Enrollment growth keeps classes going

Parents, teachers work
to prevent UM school
from closing doors

By Claudia M. Williams
Staff Writer
Six weeks into third grade, Garrett Hinck could have had to say goodbye to teachers and friends he’d known for seven years.
Trinity United Methodist School, supported by Trinity UMC, San Antonio, for more than 30 years, was in financial trouble. Administrators were struggling to keep the doors open.
With enrollment in preschool classes and elementary grades declining and funds not coming in, it looked in October 2004 like the school might have to close.
Garrett’s mother, Chris Hinck, whose 3-year-old son, Bennett, is enrolled at the same school, said, “I don’t know what I would have done. I guess I would have had to find another private school for them.”
Instead of locking the doors, though, administrators locked arms with parents and teachers in a crusade to keep the school—with classes from preschool to fifth grade—open.
“We parents were not going to let that (school closing) happen,” Hinck said.
School director Debra Schneider began knocking on doors.
“She’s very good talking up the school,” Hinck said.
Between Schneider’s efforts and parents talking to their friends and neighbors, Hinck said, “Word began to get around about what a find this (school) is.”
A $5,000 grant from Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, coupled with private donations and a cutback in office staff, forestalled the school’s closing.
“Teachers were giving back their paychecks and even adding donations to keep the school open,” Schneider said
In November, Schneider wrote to parents, telling them enrollment was low, and consequently the school was going through “tough times.” She asked parents for their help.
“We started getting checks,” Schneider reported, “lots of donations from the families—even $5,000 from one family—with notes telling us what the school has done for their kids. People were handing us money, both faculty and parents, saying thank you.”
Among themselves, parents, teachers and administrators had increased the school’s funding by $18,000. That was enough to get the school through December and January.
And then the kids started coming.
“It was a miracle,” Schneider said. “We weren’t advertising any differently. A lot of our enrollment is from word of mouth, and that wasn’t any different.”
When the elementary school reopened after the Christmas holiday, enrollment in the second grade had doubled. There were additional students in each of the grades. The preschool filled up.
Enrollment schoolwide, from the 2-year-old preschoolers to the fifth graders, is now 106, up from 74.
“This was God,” Schneider said.
And more kids are coming.
“We’re usually nervous in late summer, worried about having enough students to begin the year,” Schneider said. “We have 12 more already enrolled for next year. And here we are, in April! This is unheard of.”
Hinck said she’ll keep her sons enrolled in Trinity school “until they kick us out.”
The quality of their education is unmatched, she said. From learning Spanish in preschool and Latin in the fifth grade to studiously following the trek of the Iditarod sled-dog race in Alaska, students are immersed in a curriculum markedly different from that of public schools. In addition, small class size allows teachers to give students individual attention.
“Our son Garrett is interested in history and politics,” Hinck said. “His teachers know that, and they look for materials for him. One got some books for him from e-Bay, and when the school has Scholastic book fairs, the teachers point out the books he’d like.”
Bennett has some special needs, his mother said.
“No one has ever said ‘we can’t handle him’ here,” she said. The school entered a partnership with the public schools so that he could get the nurturing he needs from both environments.
“The children are encouraged to do what they’re good at,” Hinck said. And what they’re not so good at, the school encourages them to try.
“Garrett is shy,” she said, “and his self-confidence has been boosted here.” Her son, she added, has had leading roles in school programs and is comfortable on stage.
“It’s so much more than reading, writing and arithmetic,” she said. “This is a well-rounded education tailored to individual needs.”
Schneider described an incident that sums up the reasons parents keep bringing children to Trinity United Methodist School, and why children want to stay.
“There was a little girl who transferred here in the middle of the year,” Schneider said. “In her classes, she kept saying loudly, over and over, ‘I don’t understand. I don’t understand.’ Her teacher told her to raise her hand if she didn’t understand something.
“The little girl said, ‘But you won’t see me.’”
In a school where enrollment from preschool through fifth grade is capped at 140 students, this little girl was sure to be seen, not only by this teacher but by no fewer than three adults who greet every child by name each day.