Why we chose Christ Lutheran School

This will be our EIGHTEENTH YEAR in a row with at least one kid at CLS! With five kids, we often had two or three or even four there at one time.

Let me start with the other end of schooling. All of our kids so far have gone to high school at Chi-Hi. This has worked very well for us. We appreciate all that a big high school has to offer -- marching band, choir, advanced placement classes in just about every subject, science fairs, shop classes, and so forth.

We believe that by the time a child enters high school, he is old enough to stand his ground in matters of morality and philosophy.

However, that assumes that the child has a solid foundation from his elementary years. One thing we noticed when our kids were very young is that they believe anything they are told! So as parents we must be very careful who we allow to shape the minds of our children.

Now, we know some excellent school teachers in public elementary schools in our district. But there are two reasons we were still looking for an alternative.

First, there are no guarantees -- if your kid ends up with a teacher who doesn't share your values, there's not much you can do about it.

Second, even if your child is fortunate enough to get into a public school class with a great Christian teacher, that teacher is limited in what he/she can talk about.

"As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord," said Joshua. Especially when minds are young and malleable, we wanted our kids to be in a setting where Scripture is honored and taught not only as a "religion" class, but where it's allowed to permeate all subjects.

We were considering home-schooling back in 1994, when we first heard about Christ Lutheran School. We heard it was a small, Christian school that was started by a bunch of home-schooling moms, using some of the same curriculum they were already familiar with.

By pure "chance," we met Bob and Esther Johnson at a Christmas singing event, and found out that Esther was in charge of CLS admissions! So we signed up our oldest son Benjamin for kindergarten starting the following September.

Once Ben started at CLS, we never had any doubts or thoughts of doing anything else. We were thrilled with the experiences of all five of our kids at CLS.

There are other advantages of CLS beyond the Christian emphasis. The course work is excellent -- graduates of CLS are usually well ahead of their peers when they get to high school.

Parental involvement is not only tolerated, but strongly encouraged. Beth had been at school every Thursday for years! She had filled lots of roles, from correcting to janitorial to even substitute teaching.

I was blessed to be able to teach free-market principles through Junior Achievement to every grade level, for at least ten different years.

Many other parents also lend their expertise. For example, Kevin Mason, who used to coach Division One high school cross-country, started a team at CLS. Another dad, renowned computer expert Lyle Stoll, taught computer classes. Other very qualified parents volunteer in phy ed, art, recess, cooking, and cleaning.

Everything about CLS is truly a team effort: parents, teachers, and students all working together toward a common goal. That goal is the education of our children, "training them up in the way they should go," spiritually, morally, emotionally, and physically, in addition to academically.

We were truly blessed to have had each of our kids spend eight years at CLS.