Schools

King's Ridge Christian Starts School Year with New Students, Teachers

The high school on the 70-acre campus gets 10 new classrooms.

Most of the more than 700 students at have been back to school since Wednesday, and the school is filled with energy, said Associated Headmaster Lowrie McCown.

The high school is just shy of 160 students, and will have the largest graduating class ever at the school with 32 seniors.

While the first day of classes was Wednesday, kindergarten and Pre-K students won't start until Monday, Aug. 15.

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"There's a lot of excitement because we've really grown, especially our middle school and high school," McCown said.

Almost 80 news students are enrolled in the middle and high schools.

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"When you are building your school, that's the really hard place to grow," he said.

To support the growing school, more teachers and administrators have been hired.

"We have 137 new families at King's Ridge this year. Also, a third of our high school and middle school faculty are new. This adds a lot of enthusiasm for parents," McCown said.

Ten new classrooms ahve been added for the high school as a new, permanent building is getting ready for construction, due to open in Fall of 2013.

"King's Ridge loves to build," he said.

With the new teachers and administrators, the school has been able to go deeper inot it scurriculum, providing for more students. It's the largest sixth grade and freshman classes ever at the school.

"We haven't really broadened our curriculum as much as take it deeper and cover more bases with it. With new students we are just needing to have more sections or more class offerings,' McCown said.

King's Ridge has been able to add a full-time band director for 6th through 12th grade. The school can add a high school pep band. It already has a middle school worship and praise band. But instead of a teacher having to handle that in addition to regular classes, now the band director can handle it.

In addition, the art room has tripled in size, eliminating the limit on how many students could take art at one time. Now it's a big enough facility to teach whatever is needed without the art teacher having to rearrange the room just to do it.

The ability to expand the fine arts instruction is important, McCown said, because the school is focused on preparing students for college placement.

"Keep in mind, we've already got lower school, K-5, music and art programs, fully implemented," McCown said.

King's Ridge draws students from about a 12-mile radius, with most coming from Milton, Alpharetta, Cumming, Roswell and Canton.

Administrative staff that has been added includes a full-time athletic director and a full-time Christian Life director. In the past the school had those positions, but they were filled by staff that also had teaching assignments.

A brand new director of technology will help the school as it revamps its technology infrastructure across the campus in time for the new high school to open.

 

A school growing so quickly that already has 120 people on staff, a full-time human resources manager was hired to serve that staff.

"Also, believe it or not, we've been on the property four years, and never had director of facilities," McCown said.

Now the school has someone to manage the 70-acre campus.

While the public high school won't open across Cogburn Avenue for another year, King's Ridge administrators are already meeting with that school's principal, Ed Spurka.

"We are having lunch together on Monday, just to really build a relationship, be good neighbors together," McCown said.

The Bethany Bend high school probably will start its carpools a half hour later than King's Ridge to help deal with traffic. He said the King's Ridge carpool takes about 20 minutes each morning. They'll plan more once they learn where the public school will load out, whether that's Bethany Bend or Cogburn Road.

There will be some disruption at the Cogburn and Bethany Bend intersection in late spring when intersection improvements are made in advance of the new school's opening, e said.

McCown takes it as a good sign that schools would locate so close together. It creates a healthy competition and makes King's Ridge raise the bar on its own standards.

This part of metro Atlanta is a good environment for education, McCown said.


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