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Valley Christian Schools grow into Warren
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
Valley Christian Schools is expanding into Trumbull County with next year’s opening of a kindergarten-through-sixth-grade school on Warren’s West Side.
The school will be at Warren First Assembly of God on Parkman Road Northwest. The announcement came Tuesday when the school also marked its 40th anniversary.
The school began as Youngstown Christian School in 1975.
“We had our strategic plan in 2012,” said Shelley Murray, the school’s director of institutional advancement.
School leaders believe it’s their call to offer quality Christian education to more students across the Mahoning Valley.
As part of that plan, the school changed its name last year from Youngstown Christian to Valley Christian Schools. The main campus is on Southern Boulevard on Youngstown’s South Side. It opened the Lewis School for the Gifted in downtown Youngstown in 2014 and it operates two early-learning centers, one at Good Hope Lutheran Church in Youngstown and one at Old North Church in Canfield.
The schools and early learning centers enroll 700 students from Mahoning, Columbiana and Trumbull counties.
Michael Pecchia, president of Valley Christian, said there’s a possibility of developing kindergarten-through-sixth-grade feeder schools throughout the Valley.
The plan is for the Warren location to expand to include seventh-and-eighth grades.
Pecchia said the schools’ mission is to transform the lives of students through love, scholarship and mission.
Murray said the school includes three kindergarten classes this year and it continues to grow. In 2009, the enrollment stood at 380.
“We nearly doubled in size in six years,” she said.
Mayor John A. McNally presented school officials with a proclamation, celebrating the school’s 40th anniversary.
The school’s first class of six students graduated in 1980.
The school started when Highway Tabernacle Church, then led by the Rev. Jay Alford, bought the former Bancroft School.
It was the first nonparochial private school in the Valley that offered families a faith integrated educational experience.