Portables leased by Cornerstone Christian Academy sit on the future site of a permanent K-12 school building Dec. 6. The second of a three-phase expansion plan will feature a new building housing all classes including a high school that does not feature traditional grade levels.
Mike Rozhko works hard in his 8th-grade science class with Ms. Januet Dec. 6 at Cornerstone Christian Academy. “My favorite parts of going to school are Basketball, my friends, and my education,” Rozhko said.
Cornerstone Christian Academy has made the move north from their previous location at Crossroads Community Church with the school looking to add a high school and education training center as part of a three-phase plan to grow.
To get there, the school will embark on a capital campaign that seeks to raise between $37 to $45 million in order to complete the plan.
A year ago Cornerstone was looking for a place to move with their lease at Crossroads was set to expire in September of this year. Superintendent Bill Gibbons said both the church and the school were growing and needed more space than the current setup allowed.
After a local story brought the school’s need to expand to light, Gibbons said he was contacted by Faith Center Church in the Orchards neighborhood with an offer of about 4.8 acres of land that the academy could own.
Gibbons explained that Cornerstone and Faith Center Church came into an agreement where the school would own the land its facilities were on with some shared facilities like the parking lot. Both the church and school will remain separate entities.
By June, the first modular buildings were installed on the site. Now there are 15 of such buildings housing elementary and middle school classes alongside early childhood education.
The modular setup is temporary, as Gibbons explained it was the first of a three-part vision to build a new school and expand with a high school and more. Though final plans haven’t been released, Gibbons said the idea was to have a two-story building housing elementary and middle school-age students on the first floor and high school on the second floor.
The high school would be different than others in the area. It would do away with grade levels, allowing students to complete their studies in as little or much time as they need.
Gibbons said the relocation cost about $8 million, in part helped from an anonymous $5 million gift to the school. In order to fund the next phases, which includes a permanent K-12 building, the school will launch a capital campaign slated to officially begin in January.
Gibbons said Cornerstone was aiming for August to break ground on the next phase of the project. If the capital campaign goes well he hopes to be ready to open the new K-12 school in September 2020.
That building isn’t the end of Cornerstone’s plans. The third phase would involve “replication” of the school’s model with an educator training center, which will include an international teacher-training program.
When the new schools go up it won’t be Gibbons at the academy’s helm, though he’s not leaving entirely. He will be stepping down from his role as superintendent, replaced by former Hockinson School District head Sandra Yager.
Gibbons will take a role as executive director of oversight for Cornerstone, doing much of the longterm-vision work and fundraising he had been doing previously. He spoke glowingly about Yager, who had been the Hockinson superintendent since 2011 and in that time oversaw the construction and completion of Hockinson Middle School.
“She’s just exactly what this school needs, and a visionary,” he said.
Being able to go from the first portables landing to gearing up for the capital campaign was in a word, “miraculous,” according to Cornerstone Christian Academy Board of Directors Chair Pat Johnson. She remarked that project architects and contractors have gone from thinking of the work as just a job to seeing it as a “mission.”
Though Cornerstone has big plans for the future, Gibbons was not taking the fact the school was able to relocate without a lapse in service for granted.
“Every time I look at this place I praise God because it’s just a miracle,” he said.
