100% Bible Based Teaching
Provides in Depth teaching from the Word of God
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Aim to fulfill the great commission as commanded by Jesus
Seeking to find answers to your faith based questions from God’s Word
My call from God to Christian schools (Part 6)
The govt VRQA were so opposed to anything biblical that it was hard to see how River City Christian School (RCCC), Echuca, was going to get out of the no-creation dilemma. One thing is clear: if the previous principal had been still running the school, it would never have remained open by the start of 2009. I had set up all relevant policies, and had avoided a legal disaster over the underhand funding set in place when I had arrived as principal at RCCC. The requirements listed by the Registered Schools Board a few years before (and never implemented) were now largely dealt with. But the creation issue remained a big headache. The VRQA were certain that they would shut us down on this issue alone. In fact, in March 2009 they gave us an ultimatum: remove the creation component of your science curriculum and we may consider permitting your continuing registration as a school.
In November 2008 the school board chair and I had attended a meeting with the VRQA in Melbourne. There was a lot of disagreement between them and us over the one single issue: creation content in our science course. So I asked the VRQA chair: If, then, you do not accept our science curriculum, which school’s curriculum would you accept? She said: The science curriculum of Waverley Christian College. So when I returned to RCCC the next day, I made contact with Waverley Christian College to ask them if they would make their science curriculum available for us to look at. They agreed. We also arranged for our science teacher to go to Waverley for a week in February 2009 to see how it worked in practice. It looked workable, and it did happen to accept some creation content. (I wondered if the VRQA actually knew this?) Plans were made to implement the Waverley curriculum as soon as possible in 2009. Meanwhile, before we could set up the Waverley science curriculum, the VRQA sent us an ultimatum: to drop creation from our curriculum or be closed down in 30 days. We told them that we were still in the process of implementing an alternative curriculum. They then came to re-assess us in Term 2 and, upon noting that we still had a creation component in our science curriculum, informed us that they would refuse our re-registration to operate as a school in Victoria. I then informed them that the science curriculum we were now using was the Waverley College curriculum as recommended by the VRQA Chair in November 2008. That actually stopped them in their tracks and they said that they would check this out and get back to me. When they did get back, we had passed the assessment and had been granted provisional registration to operate. It was clear that we had won this round.
That necessary certificate that gave the school legal right to operate as a school was missing when I started at RCCC. No-one seemed to know what it was, and no-one recalled seeing such a document. Then (in maybe late 2008) one of the board members said he’d been given (by the previous principal) a box of papers to be burnt or otherwise disposed of. He’d stored this cardboard box under his house. He now brought it in to see if there were any documents there that we might need. And that necessary certificate permitting our operation as a school was in that box. Fortunately, in spite of the previous principal’s efforts to get rid of it, we were able to frame it and hang it on the office wall. We were now legally permitted to operate a school on that site! In fact, it is clear that if the previous principal had stayed on longer, the school most likely would not have survived. He apparently didn’t have much idea of running a school properly and should never have been appointed principal in the first place. (I suppose they were desperate for someone to employ!) I had the experience of many school reviews in previous schools and knew a lot about what was required to pass an assessment. I had set about doing what was needed from the time I started at RCCC and in my three years managed to bring the school back from disaster. But it came at a cost to my health; I needed a break to recover from my stress-related health problems. And the school enrolment numbers did not slide any further while I was there, in spite of no longer being able to count Yr 11&12 students in the figures.
While there we had the opportunity to have a new science building built using a govt grant for such buildings. Some on the school board wanted a local builder to build it, rather than accepting the builder the govt had chosen for the task. A school meeting was held and by a narrow margin it was decided that the govt-approved builder should do it. However, I was constantly harassed and pestered by the board chairman, even in my own time, including a holiday break. I would get phone calls over and over to get me to change my mind. Then the board chairman started harassing the woman who had made the application in the first place. It was never expected that her application would get us something but when it did the school board wanted to control it (even though the school board had rejected putting in the application in the first place). The board chairman harassment was so intense that, due to my stress problems, I was not able to withstand, and I signed the request to use a local builder. The project was delayed for a few weeks while this was considered, and then we were told that by then the last half dozen building grants had been cancelled due to funds running out. We missed out because of that harassment! I often think what the school could have had if only the board chair hadn’t bullied me into submission. Still, he has to wear that, not me!
