'Every Church Should Start a Christian School': School Vouchers Fuel Wave of Faith-Based Schools

Over the last decade, the public school classroom has transformed into a political battleground as parents and educators fight over curriculum that has been hijacked with subjects like gender, sexuality, and critical race theory. 

A new report, "Navigating Political Tensions Over Schooling: Findings From the Fall 2022 American School District Panel Survey" says that 51% of school leaders find this tension is impacting schooling.

Some battle-weary parents have had enough and are turning to their local churches, who now find it easier to gain the funding to educate students through a Biblical worldview. 

"We're making disciples and we're doing it not just on Sundays, but we're doing it all week long," said Pastor Melvin Adams of Faith Family Community Church. "I feel like we do have a leg up here in Florida."

The church's Winter Garden Christian Academy just launched this school year. It is one of several Florida churches taking advantage of the state's expansion of the school voucher program due to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2022. 

The ruling allowed all K-12 students regardless of income to use taxpayer-funded programs to pay for private school tuition, including religious schools.

Pastor Jimmy Scroggins of Family Church in South Florida is launching four classical Christian schools over the next year.

And long-running faith-based schools like Mount Dora Christian Academy in Mount Dora, FL have waitlists, while others plan to expand their campuses. 

"We are moving into growth mode," Jim Rigg, superintendent of the Miami Archdiocese's 64 Catholic schools, told the Associated Press. "We are actively discussing new schools, either opened or reopened, over the next several years."

Governor Ron DeSantis has taken school choice a step further by recently removing zoning and land use restrictions for private schools. The move allows educators to use facilities owned or leased by a library, community service organization, museum, performing arts venue, theater, cinema, or church.

This opens the door for these facilities to serve as the site for "micro-schools," —a small, independently operated school or co-op that usually serves a small number of students.

"Microschools have the potential to revolutionize K-12 education," explains Shawn Akers, Covenant Journey Academy President and CEO.

Covenant Journey Academy (CJA), a full-service online K-12 Christian academy, has started an affiliate program that offers "homeschool without the hassle." 

"Through CJA's Affiliate Program, micro-schools don't have to offer micro programs — they can hit the ground running by offering their students a full catalog of engaging, high-quality courses, including six world languages and exciting electives, all taught by certified teachers from a biblical worldview," Akers added.

Arizona, West Virginia, and Ohio are expanding their offerings to parents as well. 

Ohio passed universal school choice in 2023 which makes taxpayer vouchers and scholarships available regardless of income.

West Virginia quickly made charter schools, open enrollment, learning pods, and micro-schools an option for parents. And in 2022, they approved the Hope Scholarship, which gives families $4,300 per child per year to pay for tuition. The Hope Scholarship is 100% funded by the state. 

And while proponents of school choice see the benefits for parents and children, critics say it takes money from the public school that serves the majority of U.S. families and could even benefit higher-income families.

"The problem isn't churches starting schools. The problem is taxpayer funding for these schools or any private schools," said Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, in a statement. 

Laser claims vouchers "force taxpayers to fund religious education," but supporters contend that it actually boils down to parents just being allowed to use their own tax dollars to choose the type of education they want for their own children.

And what do many parents want these days? Faith-based education. New data from the National Center for Education Statistics' Private School Universe Survey shows that most U.S. private schools are religious. In 2021, 20% of private schools were Catholic, and conservative Christian schools accounted for nearly 12% (3,549) of the country's private options.

"Our hope is to help accelerate this movement of Christian education. … That every Christian church with a building will consider starting or hosting a neighborhood school," said Scroggins. "We're not trying to burn anything down. We're trying to build something constructive." 

Scroggins makes the case in his free e-book, The Education Reformation: Why Your Church Should Start a Christian School. Family Research Council senior fellow Joseph Backholm made a similar argument in a 2020 report called Why Every Church Should Start a Christian School, calling for more public funding for private education. 

And as CBN News Digital reported, when Justin Walker, pastor of Salt and Light Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, learned that his 11-year-old daughter had few acceptable options when it came to finding books at her local library, he took matters into his own hands. 

"It was the first of June, and they were pushing all of these LGBTQ books on my daughter in the public library, and I was so upset," he said. "And I just made this personal post on Facebook. I took a picture of the books they were [trying to give my 11-year-old daughter] … and I was so upset at that. … I took a picture of [the books] and I posted them on Facebook and I said, 'Shame on you, public library, for pushing these books on my daughter. We won't be back.'"

Other parents shared in his plight. 

"The more I started looking, the more I realized there's a mission field in our own backyard that the average church is not involved in, and that mission field is 50 million American children that are going to public schools every day where things like what just happened to my daughter in the library are happening all day long. And here I am, the pastor of a church, supposed to be a community leader, and what are we doing about this? No one's even talking about it."

Walker started First Principles Academy, a tuition-free, church-sponsored grade school.

"We believe that the huge problem in our country and what we're seeing with depression and anxiety and many of the social problems that we're seeing stem from [a] lack of Christ at the center of our education," Walker said. "So we have a goal of putting Christ at the center of our education. So there is a part of this that goes a little deeper. There is a community need, yes, but there's a need to bring Christ into our education. … We want that first and foremost and we want mom and dad to know and we want students to know that this is what we will be teaching."

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