Student body triples at local Christian school, bucking national trends

Despite declining church attendance across the nation, one local Christian school says their community is thriving.

Otsego Christian School held a groundbreaking ceremony Thursday for a new addition to the school that will double the building’s size.

Construction on the new 14,000-square-foot addition will begin in the next week and should be completed by the start of the 2024-25 school year. The new section will add seven classrooms, a library and a half gym that could also be used as an auditorium.

Parents and school officials say the new addition is badly needed, as the school body has tripled in the past four years.

“We in the past have had to have students on waiting lists,” school administrator, Lani Lyttle said. “[Now] we can take more students as well as add some common space that the kids don’t really have right now.”

Their remarkable rise in attendance has come despite religious trends in the past decade. According to a survey in 2019 by PEW Research, adults identifying as Christian have dropped 12% in the past decade.

The president of the school board, Karl Johnson, attributed the school’s growth to parents paying closer attention to what their kids are learning in school.

“I think parents are concerned, and they want their kids to be trained in truth,” Johnson claimed.

One parent with three children attending the school says all of her children have not only become great students, she says the school has helped them build character and is looking forward to more students enrolling.

“When my daughter started here several years ago, it only went to second grade and now it going through seventh grade, (which) shows our school is growing,” she said. “People are attracted here and people are really investing in their children’s education.”