Enrollment

As I mentioned in my August 26th post, our enrollment is down. In fact, it is below 500 students in K-12 for the first time in over a decade. We are hovering just below 470 students. First of all, God is not surprised by this, and He gave us a best-in-a-long-time financial year last year that should help us weather this situation. We are continuing to evaluate all of our methods for attracting families to Maranatha, and will be doing whatever we can to do so.

When I attended Independent School Management's (ISM) training for Board Presidents in June, we discussed marketing at some length. It was reiterated that the 2 strongest tools that need to be deployed with purpose are word of mouth and our website. We have made strides with our web site, but we will continue to work on it to make the best introduction to Maranatha that it can be.

Secondly, we need everyone in our current Maranatha family to become evangelists for the school. That includes teachers doing everything they can to make their students recommend that other students take their class. They also should take every opportunity to convince the parents that they would find it difficult to find a better teacher for their subject. Make parents ask for your class, teachers! That means parents, you need to be talking up Maranatha to your Christian friends. Students, you need to do the same. Staff and other servants of the school, we need to make sure we are doing everything we can to make Maranatha a welcoming place and the best it can be.

Now I know there are issues that you have encountered that might make you hesitate to recommend the school. Have you taken those issues to those who can do something about it? Have they done anything? Have you followed a good path for escalating it? Have you been as much a part of the solution as you can be? Board, Administration, faculty, staff, are we do everything we can to make the school attractive by raising the bar and responding to these detracting issues? I think these are all questions that we need to ask ourselves. This is God's ministry and we are part of it. And if we are part of it, we need to be invested in making it the best it can be. Then we must go share the good news with others so that an increasing number of families can have us as a partner to preparing their children for making an impact for our Lord in this fallen world.

Well, there is my heart. I pray that it finds a empathetic ear, and that we will all pray to our Sovereign Lord and then choose to do our part in His ministry.