I was desperately wanting a break to recuperate and in the last few months of 2009 I took a few afternoons off due to my stress levels. I notified the board that I would resign at the end of 2009. I would have liked to have stayed longer but needed some time off to regain my health. I think if they’d wanted me to continue, then perhaps a paid sabbatical might have worked, or at least my house rent paid. I couldn’t afford to pay money on rental when not working, so I’d have to move away from Echuca.
In June 2011 the RCCC council chairman contacted me requesting that I consider taking a secondary teaching position for 2012. I refused on the basis that (a) I would need rental once again, (b) my wife would have to stay home this time, and (c) they should have kept me on while I was still living there. I didn’t need the funds anyway. Once I left Echuca, I was never coming back!
If only the school board had recognised my stress levels and had acted to offer support while I was working so hard tov save their school from closure. I remember going to a school board meeting in early 2009 and telling them that I had assessed my effectiveness as principal and was not performing as well as I should be now because of my stress levels. Unbelievably the general mood seemed to be that if I thought I need to improve, then I should try harder. I don’t think they understood at all!
This was the last teaching job I’d take on. God didn’t open any more doors after that, and I had ample funds to permit me to just stay at home, and consider that my retirement began for me at the age of 60. We have made many acquaintances over the years at Benalla, Alice Springs and Echuca, and keep some communications going even now. God has been good to us; we lack for nothing in spite of no longer having our farm which was the price we had to pay for my teaching ministry. There’s always a cost in ministry. If there is no cost, then there’s probably no victory either. I am satisfied that every cost involved with all my travels has been worth it. I have followed where God has called and do not regret my teaching ministry in spite of leaving much comfort and financial ease behind.
Finally, it was an “all or nothing” desire that led me to go into ministry. I reasoned that if God couldn’t have all of me, then I would always be compromising in having to choose those things of the world I would accept rather than condemn. I didn’t want one foot in the world and the other in ministry. It had to be all or nothing!
My call from God to Christian schools (Part 5)
In 2006 we spent 6 months travelling around the outback of Australia, including a risky trip across remote desert areas from 80 Mile Beach to Alice Springs, around 1600km of extremely remote tracks where a breakdown could mean disaster, especially on your own as I was, and towing a camper trailer as well! We carried fuel, water and all food supplies with us. When still only halfway, we had a rear wheel bearing start to fragment; the solid hammer-like “thump” in the rear, followed by the sound on metal rubbing on metal. Disaster! I had a better chance if I dropped the trailer off, but we were still over 800km and a few days 4WD track travel from Alice Springs (the first place we’d reach to get any repairs). The noise indicated a roller had come loose from the roller bearing on the RH rear axle. Experience told me that it wouldn’t be long before the whole bearing disintegrated, and that would mean not going any further without replacing that bearing. Even on smooth good condition roads my chances weren’t good and we were on a rough track, heavily corrugated in many places, with washouts and other obstacles needing a vehicle in good condition to get through. It would take a miracle to even get to the WA-NT border yet 260km ahead. Once we crossed that border we had a chance of getting a recovery vehicle from Alice Springs to pick us up; it would take us all day to get to that border.
