Faith Christian Head of School Peter Baur, who welcomed students back to classes for a second year recently, said enrollment at the middle and upper school levels is the highest-ever this academic year for the “Classical Christian” JK-12 private school on Buck Mountain Road in Southwest Roanoke County. There are 55 new students overall at FCS with a net gain of more than 30 – and an overall student population of just under 300.
“That’s something we’re very excited about,” said Baur of the record numbers at the higher class levels. “Last year we worked very hard at promoting the school and we had good results.” FCS spokesperson Susan Childs said enrollment at the lower school level has typically been “much larger” than at the middle and upper school levels, “so it’s very exciting for us. [People] are seeing the strength of the program and the quality of the young people it is producing. They’re looking for an alternative and something different.” Different but perhaps not really new – Childs said the Classical method of education has been used for “thousands of years.”
Faith Christian students and many parents gathered last week for a rally of sorts in the school’s Great Room, as Baur and others spoke about the year ahead. Baur said parents were “excited” about some changes at the school – one reason new students were attracted and others were retained. This academic year Faith Christian will also “celebrate the passage of time and different aspects of the community.”
Tobias Riggs teaches Latin and Greek at the upper school level; he also spoke at the opening ceremony which was called Inceptio (that’s Latin), which he described as signifying “that we are embarking on a journey… a journey of studying together and glorifying God with our minds … coming together as a community.” Riggs said he too was “very excited” about the record middle and upper school enrollment levels. “I think it shows that people are excited about what we are trying to do. They’re very interested in that.” He commended efforts made by Baur since he came aboard last year to succeed Sam Cox, who left for a larger private school in Greensboro.
Senior Kirsten Cott has three “buddies” this year at the kindergarten level, showing them the Faith Christian way as they embark on their school careers. “Telling them what they should look for,” said Cott just before she went in to the Inception (In-Kept-Tee-Oh) program.
Matthew Withers, a fellow senior, said Inceptio follows up on a closing ceremony Baur instituted at the end of the 2014-2015 academic year. “This is designed as a complement to that … to make sure that every student is involved at the beginning of the year in some way.” Withers was happy to see the rise in upper school attendance: “We’ve been dwindling the past few years.”
Penny Maynard was one of the parents who came out for the opening Inceptio ceremony to usher in the new school year: my [two] children are very excited and they’ve been here since kindergarten.” Her fourth and tenth graders, in fact, “never want to miss a day of school. I have to fight with them not to go to school [when they are sick for example].” Maynard called Faith Christian School a “hidden jewel” but she doesn’t want to see it get too big – she prefers the smaller class sizes and the intimacy. “I like the attention that my [children] get.”
By Gene Marrano
