Giving - Parkside Christian Academy

Praise God! Crystal and I have been blessed greatly in this 3^rd year of our leadership at Parkside Christian Academy. Our family grew when we welcomed our 6^th son, Jacob Joseph into the world in June. In addition, the school grew in numbers both in the lower school, and as we expanded to the high school this year to continue to serve families and students past the 8^th grade. Parkside's new high school is called Cross Factor Academy and serves grades 7 through 9 with a plan to add a grade each year. Parkside continues to serve students from Preschool through Grade 6.

Our dream to establish a school that will unleash students and help them reach their true potential continues to move forward. Although we have been blessed to experience a growth in student population by 29% over the last two years (with most of this growth coming through word of mouth), it has been a great challenge to grow financially during our country's economic downturn.

The challenges we face are numerous!

A major annual donation (that many of you so generously helped replace last year) is no longer available due to the financial downturn.
Some parents are having difficulties because of the economy.
We are still catching up on some of the debts we inherited.

Moving from Survival Mode to Thrival Mode!

In short, we really need to get out of survival mode and get into thrival mode, where we can deal with needs - not emergencies.

We need to improve teacher salaries to maintain and grow in quality.
We are still working with limited basic educational and outdated technological resources.
We need to grow physically as we expand to the high school and more families see the tremendous growth their child experiences.

Parkside and Cross Factor Students
Making the Extraordinary, Ordinary!

John Hopkins Center for Talented Youth Talent Search selected Parkside as one of the Top Schools in Massachusetts.
This Fall, students as early as 5^th grade, took the PSAT's (not normally taken until sophomore year). One 5^th grader got a 120 (the average sophomore only gets a 126), and a 7^th grader scored 155 (the 66^th percentile for college bound juniors). Our overall average (for 5^th- 9^th grade students) was 108, and the average for returning students went up 10 points from last year, showing significant progress.
This Fall, students from 5^th - 8^th grade took the American Mathematics exam. Our top student (a 7^th grade student who has been at Parkside since Kindergarten) scored in the top 5% of all students in the U.S.
Our students are continuing to participate in other school-wide, regional and national competitions, including the Science Olympiad, Spelling Bee, and Geography Bee.
Our Head of School, Dr. Michael Dixon recently published a chapteron Assessment in "Faith-Based Education that Constructs" by HeeKap Lee.

Many of you generously helped us to raise over $25,000 last year, adding 52 new partners in this vision. We ask that you keep the excitement going and consider helping us to exceed last year's amount to raise $30,000 during this Fall season, and $150,000 over the entire 2010-2011 academic year.

Every year, our tuition income doesn't come close to the real cost to educate each student, and to meet our yearly budget, we must raise at least $150,000 from other sources.

Help us maintain affordable, high quality Christian education in the City!!

We want to build a firm foundation for a lifetime of serving urban students. We need to build a significant revenue source outside of tuition to keep providing high quality education at an affordable price, and to help give more children - and families - the benefit of a Parkside education. That need is more urgent now than ever in a climate of school consolidations and closings.