13 Who Are Christian Education Parents?

William always knew whom to call when he needed a hand. For William, one of the best and most-surprising things about his child’s enrollment in Christian school was the parent network the enrollment opened to his family. William and his wife each quickly made friends and connections among the other school parents. The school took deliberate steps to help parents do so, with school parents’ days, a school parents’ organization, and class parent directories. But the informal parent network was just as vital and powerful. Within a short time, William and his wife found that they were enjoying the company and kindnesses of other school parents inside and outside of school, as well as their business goods and professional services.

Parents

The parents with whom you share a school community can make a big difference to your experience of your child’s schooling. Parents of your child’s classmates can also make a difference to your child. School parents form new parent friendships beginning on their child’s first day of school. School parent networks can become a vital part of a child’s family life and friendships. School parents coach and volunteer at school together, chaperone and drive on school trips together, meet and recreate with their children after school together, and even vacation on school breaks with their children together. School parents also network with one another for goods, services, advice, information, and referrals. Getting your first child into school opens a vital parent social network for you, one that can significantly enrich your life and the life of your child. The common household loneliness and isolation of raising infants ends with preschool or kindergarten enrollment, generally for your better welfare and the better welfare of your family and children.

Commitment

Christian school parent networks can be especially vital and supportive, for your benefit and the benefit of your child. That vitality is in large part due to the faith commitment of Christian school parents. Christian schools may request that parents enrolling their children acknowledge in writing that they support the school’s instruction of their children in the faith tradition the school embraces. Parent consent after clear school disclosure can ensure the school’s transparency and forestall later disagreements and disputes. Parent consent also generally reflects the parent’s own commitment to that faith tradition. In short, Christian school parents are often, even if not always, active and practicing members of local churches within the same or similar faith tradition as the majority of other parents also having children at the school. Christian school parents thus typically have an additional commonality and affinity among them that public school parents may lack. Christian school parent networks may also be closer not only in the depth and nature of their faith commitment but also in other related affinities and outlooks. When you send your child to Christian K-12 school, you join a parent community knit together not only by school choice but also by faith commitment.

Churches

Christian school parents also generally share church attendance with at least some of their child’s Christian school’s other parents. As already indicated in a prior chapter, some Christian schools primarily serve a single local church membership, while other Christian schools serve multiple churches, even dozens of them. No matter the church makeup of your child’s Christian school, you are likely to have at least a couple or few school parents whom you know through church, creating additional connections and affinities for you. That hidden web of healthy church relationships, woven through the school’s parent network, makes that network especially fruitful for all manner of family and child support. Whether your child needs a ride to school or back, hand-me-down athletic equipment, or a meal prepared due to illness, you’re likely to find it in your Christian school parent network, spurred and supported by the school’s church connections.

School

Your child’s Christian school is likely to take deliberate action to help connect you and your spouse with other school parents, as soon as you enroll your child. In Christian schools especially, as in some other well-run schools, school teachers and administrators make a point of welcoming, introducing, and connecting parents. As the story at this chapter’s beginning suggested, their methods include parents’ days, parent organizations, and class parent directories. Some Christian schools also have parents serve specific classrooms or teachers, in rotating groups or pairs, while also relying on parents to drive and supervise students on school trips. Christian schools may also recruit parents in pairs or groups to coach and referee sports, advise clubs, lead the school board, serve on school committees, and support other co-curricular and extra-curricular programs and school operations. Yet as much as Christian schools involve and connect parents in these ways, Christian school parents routinely and joyfully connect with other school parents on their own. Christian school parents can easily see the school community as the heart and soul of their social life and support network. May that blessing also be your experience of your child’s Christian school.

Similarity

As already mentioned in the above paragraph on faith commitment and church attendance, Christian school parents can have a greater similarity of interests and affinities than parents in other schools. Their common faith tradition and the likelihood of intersecting church membership and attendance augur those similarities. Other factors, though, can also increase the consistency and coherence of Christian school parent networks. For one example, private Christian schools often rely on parent transportation rather than school transportation. Some Christian schools operate school buses. Many Christian schools do not. A Christian school parent’s daily drive of a child or children to and from school brings the parent into daily contact with other parents, at drop off and pick up. That transportation rhythm alone fosters connections and affinities, especially when a family shares the driving duties with another family, as is common. Faith tradition, church membership, school activities, driving duties, and a host of other common activities, commitments, and interests make Christian school parent networks especially cohesive, coordinated, and consistent.

Variety

As much as Christian school parents may have similar commitments, responsibilities, and affinities, beyond those that public school parents generally share, Christian school parents can also show great variety in their backgrounds, experiences, and interests. For example, as much as private school tuition costs tend to keep Christian school parents among the middle- and higher-income families, many Christian schools deliberately ensure access for the children of low-income families. As previously indicated, Christian schools do so through tuition adjustment, fundraising, and scholarships. Christian school parents and alumni may also voluntarily pay the tuition costs for another lower-income family. Christian schools can also have special programs bringing the children of migrant-worker families, immigrant families, single-parent families, and other families in need, into the school for enrollment. Christian schools offering their increasingly common foreign language immersion programs can especially acquire a parent community with a wider variety of cultural backgrounds. Your child’s Christian school should offer you a healthy variety of interactions with parents of differing demographics, interests, and experiences.

