Southbay Christian school to close Southbay Christian school to close (May 10, 2002)

By Candice Shih

The local phenomenon of declining school enrollment reared its head again last week, as Southbay Christian School announced it would close.

Last Sunday church membership of the Southbay Christian Center voted to close the school after this school year. The school has been facing a financial shortfall due to declining enrollment.

"It wasn't a close kind of vote (but) it wasn't the kind of thing that the church wanted to do," said Pastor D. Ronald Bailey, who is also the superintendent of the school.

The school had been confronted with financial struggles for a few years, said Bailey. Nonetheless, the decision to close the school came as a surprise to some.

"It just pains me," said Marco Rosa, the parent of a Southbay Christian third grader and active volunteer at the school. He said he didn't know the 160-member church membership was considering closing until May 2.

"It just popped up," said third-grader Denise Landreth, who has attended the school since pre-school and who said she will miss her friends and going to chapel the most.

The school opened in 1964 in Sunnyvale and moved to Mountain View in 1982. It currently educates about 220 students from kindergarten through eighth grade.

The annual tuition for a student in pre-school through fifth grade is $5,400. Tuition for a sixth, seventh, and eighth-graders is $6,950.

Tuition for those participating in the "Learning Assistance Program" is $10,950 for a student in first through fifth grades and $8,050 for a middle school student.

But, the tuition, gifts, and grants weren't enough to keep the school afloat.

Recently, Southbay Christian considered merging with the Los Altos Christian School to ease it of its financial woes. But the idea never came to fruition.

The church may house a smaller school with a different model in the current building or lease it to other schools, said Bailey. In fact, parents and teachers of Southbay Christian met last Monday to discuss the possibility of opening a parent-governed school with the same staff and program at the site.

"We would be resurrecting the core infrastructure under completely new management," said Karenda Botelho, a member of the parent-teacher fellowship board and a parent of a sixth grader.

Botelho said the idea of a parent-governed school may draw new families to the school, thereby offsetting the issue of declining enrollment. In addition, she said they would manage expenses, such as building costs, better.

The closing of the school is "the straw that breaks the camel's back in a good way," Botelho said.

However, some Southbay Christian parents are making plans to enroll their children at Los Altos Christian in the fall. "I will take my son down to Los Altos Christian. My son will be fine. That's a well-run school," said Rosa.

"We are on the path to accommodate all that approach us," said Los Altos Christian Principal Susan Torode. The school currently has 206 students. She said Los Altos Christian is considering hiring more staff and expanding its facilities.

"It's about children and it's about ministry," said Torode.