How and Why I Should Donate to the High School Expansion Campaign
To make a donation or pledge now, please go to the link below and click on the “Pay Tuition and Make Contributions Online” link.
Whether you’re the parent of an elementary, middle, or high school student, you’ll want to know about how your child will benefit from the space being added to our GCA campus. Work is underway for the GCA High School Expansion due to open this coming school year.
Tell me about that new building up on the hill.
This expansion to the existing building has added 9 new classrooms , a music suite, a cafeteria and a kitchen. With our largest to date 9th grade class (110 as of May 7th), and a high school enrollment for 2010 at nearly 300students, these extra classrooms are already filled. The music suite will give our award-winning Ensemble and amazing Worship Arts program a place to grow and continue to undergird the many musically talented students at GCA. Both the classrooms and the music suite will be completed and furnished, ready for use in August of 2010.
The cafeteria/kitchen space of 7,754 square feet will add a cafeteria-style eating area, large group meeting area, and lunch service for high school students in their own building.
How does the new cafeteria help my student in elementary school?
First of all, our kindergarteners no longer have to eat lunch at 10:20 am! Reducing the number of students being served and eating in the Cullum Hall cafeteria from 900 to 600 has changed our start time for serving lunch to around 10:45. Also, with no high schoolers needing entry to Cullum Hall, the doors to the outside of the lunchroom can stay locked and make the school even safer for your student.
How does the new cafeteria help my student in middle school?
The middle school students are now able to not feel so rushed in order to “ make way” for the onslaught of high school students headed in behind them each day and they can look forward to their own enjoyment (in a couple of years) of a cafeteria/kitchen in the high school building.
How does the new cafeteria help my student in high school?
For those students in our high school, not having to trek to and from the high school building across the parking lot and back (no matter the weather) will be a big crowd-pleaser as well as alleviate several security issues, while not having to wait to eat until 12:45-1:30 will help with classroom concentration and those who are “starving” by that time of day. Of equal importance, these students now have more of a student body experience (having their own cafeteria and the ownership of it being “the high school lunchroom”), which is very important to this age student.
What will it take to make the high school cafeteria ready for full-service eating?
This new part of the cafeteria space is only being “roughed-in.” In other words, the cafeteria will have walls and floors and the kitchen area will be walled in but have gravel floors until plumbing, gas, and electrical lines are run to the kitchen equipment chosen to be used and placed in this space.
Because of the generous donation of finances, construction work, and time from a couple of families, the school has received over 20,000 square feet of ready-to-use educational space. The ability to finish out the cafeteria and kitchen spaces depends directly on our ability to raise the funds necessary. We have begun raising funds and have received more than $75,500 in donations. However, to finish both the cafeteria and kitchen space will require up to $600,000.
Did I read that right? $600,000?
I heard that large gasp. How could it possibly cost that much, you ask? The cafeteria, which will serve a double purpose as an eating space and a large group meeting space (for high school chapels, group meetings, etc.) will cost around $150,000 to paint, light, make it media friendly, and supply tables and chairs for lunch as well as chairs for meeting space. The rest, (at least $450,000), will be needed to equip the commercial kitchen. Did you know a new commercial oven, alone, costs $30,000?
We are being careful to be good stewards by buying much of this equipment from suppliers who can make floor models available for lesser amounts, or other businesses who can sell barely used, excellent condition equipment at a fraction of its original cost. We are also excited about possible donations of needed equipment from contacts made in these fundraising efforts.
What are the plans to feed the high school students next fall?
For this year, we have secured the services of Bearden Banquet Hall Services to make hot lunch and soup and salad bar available at the high school. Also, having this space for a large group meeting area is much needed.
Next, if the necessary funding is not raised to finish the entire cafeteria/kitchen project, we could make the kitchen user-friendly to a point. However, our real goal is to raise the funds required to finish the kitchen as an a la carte type lunch service. This would be the kind of lunchroom where students can “pick and choose” between items available such as salad bar, sandwich bar, burgers, pizza, french fries, soup, hot meal, baked potatoes, etc. This has been seen to be the most popular lunchroom option for high school students and can actually even (eventually) possibly make money for the school.
The lunch program we now use at the high school costs $4.50 a meal. It is a service we provide to make it easier on the parents and students, but it is not a moneymaking venture.
