Dear Church and School Family:

At the beginning of the 2006-07 school year, the school administration was notified by the Association of Christian Schools International that we would be receiving a visit from one of their accreditation members. The ACSI representative would be accompanied by an examining member of the Western Association Schools and Colleges. The visit had been anticipated for some time as a component of the on-going accreditation process that we subject our schools to, in order to insure that the Valley Christian Schools are measuring up to the high standards that are laid out before us by the Valley Christian School Board and Valley Christian Board of Deacons. We were offered the choice of being visited in October of 2006 or postponing the visit until early in 2007. We chose to invite the individuals to visit us in October of 2006.

The purpose of the visit was two-fold. The ACSI representative, Mr. Steve Roberts, was coming back as a follow up to a visit in 2002 in which a series of recommendations had been directed to us that needed to be followed up on and implemented. Steve had previously visited along with a WASC representative and in that visit in February of 2006, it was determined that the high school “has developed a well structured action plan that demonstrates the schools approach and completion of most items from the last two visits. The team was impressed with the overall action plan and pleased at the excellent progress made in the implementation of that plan”. The second reason for the visit was for WASC to determine whether or not to grant a “Substantive Change Request” in which we requested to have our elementary school incorporated into the ongoing accreditation process by both ACSI and WASC. WASC would need to determine if sufficient ESLR implementation has taken place in both schools. ESLR is the acronym for “expected school wide learning results”.

At the conclusion of the visit, we received two written reports that were highly complementary of both the elementary and the high school. We received eight commendations from ACSI and seven recommendations; all of which were in process of being implemented even prior to the visit. The commendations included commendations of the students, the parents, the administration, the faculty, the support staff, the school board; in short all of those involved in our schools were commended for their various contributions. The WASC recommendation from Dr. Ralph Giannini read in part; “I strongly recommend that the Substantive Change Request” to include the Valley Christian Elementary School in the WASC Accreditation Process be granted”. These reports have been forwarded to the two accrediting committees that will affirm, reject or modify the recommendations. We have been assured that these reports will very likely be affirmed because the recommendations are without condition. The full committees meet separately in early 2007, and if the reports are ratified as expected, our elementary and junior/senior high schools will be dually accredited by ACSI and WASC for the next three years.

Sincerely,

Bryan Tebbutt
Executive Administrator
Valley Christian Center