Turning into the Chatham Parkway campus a few weeks ago brought a shock! The completion of our entrance drive and new parking provided a hint of things to come, and now bulldozers were moving tons of dirt in preparation for our new Fine Arts/Athletic center. The work at our main campus and the improvements to our DeRenne campus over the summer are visual reminders of the wonderful improvements coming to Savannah Christian. However, even more important work is happening behind the scenes.
Last year, your Board of Trustees and more than one hundred SCPS community members invested many hours in the development of our new Long Range Strategic Plan. Using our Vision Statement as a guide and with the help of one of the nation’s leading experts in private school education, the participants created a roadmap that will take our school to the 2009-10 school year (which is just around the corner for Lower School parents!)
The plan is built on the following four key building blocks:
- Vision and Curriculum – Only SCPS, within the Savannah area, seeks explicitly to “glorify God … through Christ-centered training … with a rock solid foundation of biblical values … [equipping students with] moral strength … spiritual discernment … and … academic integrity..” while, at the same time, preparing students for success in the higher education context that most closely fits each student’s and each family’s religious, ethical and academic niche, whether that turns out to be the major state and private universities, the smaller specialized – including specifically Christian – colleges and universities, or the technical junior and community colleges of the state, region and nation.
- Culture - Only SCPS, within the Savannah area, has, over a full half-century of concentrated, purposeful development of students, their families, their teachers and their administrative and trustee leaders, developed a biblical and academic ethos steeped in servant leadership at all levels and in all of its manifestations to the glory of God.
- Pricing Structure - Only SCPS, within the Savannah area, has sought to execute a biblical and college preparatory vision, to establish and promote a biblically based culture, to attract and retain a superb faculty and staff, and yet, despite enormous economic pressure to the contrary, to maintain a pricing (i.e., tuition and fee) structure that remains among the lowest in the area and, among college preparatory schools, among the lowest in the entire two-state region; SCPS does not, in short, charge what the market will bear, but what its Christ-centered mission dictates.
- Geographical Placement within the area - Only SCPS, within the Savannah area, has been able to occupy and develop such a large tract of land located along an axis forming one of only two (i.e., to the west or to the southwest of city center) possible growth vectors in the area; among the area’s college preparatory schools, only SCPS is situated so ideally both by geographical placement and by total amount of acreage.
Building upon these four foundation blocks, our school has developed a Long Range Plan that is bold and exciting, yet conservative in cost. Execution of the Plan does result in tuition increases each year. But the Board took care to “cost out” each element of the Plan to make sure it was within our budget. Importantly, tuition increases are largely targeted to our most important asset, the wonderful teachers, administrators and staff who daily tackle the important job of teaching, coaching and caring for our children. Your Board is determined that our school will offer the very best program we can, remain the “best deal” in private education in the southeast and constantly work to improve the compensation and benefits for our faculty.
These are exciting times at Savannah Christian Preparatory School. Yes, we are building wonderful facilities, but more importantly we are, everyday, helping build the future!
Click here to read our Long Range Strategic Plan, 2004-2010.
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