Why don’t you just take the tuition money we pay and use it for this project? Along those lines, the school is not a moneymaking entity. The charge for tuition at GCA is at least $2,000 less than the other schools similar in size in Knoxville. This, plus our annual fundraising walk-a-thon, covers only a portion of the cost per student for the education received at Grace Christian Academy.
Although GCA is managed with business principles, any not-for-profit school is very unlike a business in a critical way. A business sells a product or service for a price that represents cost plus profit; the cost to produce a product in a successful venture is always less than price. In a not-for-profit school, however, price is always less than the true cost of the product (an education), with the difference in price (tuition) and cost being borne by a subsidy. For a public university that subsidy comes from taxes, which is why many state schools are struggling currently. For a private school, the subsidy typically comes from endowment earnings, foundation and grant monies, and donor gifts.
For now, GCA’s only subsidy comes from Grace Baptist Church through facility use and from donor gifts. So you see, a portion of the annual costs of operating the school is provided through generous gifts from Grace Baptist Church, a few specific students’ families, and friends and supporters of Christian education in the greater Knoxville area.
Therefore, the cost of running the school is not met by tuition fees. We are careful to keep strictly to the budget passed each year and are glad when we can end the school year with no deficit. We do not, though, have extra money in any budget or line item for expansion or growth such as this. We only have the facilities we now enjoy, including the original high school building, most of our practice and playing fields, the new high school expansion, and the frame-in for the cafeteria/kitchen because of a couple of families’ overwhelming generosity and unwavering belief in the difference Grace Christian Academy can make in a child’s life. Their combined investment of more than four million dollars has provided so much for all of the students attending GCA.
What can we do to make this cafeteria a reality?
After being given so much as a school, we implore you to pray and think seriously about how your family can join these families in finishing out this kitchen/cafeteria space. For anyone donating at least $500, we will recognize you, your family, your business, or someone you would like to honor by placing your name on a plaque to be hung in the expansion of the high school. Some parents are giving in honor of a graduating senior, an alumni student, a teacher, or a coach. Others may give in memory of someone who believed in GCA and supported our students and school in the past.
With our 600 families giving just $500 each by pledge or one-time gift, we would immediately have over half the funds needed. The more money we raise, the faster we can bring to fruition the entire high school expansion including a cafeteria and kitchen which are fully furnished and ready to use.
Many parents are choosing to make a pledge over the next year, which can be paid out monthly, while others are giving a one-time gift. This is considered a donation to a 501 (c)3 and will be tax-deductible and also possibly applicable for a matching gift from your company. Please check with your employer, or give us your employment information so we can follow-up on any matching donations available. To make a donation or pledge now, please go to the link below and click on the “Pay Tuition and Make Contributions Online” link.
Can I talk with someone about this in more detail?
No problem! If you would like to speak with one of our fundraising committee members about the possibility of a large gift or donation from you or your company, please email Debby McElroy at mailto:jeffndebby@aol.com and a meeting will be arranged or needed information can be forwarded.
Make your donation now and be a part of growing our campus in an unbelievable way. The fundraising committee has been using Ephesians 3:20 as its verse in raising this large amount. Join us as we see that “ God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. ”
If you would like to help with this fundraising effort, or know of a specific contact whom would be a possible donor of finances or equipment, please contact Debby McElroy at 384-1957 or jeffndebby@aol.com.
Who else can help?
Alums, graduating classes, past sports teams, or others who would like to go together as a group to make a donation are welcome to do so. Show your support of and gratefulness to GCA for its influence in your academic, social, spiritual, artistic, and athletic lives.
We need everyone to do their part, whether small or large, to raise the funds necessary to finish this expansion. Wouldn’t it be great to know, in a few short weeks, we have all we need and can look forward to more than just a glassed in corner of the new expansion that “someday” will be the new cafeteria and kitchen? It seems a shame for this space to have to wait to be used in full, when, if we all work together, and see it as all our responsibility and honor to give, we could make the most of this investment into our students right now.
Let’s join together as a growing group of Christian families who believe in Christian education, who believe in our children, and who believe in the one and only God who cares about our kids even more than we do. Pray and ask Him, “ What can we do?” as we watch Him “do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.”
To better lead, build, and equip our students,
Debby McElroy
Chairperson, GCA High School Cafeteria/Kitchen Expansion Fundraising Team
