Evangelical Christian School brings $10M campus vision to life
Jan 26, 2023
By Stephen MacLeod – Reporter, Memphis Business Journal
Grinder, Taber & Grinder, Inc. is the General Contractor for this job.
Evangelical Christian School (ECS) has two campuses — a lower school (PreK-5) in Germantown and an upper school (6-12) in Cordova by Shelby Farms.
Both of those school campuses have seen upgrades, and the payoff has been noticeable, especially related to the younger grades.
Braxton Brady, head of school at ECS, has overseen the school for five years, including the entirety of ECS' $10 million Build For Life Vision Campaign. Work stemming from that campaign has brought significant growth to the school.
Enrollment is up 77% in early childhood education; 35% in middle school; and 2% in high school, bringing ECS' total enrollment well past 900; the school's internal enrollment projections forecast 975 to 1,000 students enrolled in time.
Hiring has also increased over the past several years, with 10 to 15 staff additions, pushing ECS' employee count to 150. Brady noted the school has a 90%-plus staff retention rate, and should need to scale up further as its early childhood student enrollment grows.
The Build For Life campaign has raised $9 million of the total goal of $10 million, as the school enters the latter half of its fiscal year. Those funds have already gone toward extensive renovations.
An eight-classroom early childhood wing and playground; a new entrance at the Shelby Farms campus; and a spring sports venue with a turf baseball field have already been built. Currently, both campuses are being renovated in order to accommodate large early childhood classes.
ECS' fourth and fifth grade will be moved into the Shelby Farms campus to create an upper elementary campus of fourth through sixth grades. All the high school students have been moved out of the building and are set to adopt a college-like campus model.
“I want kids to be somewhat familiar with what they're going into — being able to change classes in different buildings — to get the feel of [college life]," Brady said. "We're not a college campus by any means; we’re much smaller. And we're trying to prepare kids for life beyond high school. I believe, educationally, getting students moving and outside in between classes is always a benefit, not just walking from one room to the next.”
There will be specific facilities for different purposes for the high school-focused areas, such as an English building, a history building, and a math and science building.
A lot of work is set to be done this summer, including on a chemistry lab. But most of all, Brady is proud that the campaign has allowed the school to hire more.
“It's been a true blessing for us to be able to raise the money to improve our facilities, but more importantly, to be able to hire people and put people in spaces where kids are successful,” he said. “For us, that’s No. 1 — what’s best for students — period, end of sentence. For us to be able to do that, it’s really exciting.”