And, not only did we reach the NT border, we even made it to Alice Springs, although the last stretch on sealed roads was so noisy and so slow because of that bearing screeching so loudly. I had kept on saying that if we were meant to get to Alice, then we’d get there, but I wasn’t too hopeful. I was expecting the car rear axle to seize up at any time all the way. It took 3 days for us to get to Alice and get it repaired. The garage said the bearing had disintegrated but there was no damage to the axle itself, a miracle in itself! And we had towed that camper trailer all the way as well. (I reasoned that if we had left the trailer behind, we wouldn’t have seen it again, and if we did break down, it would be handy to have it to sleep in while we waited for repairs.) Outback travelling can be risky and now I look back on it all and wonder why I did so much remote travel on my own. But it was enjoyable and the peace and quiet of the outback without anyone else around is very relaxing.
When we arrived home in Melbourne, I started to look around for a teaching job. My spare funds were running low and I needed to top them up a bit. I enquired about a principal position south of Perth, WA, but when I was told there were some Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) parents involved at the school, I had my doubts. However the principal there talked me into going there for an interview, so I went. I found out that there was a significant SDA population at the school, enough to have to be careful about mentioning topics such as hell and Saturday worship. (SDAs believe that worshipping on a day other than Saturday is enough to lose you your salvation unless you repent. Their “prophetess” Mary Eddy even taught that worshipping on Sunday was the equivalent of taking the mark of the beast!) I knew that I’d have problems there, so I withdrew my application when I got home from that interview.
By early of December I was still out of a job and wondering if I’d get one for 2007. Then I saw an advert for a principal at River City Christian College (RCCC) in Echuca. It caught my eye because it was well past its closing date. So I contacted them to tell them that their advert was still there past its end date. They said they still had no-one for the principal’s position and could I at least put in an application. I knew some people in Echuca; one was my father’s cousin, a Christian who might give me some idea of what the school was like. When I rang, he said he’d been asked to contact me to ask about the position. I went for the interview, and accepted the position when offered to me.
Once again we rented a house (while still keeping our house in Hoppers Crossing, Melbourne). Our house was next to the Campaspe River which flowed into the Murray River just downstream from us. The school was a 10-minute or less drive away; most days I would get there soon after 7am and finish around 5pm. At first the school seemed to be running well enough, but records showed that it had been losing students regularly for the past few years. It had reached over 100 students and they’d had visions of it growing further again. They allegedly set the school up with room and facilities for many more students, believing that God would bless this move of “faith”. However, the numbers went into steady decline after this “act of faith”; it seems that God did not see it the same as they did! When I arrived at the start of 2007, the numbers were down to less than half they’d had previously, and even then a few of those were not legally enrolled according to the Registered Schools Board. RCCC was a Prep-10 school, yet we appeared to have students doing Yr 11&12 studies.
The previous principal had left a message saying that the Registered Schools Board (RSB) were due to assess RCCC that year (2007) for registration. So I contacted the RSB to follow up what their plans might be. I’d had good contacts with the RSB in the past and now got someone I knew. He said that the state govt had now replaced the RSB with another body with further-reaching powers and consequences, the VRQA, and that the assessment wouldn’t be in 2007 but most likely in 2008, the changeover requiring a year to accomplish. And, he added, RCCC’s funding was under investigation because they considered we were getting more funding than we should have been getting. It seemed that we were claiming funding for Yr 11&12 students but were only registered for up to Yr 10. This was news to me, so I said I’d follow it up immediately.
And I did follow it up. I asked one of the school board why we would be under investigation regarding funding. I was told that Yes, there were students doing Yr 11&12 studies but were being listed as Yr 10 because they still had Yr 10 subjects to complete. The trick was, I was told, to keep them from completing Yr 10 until after they had completed Yr 11&12, and thus could be funded as Yr 10 students. I found it hard to believe they were doing such fiddling of the books, but Yes, they were indeed, and I told this board member so. RCCC was doing the ACE curriculum that used standardized subject booklets at each level, much like a home-schooling system might do. They could mix and match so that they might be doing yr 10 in one subject, but perhaps Yr 8 in another. The individualized method permitted each student to work at his/her own pace regardless of what the others were doing. But it still should never have been manipulated to permit the extra funding. So we did have an enrolment issue and serious funding issues as well. I took this to the school board and had the system changed so that these Yr 11&12 students were actually enrolled externally but could attend the school for their studies. It meant a reduction in govt funding though and therefore less money in the RCCC bank!
