HEADMASTER’S PERSPECTIVE

Dear Friends,

In December of 2006, when Spruce Hill Christian School (serving grades Kindergarten through 8) merged with City Center Academy (grades 9 through 12), to form one new school, it was decided to adopt the motto that CCA has always used to characterize its mission:  LUX URBI.  Latin for “Light to the City”, this motto characterizes well our purpose as a merged school. As headmaster, I think often about how our school is uniquely called to be a light in our city through excellence, accessibility and being grounded in Truth.  

We are here to offer an excellent education. Excellence on both campuses is reflected in our remarkable faculty. These teachers are highly educated, professionally excellent and deeply devoted to their work. They fully embrace their pivotal role as academic instructors. Their passion for helping students excel as mathematicians, artists, scientists, historians, athletes and writers is inspiring. You cannot imagine how often I find them counseling during their lunch hour, tutoring after school or working late in their classrooms to get things “just right” for the following day. Rather than counting hours worked or salary dollars, these men women and men of God are pursuing academic excellence in an effort to honor Jesus in all they do.

Harold Best, former Dean of the Wheaton College Conservatory of Music, asserts that “excellence is both absolute and relative. Absolute because it is the norm of stewardship and cannot be avoided or compromised; relative because it is set in the context of striving, wrestling, hungering and pressing on from point to point and achievement to achievement.” Spruce Hill and CCA are excellent because each one continues to strive, wrestle, hunger and press on toward even better things.

The founders of CCA, Dr. James M. and Mrs. Linda Boice, built an academic curriculum born from their own Ivy League educational background. Today, CCA’s curriculum remains strong in fundamentals and has led to an impressive record of college placement.

In 2007, Spruce Hill became one of 32 urban schools nationwide to be invited to become a member of the prestigious organization, Schools That Can.  Their investigation of our programs led to a recognition of our superior and innovative academic programs, strong test scores, hands-on learning through art and our use of Responsive Classroom, a comprehensive social and emotional curriculum.

Each year, educators and legislators from all over the country visit our excellent school to find out how we do it.  At Spruce Hill and CCA, we do not want to be merely a “good enough” Christian school; we’re striving for a genuine academic excellence that any student would desire, purposed for nothing less than the glory of God.

Being excellent, however, is not all there is to being Light.  The nature of light is to touch and brighten everything in its path. If you sat in a dark room and someone suddenly turned on the light, everyone and everything in the room would be illuminated. Light does not discriminate. It does not pursue some things and draw back from others. It does not weigh the merit of objects in its path before illuminating them. Light simply shines.

On the landscape of urban education, Spruce Hill Christian School and City Center Academy are somewhat unique. This uniqueness lies in the combined characteristics of excellence and accessibility. Academic excellence is not enough on its own. It is not enough for some children to thrive and others to be left behind, for some to grow in Godly character and others to be considered incorrigible, for some children to experience the joy of learning while others falter. In fact, it is an injustice when our city and our nation do not ensure that all children are served with a decent education. The sad fact is that in Philadelphia, some of our children are receiving an excellent education, but the majority of our children receive an inferior one.

Rod Paige, the former Secretary of Education, states that “it is unacceptable to waste a child’s life, to treat a child as unimportant or marginal, or to simply pretend the child is invisible.” Then he asks, “Who among us would condemn a child to an inferior education?  Which child?  Whose child?”

In our own city of Philadelphia, like the cities across the nation, the children condemned to an inferior education are poor, and often children of color. They are condemned because the schools they must attend in their neighborhoods are failing on every front. Their parents and grandparents grieve because they have no choice in the matter. If they had a choice, they would happily move to another school district where the school maintains a reputation of academic achievement and preparation for college. But they cannot afford a home in an area with an acceptable school.  They are economically bound to failing schools.

But these parents and grandparents do not give up easily. They call the nearby private and parochial schools, hoping against hope that these schools will save their children from substandard education.

Each year at Spruce Hill and CCA, we receive hundreds of calls for seats we have open. At Spruce Hill Christian School and City Center Academy, we believe that parents should not have to choose between groceries and education. So we step up to the plate, offering a college preparatory education to any qualified student, regardless of their ability to pay.

We are able to do this by asking parents to pay some of the tuition from their already stretched resources, by taking advantage of programs like Pennsylvania’s Educational Improvement Tax Credit, and by relying on the generosity of supporters; businesses, churches, foundations, and individuals. This year alone, our supporters have provided nearly $700,000 to educate our students.

You may ask whether so much work—year after year—is worth it, and I have the joy of telling you that it is.  You cannot imagine the face of a grandmother living on a fixed income, raising three grandchildren and facing a $15,000 tuition bill when she is told that we have tuition assistance available and all she will need to pay is $40 a month for all three children.  You should see the tears of joy when a single mother, working full-time and attending a university at night to become a nurse, learns that all she will need is $200 a month to educate her two boys. Watching the light shine without discrimination is, indeed, a beautiful thing.

Even the admirable and dual characteristics of excellence and accessibility, however, are still not enough to justify our claim to be Light to the City.

Our claim can only be justified because we teach the Truth—all of it.  Everything starts from this central point:  the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the authority of the Bible. From there, we move on to teach everything from phonics to music, from algebra to geography, from physics to history.  These, too, are truth. Like Justin Martyr and Augustine of Hippo before him, Frank E. Gaebelein, the founding headmaster of the Stony Brook School, asserts in his classic book The Pattern of God’s Truth that “all truth is God’s truth.” All subjects are subject to Him.  The integration of faith and learning is the very purpose of our school.  Jesus Christ is our head—and He alone is the Light of the World. It is His light that we will shine in the city of Philadelphia.  By being excellent, accessible, and grounded in the truth of Jesus Christ, Spruce Hill Christian School and City Center Academy are Lux Urbi—“Light to the City.”
 

Seth R. Cohen
Headmaster