After nearly four decades of educating kids in Farmington, Christian Life Academy will close down at the end of the school year and merge with two Bloomington schools.
Christian Life Academy, Bethany Academy and Life Academy will form one school under the name, United Christian Academy. The new K-12 school will open next fall at Bethany Academy.
Meanwhile, Christian Life Academy’s sprawling 20-acre campus along 212th Street hit the market this month for $3.9 million. The land and church and school buildings are owned by Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal denomination.
Christian Life Administrator Darin Kindle said the three schools faced a question of financial sustainability and that the thinking is they will be able to provide more educational and extracurricular opportunities as one.
“We’re all functioning to some level, but the question is where can we be at our best?” he said. “The simple answer is together.”
Christian Life Church will exist either on the property or elsewhere, depending on what happens with the sale, he said.
CHANGING LANDSCAPE
The decision comes as many faith-based, tuition-based schools struggle to keep the doors open. Last month, St. Mark’s Catholic School announced it was closing its parochial school this fall after a century in St. Paul’s Merriam Park neighborhood.
Christian Life Academy opened in 1983 as a ministry of Christian Life Church. Its enrollment rose slightly the past two years and now totals 183 students.
But those gains came after three years of declines that Kindle said can be attributed to large graduating classes and the introduction of all-day kindergarten in Minnesota’s public schools.
“That has affected not only us, but a lot of private schools in terms of kindergarten enrollment,” he said.
Bethany Academy’s current enrollment is around 160, while Life Academy has about 60 students, he said.
A SOUTH METRO NEED
The long-term plan is to eventually move United Christian Academy to another site somewhere in the south metro, where Kindle said options for faith-based high schools are few and far between. He noted how former Minnesota Vikings center Matt Birk is co-founding a new high school this fall at Mary, Mother of the Church in Burnsville.
“We see the same need,” Kindle said.
Bethany Academy was chosen as the host site for United Christian Academy because it has more space and amenities and is centrally located in the south metro, he said.
But some Christian Life parents have told administration the drive is too far and they won’t be making it next year, Kindle said. The new school will be about 19 miles away from Christian Life’s current site.
“It’s a complicated drive for those who live south to go to Bloomington, given the 35W construction at the bridge,” he said. “Those are significant detractors, but we had to take steps to bring the schools together.”
‘A SACRIFICE WE HAVE TO MAKE’
Parent Sarah Loewen of Lakeville lives about six minutes from Christian Life, where she now has an eighth-grader and a preschooler enrolled. News of the closure was “a shock,” she said. “We were pretty devastated at first, just because we live so close.”
They’ll be making the drive to Bloomington, she said.“It’s a sacrifice we have to make to have a good Christian education,” she said.
Tuition for the new school will be $8,500 for secondary, $7,500 for elementary, Kindle said. That’s an increase over what Christian Life Academy and Life Academy now charge, but a decrease for Bethany Academy.
Staff for the new school will be a mix of the three schools, said Kindle, who will be retained in a leadership role.