The previous principal (and possibly the one before him as well) had been given RSB recommendations back about 5 or 6 years before I arrived. These included a lack of policies for just about everything to do with the school, and some serious health and safety issues such as and asbestos assessment, exit doors opening inwards, and toilet locks that could end up locking someone in and not being able to get out (this did happen one evening!). We also didn’t have available our official certificate (effectively our licence to operate as a school) that had to be on show in the school office. It was missing; in fact no-one knew what it was or even if we’d ever had one! This school was in a proper mess and may not even had a legal right to operate as a school.
The VRQA came visiting early 2008. Almost their first words (after announcing a school review) to the staff gathered in the staffroom were “We intend removing some or all of your school registrations.” That is, we were registered primary P-6 and secondary 7-10. Most likely they meant that they would remove at least our secondary registration and probably also our primary registration. We found out later that the VRQA had a particular vendetta against Christian schools and had selected around six schools to start with to begin their planned destruction. They said they had already shut one school down before they visited us; we never did find out which school that was. We were given terms of assessment to consider including the total removal of anything in our curriculum that referred to biblical creation; creation teaching, they said, belonged in our myths and legends time, not our official curriculum; evolution was science and creation was not, so end of story!
We also needed to produce around 70-80 policies on every aspect of school activities. But their main focus (really an obsession!) was on removing all refences to God and the Bible from all our official statements and curriculum documents. On their first official assessment review later on, their report said that I was a fundamentalist teacher, something that in their context was intended to strongly suggest that I was a religious extremist of some sort, implying something maybe akin to being a terrorist. I spent long hours reviewing our curriculum documents which were in general very concise and not detailed enough because our curriculum was actually built into the ACE workbooks the students used. All the ACE curriculum had to be collated, letters written to obtain information. And we only had six policies, none of which actually dealt with RCCC. They had been copied from policies of another ACE school and mostly just had names and labels changed, but the wording remained largely applicable to the other school. They were useless! I spent long hours researching and writing policies for all sorts of areas. I ended up with 72 policies covering every possible aspect of school management including Emergency Management Plan, Bus policy, Occupational Health & Safety, etc. At first I would present what I had written to the school board for ratification, but this process was too slow so I finally put all the completed policies in a folder and presented them to the board, telling them to check them and if there were no stated issues, then consider them ratified! We were learning to cut corners due to the time constraints placed on us by the VRQA. And by the end of my second year there (2008) I was getting exhausted due to long hours being put in, including most weekends and holidays.
On their second visit the VRQA had a list of complaints, mostly due to their religious hatred of our biblical standards. They noted that on our website we declared God to be the ruler of the universe. They ordered me to remove it because it was an anti-government statement. I told them they were being ridiculous. And our statement of beliefs on our website was also under fire; they ordered me to remove that also. I told them it was none of their business what we put on our website; the website was not their official document to dictate terms about it. I don’t know what their hangup was but they certainly had a serious hatred for anything Christian. They continued to make it clear that they would shut us down if we couldn’t remove everything Christian from our school, website, everything. We were going to be completely sanitised or closed down!
At the end of 2008 I was suffering much stress-related health problems. I had a medical checkup and was found to have oesophageal ulcers. I was advised to back off my workload for a while or else things would get worse; the worst case scenario was that I could end up with cancer, or require major surgery for my stomach issues. I had been working 80 hour weeks consistently for a long time but would have to cut this back in 2009. The school board didn’t seem to understand my needs here and, effectively, without some support for my workload, it looked like I’d have to resign my position at the end of 2009. And with the VRQA still trying hard to shut us down, it didn’t look like I’d be backing off the workload enough yet.