From Humble Beginnings: Joy Christian School Comes of Age
By Jo Anne Grammond
When they take the field, the Joy Christian School football team knows the odds are against them. They are young, with not a senior among them, and their experience playing football is limited. But in every game, the boys play their hearts out.
“That’s what Joy is all about,” says Michelle Reddy, director of development for the school. “Family, teamwork, and heart, that’s what matters.”
These are the values taught at Joy, where the football team is well into its inaugural season. The year-old private Christian high school is located on the Community Church of Joy campus in Glendale, with only thirty-four students. It won’t have its first senior class until 2008.
Reddy says the football team is symbolic of what’s been happening at Joy Christian School during the past year, where the fundamentals of teamwork, love, forgiveness, and faith have been tested. Last fall, just weeks before the students were to celebrate the grand opening of their new gymnasium, a fire broke out and destroyed a sizable portion of the building.
“We worked for three years to raise the money to build the gym, so it was devastating,” Reddy says. “The best you can do is forgive and move on.”
And move on they have. A temporary wall was constructed, and in August, the students resumed activities in the gymnasium. In November, the school will officially break ground on a major expansion to the existing gymnasium, to include replacing the temporary wall and adding six classrooms, locker rooms, and a weight room.
“After the fire, the school and community came together, and we raised the money to move ahead with the bigger, better facility ahead of schedule,” Reddy says.
Joy Christian School began as a preschool twenty years ago and gradually extended to full elementary and middle school, with the high school being added last year. It recently earned the highest possible initial accreditation through the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI), and is the fourth-largest Lutheran school in the country. But though the school is a faith-based school, it doesn’t simply serve members of the Lutheran church, says Reddy. Many students enroll for the smaller private setting, which means more personal attention.
“We have students from nearly every religious sect,” she says. “Seventy percent of the school’s students do not attend Community Church of Joy. We don’t enroll students based on their faith.”
The school’s educational offerings are founded on Core Knowledge curriculum, and each year the students’ standardized test scores (including AIMS) well exceed state averages. Technology is readily available, and with the recent addition of eighty new computers, every classroom has a minimum of two computers. Middle school students have their own mobile laptop lab. And, unlike most public schools, students begin taking foreign language classes in kindergarten.
All of this has set the precedent for the high school, which executive director Nate Kretzmann says is en route to becoming “more consistent with other schools.” Even with its small enrollment, the school has full membership confirmation from the Arizona Interscholastic Association (AIA) to the 1A West Conference, and offers students a variety of athletic programs including cross-country, football, boys’ and girls’ basketball and track, and girls’ volleyball. Cheerleading, speech and debate, and student government are also available.
Joy Christian School continues to grow—largely by word of mouth—and administrators expect the high school portion to nearly triple its enrollment by 2009. As the school develops, more activities will be added, including baseball, softball, golf, tennis, soccer, swimming, and wrestling. Maybe one day, it will even have its own football stadium!