Cited: NY Daily News
A Lutheran school lost its facility, but has reopened as a secular school after the parents raised thousands of dollars were to happen. The New Chapter Academy has a new beginning as does Principal Ginger Joseph. The Lutheran school came back from the brink last month when it was slated to close the parents would have nothing of it.
The Holy Trinity Community Lutheran School, which lost its Hollis facility earlier this year, reopened as the New Chapter Academy in September. It is now housed in the former St. Albans Police Athletic League building.
The school was expected to close after it lost support from the Metropolitan New York Synod, which had overseen the pre-K-through-8 program and provided a building for the school. But in a move that could be a model for other religious schools struggling with dwindling enrollment, parents raised thousands of dollars and reopened the school as a secular private school.
“What we asked the parents to do is believe in us and believe that this thing could happen,” said Darnel Lyles, chairman of the academy’s board of trustees.
“The school is one big family, from the parents to the teachers to the administration,” said Lyles, who is also the father of two academy students. “We all want to do what’s best for our children.”
Parents had looked into turning Holy Trinity into a charter school, he said, but decided it was easier to create a nondenominational academy instead. They found a new space for the school with the help of local elected officials.
It was allowed to retain its academic credentials, he said, by changing its name and forming a nonprofit board of trustees.
“We worked as hard as we did to keep the school open for our children,” Lyles said. “The alternative public schools available to us were not appealing.”
The synod decided to close the school because it couldn’t afford to help Holy Trinity stay open any longer, said the Rev. Gary Mills, synod spokesman. The synod was lending the school money to meet its operational expenses each month, he explained, and the school was more than $1 million in debt. Enrollment was also down, which meant fewer tuition dollars.
The school once called the Holy Trinity Community Lutheran School, had signs out urging parents to sign up their children for the following year. However, many did not think that there would be a next year at the Hollis Institution.
Officials at the Metropolitan New York Synod, which oversees the pre-K through eighth-grade school, said Holy Trinity is being closed because the synod can no longer bankroll it. St. Stephen’s Lutheran School in Brooklyn is also scheduled to close.
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Parents and teachers fought to keep it open for one more year – just long enough to be eligible for charter school status.
“It’s ludicrous for this place to close,” said Marie Evans, 49, of Hollis, who has a daughter in the eighth grade. “Children do well here.”
“It’s too bad, but it’s a challenge when you have so many schools that are facing the same problem,” said David Olson, interim assistant to Bishop Robert Rimbo at the synod. “There’s a limit to the resources.”
Over the last few years, enrollment at Holy Trinity has dropped to a low of 120 students, from the past average of 150-160. And even with an increase in tuition, the school has still needed hundreds of thousands of dollars from the synod to remain open.
“We have regretted that we cannot continue to provide,” Olson said. “But we are hopeful that these students will find as good of an education in a nearby school.”
Parents and staff did not taking the decision lightly. They met with city Department of Education officials and local leaders about turning Holy Trinity into a charter school. They have also been fund-raising.
“This is an important school for the Hollis area,” said City Councilman Leroy Comrie (D-Hollis) at a meeting with parents last week. “We need to do everything we can to pressure the synod to keep it open.”
School officials now claim they can afford to keep the school open another year without financial assistance from the synod – as long as enrollment goes up. But to the dismay of parents like Fiamma Rieckman, 33, of Hollis, that did not seem likely. She attended the school as a child, and now her 9-year-old son is enrolled there.
“We wish them all the best,” Mills said of the school’s new independent endeavor. “We’re happy that they could reopen and continue.” The synod did close St. Stephen’s Lutheran School in Brooklyn.
Ginger Joseph, New Chapter’s acting principal and middle school teacher, said she is happy her school was able to survive. “I truly believe the synod did us a favor,” she said. “We ended up with a facility that is twice the size we had before.”
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My Take: I think parents should get involved in their kid’s school. I think they should get more involved with their kids as well. One time in the year you see parents paying attention to their kids most is a holiday season. That usually starts with Halloween.
While the parents look for sexy costumes, the kids try to convince them they want to be there favorite superhero or rock star. Eventually, the parents help them pick out their Halloween costume and all our happy, most of the time. Of course, most parents are most attentive at the beginning of their child’s life. They send out baby announcements galore, to everyone that they can think of. Some even send out personalized birth announcements to close friends and family.
However, because of the demands online in our society today many parents stop paying attention. At least, until their child gets into bad trouble and that trouble usually involves the police.
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