Volunteering

Christian school parents generally have a healthy willingness to volunteer in generous support of school programs and activities. If other schools find it hard to recruit parents to coach, mentor, drive, supervise, or otherwise serve students in school programs and activities, Christian schools typically do not face similar difficulties. That eagerness of parents to serve their children’s private Christian K-12 school may be due to their Christian faith, their investment in the private school demonstrated by their financial commitment to pay tuition costs, advantageous income levels, or other factors. Abundant parent volunteering may also be due to the figurative ownership Christian school parents take in school operations. They often give financially beyond tuition costs, while offering other free goods and services to reduce school operating costs and ensure the school’s quality. No matter the cause for abundant parent volunteering, Christian schools benefit from the highest parent engagement in school activities.

Kindnesses

Christian school parents can also share significant kindnesses with the parents and children of other school families. If a schoolchild or parent suffers a serious illness or injury, other parents within the school community may offer meals, groceries, transportation, and childcare as supportive kindnesses. If a school family suffers disability, job loss, business loss, home damage, or other personal, financial, or material oppression, other Christian school parents may provide free lawncare, home maintenance and repair, snow removal, and other goods and services. If a school family simply cannot make ends meet, other Christian school parents may provide free clothing, gift cards, rent payments, utility payments, and other helpful goods and services. Moreover, Christian school parents will also pray for one another’s children and families, while offering comfort, reassurance, and a compassionate listening ear. Expect to receive and share abundant Christian kindnesses with other parents from your child’s Christian school.

Services

The services that Christian school parents share in networks with one another, for the benefit of their families and schoolchildren, span the full variety of consumer services. Sometimes, those services shared and swapped among Christian school parents are free, other times at a discount, and other times at the public market price. The point isn’t so much the financial value of the transactions. The point is instead that Christian school communities care for their members, while also caring for their school. Parents also share their business and commercial services with the school. You may see signs and acknowledgements of the businesses supporting your child’s Christian school, plastered on the gymnasium wall, on plaques in the entranceway, or in newsletters. In many instances, the school’s parents own those businesses and supply their services to the school for free or at substantial discounts. If you don’t see such acknowledgements, or hear of them from appreciative parents, you may still rightly suspect that parents are providing free business and commercial services to the school and its families, as another blessing of Christian school enrollment.

Professions

Christian school parents also often include professionals who serve the school and its families. Your child’s Christian school parent community may include physicians, psychologists, nurses, dentists, orthodontists, nutritionists, therapists, counselors, lawyers, accountants, architects, social workers, benefits managers, lifecare managers, personnel managers, and other professionals. A parent network including so many professionals of different fields and experiences can be a vital resource for a Christian school family. If you find that your family members or your own professional practice, vocational trade, or business needs the services of one or more of those professionals, then your child’s enrollment at the school may be the convenient personal connection to obtain those services. Christian school parent networks can also give sound advice as to which professionals to retain for what issues, whether those professionals are part of the school’s parent community or not. Don’t hesitate to avail yourself of the services of professionals connected with your child’s Christian school community. Professionals know the value of their reputation within the communities they serve and are likely to give their best efforts to clients and patients from within those communities.

Trades

Christian school parents also often include vocational tradesmen who serve the school and its families. Your child’s Christian school community may include builders, contractors, carpenters, cabinet makers, designers, decorators, electricians, plumbers, and HVAC technicians, among others in the trades and connected professions. Your school parent network may also include owners or managers of lawn services, snow-removal services, landscape services, home-and-garden services, tree services, and home maintenance and repair services, among other consumer services. You may also find grocers, tailors, dry cleaners, caterers, wedding planners, cosmetologists, barbers, and other home and personal-services providers among your school parent network. While any of these tradesmen, contractors, business owners, and consumer-service providers would generally be available to the public, beyond your Christian school parent network, your network advice, referral, and connection may make all the difference in your trust and confidence in their prompt, reasonably priced, and competent service. Appreciate the value to you and your family of your Christian school parent community.

Reflection

Do you have parent friends and acquaintances within your child’s current school community? If so, what activities and interests do you share with those other school parents? And how did those friendships and acquaintances arise around the school, whether by the school’s own program design or informally? Have you shared your faith with other parents who are members of your child’s school community? Do you share church membership or attendance with other parents in your child’s school community? Have you received kindnesses of some kind from other parents in your child’s school community? If so, what value were those kindnesses to you, and what contact or communication engendered them? Have you shared your own kindness with other parents in your child’s school community? Do you receive professional, consumer, or trade services from other parents in your child’s school community? What benefit do you sense that your child draws from your parent relationships within your child’s school community?

Key Points

A Christian school parent community makes significant contributions.
Christian school parents generally have strong faith commitments.
Christian school parents often share overlapping church memberships.
Christian schools eagerly involve parents in school activities.
Christian school parent communities can have greater consistency.
Christian school parent communities can also include great variety.
Christian school parents volunteer at high levels of engagement.
Christian school parents show one another considerable kindnesses.
Christian school networks can include valuable home services.
Christian school networks can also include professional services.
Christian school networks can also include trades services.

Read Chapter 14.