increasing tuition assistance budgets. If your middle income families lose jobs or take a short-term income hit, you can build long-term loyalty and protect enrollment by holding them in place with strategic emergency assistance. This is best accomplished by targeting tuition increases on the potential short term needs of families. Let’s say that you currently budget 5% of expenses for need-based tuition assistance on a $2 million budget. An 8% tuition/revenue increase, combined with a 3% increase in tuition assistance funding will provide 24 students with $3,000 in additional tuition assistance. Not only is this a wise use of tuition revenue, but it communicates that your school is serious about addressing the critical accessibility issue and that you have the ability to respond to the needs of your community.

3. Continue to appeal to the mission for gifts. With bad economic news, it can be tempting to curb appeals for donations or to seek gifts indirectly through sales and event gimmicks. But keep a couple of things in mind. The needs that gifts meet did not disappear because investors lost money. We
also do not know the financial situations of our families, and many people still need to give for tax purposes. Even though people feel jittery, the mission of the school is still relevant to parents, grandparents and other friends of the school, and it is your most compelling case for generosity.

4. Focus on smaller gifts. Many major gifts (mid five-figure to seven-figure, e.g.) are made possible by individuals’ investments. With the markets down forty percent over the past year, the original capital of many investments is in jeopardy. Annual funds or mini-capital campaigns typically appeal for smaller cash donations, and as donors protect and rebuild their portfolios, cash may be all they have available. These campaigns also can strengthen the sense of community among our families and friends by focusing on short-term projects and goals that are accomplished through a high degree of participation. Again, we do not know who will give, so it is important to provide strategically important giving opportunities.

5. Invest in value. If enrollment decreases or short-sighted pricing policies shrink your budget, continue to spend on programs or initiatives that increase the value to parents. Perhaps you had planned to add a full-time maintenance supervisor and two part-time teaching aides. Even though the aides will make life easier for teachers, you might consider postponing those hires in favor of a cleaner, more orderly campus. When we find ourselves making tough choices about spending, it never hurts to ask ourselves which investments will make parents more confident that they are making the right educational choice for their children.
A former Christian school administrator, Charles T. Evans is an Executive Consultant with Paideia, Inc. and directs the Texas Association of Non-public Schools. He lives in Austin, Texas.

by Linda Day

I agree that “academic training in a Christian context IS spiritual formation.” While there is more to spiritual formation than training the mind, there should not be less. Intellectual training is an important component of spiritual formation and the one the school can most easily address.

Of course, “being smart” doesn’t inevitably lead to being more spiritual, but those who are zealous for God but don’t know why they believe what they believe are those most likely to be “faith dropouts.”
I saw and talked with a lot of faith dropouts and potential faith dropouts while working at L’Abri in the 70’s, and the great majority were those who had been told, “Don’t ask questions; just BELIEVE.” (It was this phenomenon among other things that led two of us former L’Abri workers to begin The Imago School.)

A lot rests on what “academic training in a Christian context” looks like. I think it needs to begin with a clear understanding by all those involved that Christianity is the truth about reality, all of reality. The students should get the message directly and indirectly that knowing who God is and what He says is crucial for a right understanding of everything, and not just for one narrow area of life. Hence, we go far beyond teaching information, and we talk about ideas and how to make judgments about whether ideas are true to what is.

We also are consciously shaping the moral imaginations of our students based on a Biblical view of goodness as we teach literature and history, including biblical history, and see models of virtuous behavior. Students taught to think Christianly about every area of study will come to see Christianity as not just a limited set of rules, beliefs, and practices but as the truth about reality.

I would go so far as to say that a school with a chaplain, a great chapel program, and a separate class in character development or spiritual disciplines but with little concern for a Christian view of reality being presented across the curriculum is actually doing a disservice to students and families by furthering a split view of reality—the view that academic learning and spiritual growth have little to do with each other. All our teaching, along with all our interactions with students, should be infused with the understanding that Christianity is first of all TRUE.

Another way that this kind of teaching about objective reality and true ideas aids in spiritual formation is that it helps students get out of themselves. An inflated view of self and the importance of my feelings and opinions is the main obstacle to growth in godliness. Those who learn to submit to the truth of what is and wonder at its beauty and unity are in a better place for the work of the Holy Spirit to go on in their lives.

Linda Dey is a co-founder and the Academic Dean of The Imago School in Maynard, Massachusetts.