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Valley Christian growth stretches to more of city and beyond
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
While other religious schools grapple with declining enrollment, Valley Christian Schools’ flock keeps growing.
The number of kindergarten students increased from 40 children two years ago and 60 last year to 75 this year.
Those students fill four classes that have been moved into the VCS’s newest building on Southern Boulevard, the former Pleasant Grove Presbyterian Church.
That building also houses VCS’s administrative offices.
The main campus includes the first through 12th grades.
“In kindergarten through 12th grade, we have 600 students,” said Michael Pecchia, the school’s president. “In 2006, we had 300.”
That number doesn’t include the preschools on Parkman Road in Warren, the Good Hope Campus in Boardman and the Old North Campus in Canfield or Lewis Center for Gifted Learning in downtown Youngstown. The Lewis Center includes 57 students grades 3-8, housed in Trinity United Methodist Church on West Front Street.
The school hopes to offer a school for lower grades at the Warren site next year or the following year.
VCS has brought life to the field at the former South High School on Market Street. Both the field and the fieldhouse are owned by the city.
The school building, which formerly housed Southside Academy, a charter school that moved to another location, is owned by a charter school company based in Michigan.
The hulking building that served many years ago as one of the city’s six high schools is too big for VCS, Pecchia said. The school is working with the city to try to involve area nonprofit agencies to offer services at the building for students and their families.
“Maybe parts of it we can use for classrooms,” Pecchia said.
But the school doesn’t plan to move out of its Southern Boulevard building.
VCS is leasing the football field at the Market Street building from the city for $100 per year for two years. Eventually, the school will own the field, Pecchia said.
The junior high football team will play games at the field using trailers brought to the site for locker rooms.
Until this year, those games were played at Ipes Field. That field though, doesn’t have facilities for a locker room.
The high school team plays its home games at Poland Seminary High School.
Last week, VCS and city officials met and talked about a possible use for the fieldhouse, said Shelley Murray, VCS’s vice president of advancement and operations.
The city and VCS officials are contacting area nonprofit entities to determine if there’s interest in renovating and using the fieldhouse. City and VCS representatives met with a fundraising consultant last week.
Mayor John McNally noted that the fieldhouse, vacant for several years, requires much work. The school needs to figure out how to raise significant dollars, he said.
VCS’s growth contrasts with schools in the Diocese of Youngstown, which has closed several elementary schools in recent years.
Bishop George V. Murry of the Diocese of Youngstown points out that there are several Diocesan schools, each drawing students. VCS has fewer campuses.
“We’ve really embraced our demographic,” Pecchia said.
While Youngstown Christian School – the name changed to VCS a couple of years ago – was built as a school primarily for students from middle-class families, administrators recognize that its population has changed.
About 70 percent of VCS students live in Youngstown and come from lower-income families.
Those students use EdChoice vouchers to attend the private school. EdChoice allows students whose public home schools are considered poor-performing by the state, to enroll in private schools.
EdChoice students’ tuition is covered by the voucher, allowing the funding that would follow the child to public school to go instead into the private school’s coffers.
The changed demographics required a different teaching approach. Children from lower-income families may not get enough to eat or enough sleep. They may not get the support they need at home.
VCS has programs to help with those challenges. The school also emphasizes differentiated instruction, tailoring teaching to the way students learn.
That required professional development for educators.
The Lewis Center is the Valley’s only school specifically for gifted students. It draws third- through eighth-grade students from the suburbs as well as the city.
EdChoice allows students and parents another choice, Pecchia said.
VCS expanded to include its high school before the state implemented EdChoice, he said. School officials didn’t know it was going to be created and draw in more students.
“But God knew,” Pecchia said.