The Future at Prince Avenue Christian School
These are exciting times in the life of our school! Since relocating from our original campus in downtown Athens, Georgia, to our new facility in Oconee County, our enrollment has more than doubled. With a growing student body and a need for expanding co-curricular programs, we are undertaking a 3.2 million dollar capital campaign to fund a middle school building and purchase additional property.
Click Here to Donate to the NOW It’s Time Capital Campaign
Middle School Building: $2,990,000
To address our current need for additional instructional space, we will build an 18,400 square foot middle school building for grades 6, 7, & 8 on the southern side of campus. This building will contain 12 classrooms, 2 science laboratories, a tutoring center, student technology support center, administrative offices, and a teacher workroom. The building’s location requires minimal site preparation, thus enabling the vast majority of gifts to be used towards building construction and furnishings.
New Middle School Building:
Aerial Photograph of Middle School Building Site Location:
Land Acquisition: $210,000
We will purchase the fourteen acres of land that boarders Highway 78 to avoid retail development and maintain the integrity of our campus. The property will be used to expand the school’s athletic facilities with additional practice fields, a multipurpose venue that includes much needed locker rooms, and tennis courts.
The Case for Support
This campaign is much more than building a new academic facility and creating additional athletic fields. It creates new environments for teachers and coaches to partner with parents to educate and raise young men and women using biblical principles to instill wisdom as we seek to raise up the next generation of Christian families. Now that is true strategic planning, and we need your partnership and support to make that vision a reality!
Frequently Asked Questions
Our decision to house middle school students in this new facility was based on several factors. The size of the building will meet our current needs while allowing some limited capacity for controlled growth. Middle school is a common insertion point for parents who want their child in a Christ-centered environment, and we expect to see continued enrollment growth in this age group. Discipleship training is a core program in PACS’ mission, and there are more discipleship programs that pair high school and lower school students together making it more logical to house those students in the same facility and middle school students in their own facility.
The classrooms vacated by the middle school students in the main building will be repurposed for our youngest learners in grades PreK, kindergarten, and first grade who are presently housed in Prince Avenue Baptist Church. These classrooms and their adjacent bathrooms already have lower fixtures and water fountains since they were originally designed for this age group.
Purchasing the fourteen acres adjacent to the school’s property will provide us with desperately needed athletic practice fields, tennis courts, and a multipurpose venue to include visitor locker rooms while reducing usage, repair, and maintenance costs for our competition fields. The installation of tennis courts will prevent us from busing our middle and high school tennis teams to rented, off campus locations for practices and competitions. The acquisition of this property will also ensure the integrity of the campus by preventing any retail development, eliminating concerns about local traffic on and around the campus, and ensuring current campus security levels are maintained.
The PACS Annual Fund is an annual fundraising campaign that raises critical, unrestricted dollars to supplement the operating budget. It offsets the difference between the basics that tuition covers and the full cost of running the school. Capital Campaigns are fundraising campaigns to meet large-scale future needs such as a building or endowment that is vitally important for improvement and expansion.
Both are important, as PACS must continue to fund current operating needs while simultaneously making major acquisitions and improvements to fulfill our mission. While it is important to look and plan for the future (capital), we must first be intentional of our needs today (annual). Sustained growth of the Annual Fund will ensure immediate needs are always met.