MIDDLEBURG, Va. - When Cornerstone Christian Academy opened its campus doors last week, hundreds of eager students and relieved parents flooded the hallways.
Cornerstone Chapel Pastor Gary Hamrick announced the K-8 Christian school last February as an alternative for parents who wanted something other than a public school education for their children. Over 500 students are already enrolled at CCA, and parents and teachers explained why so many families are flocking to the new campus in Middleburg, Va., which is commonly known as the nation's "Horse and Hunt Capital" for its foxhunting and steeplechases.
"It’s just incredible," Head of School Dr. Sam Botta told Fox News Digital. "There was excitement from the very beginning."
"I have never been in a place that has been so filled with excitement and smiles and love," Courtney Hanak, who teaches first grade at CCA, said. "From teachers, from parents and administrators, from our church, from the kids."
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CCA, a ministry of Cornerstone Chapel, teaches the faith fundamentals, partnering with parents to provide a Biblically-grounded education.
"We believe each child is a treasure given to parents, having been fearfully and wonderfully made by God (Psalm 139:14)," the CCA website reads. "At CCA, we are committed to coming alongside families in helping our students explore and discover the unique gifts, passions, and dreams that God has placed deep within them. We will also provide our students with the opportunity to pursue and experience their calling as part of their education at CCA. This is what we refer to as 'Calling Prep.'"
"Parents are so excited about being able to send their children to a Christian school that shares their values," Botta said. "For us, this is a dream come true, to be able to have students and families involved in a place where they know that not only do we share what’s important to them in terms of how they want to raise their children, but we want to partner with them. We want to welcome them in this school."
"A lot of children know who Jesus is and love him and want to share that and this is a place to do that," Hanak said.
The church helps subsidize part of the tuition for families who may not otherwise be able to afford private school.
"Pastor Gary Hamrick didn’t want CCA to only be a school for the affluent," Botta said.
"They’re the primary educators of their children," Botta said of parents. "We just come alongside them. We’re just here to support them."
And that, many agreed, is a message that drove so many families to the campus that has a prime view of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. Several school controversies, including parents' discovery of progressive curriculum, spurred families around the Commonwealth to protest at school board meetings and demand their children be taught the basics, not be indoctrinated.
"Being able to come together with a group of like-minded families that want to raise their children in a way that it’s a little bit sometimes counter culture," CCA parent Jennifer Paranzino shared.
"The biggest thing I find as a parent so refreshing is that this school… their intention is really to partner with parents," she later added. "They really do view parents as equal teachers."
Concerned parents in Virginia have continued to speak out against progressive agendas and policies, such as increased punishments for students for "misgendering" their classmates. Most recently, Fairfax County Public Schools drew the ire of parents by defying Gov. Glenn Youngkin's guidance on bathrooms requiring students to use the pronouns and bathrooms that correspond with their biological sex, citing the federal and state anti-discrimination laws.
"So many things happening in… the public schools, what seems like an agenda," Botta said. "Things like boys and girls using one another’s bathrooms that they choose, the gender issue, where they can pick what they are. Parents, not just Christian families, most families, and most parents recognize, honestly the foolishness of that. It’s almost incomprehensible that we can tell a boy that was a boy from birth, God-ordained as a boy, that we can tell them that they can choose to be a girl. And so when that happened, these parents didn’t walk, they ran."
National reading scores saw their largest decrease in 30 years, and math scores had their first decrease in the history of the testing regimen done by the National Center for Education Statistics, last year's report card revealed, with many blaming the devastating statistics on school closures during the coronavirus pandemic.
The educational declines were felt keenly in Virginia, as well. According to an analysis of Virginia's results by the Youngkin administration, 4th graders in Virginia between 2017 and 2022 saw the largest declines in reading and math in the nation. And for the first time in decades, Virginia’s 4th grade students fell below the national average in reading and are barely above the national average in math, the administration said. The governor called the results "catastrophic."
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CCA's Kristan Bergman, who teaches fundamentals in math and pre-algebra to middle schoolers, sounded off on the cultural issues in Virginia that appear to have been a major driving force in CCA's enrollment.
"With everyone that’s going on in the world – the woke agenda, the LGBT… Christians students are being penalized in their work products – their writings, their art projects, if they mention Jesus or Christ or God, and they need a place where they can not just grow academically, but in a spiritually safe environment that’s faith focused and faith grounded," she said.
"There’s a lot of cultural things that are being targeted at our children," CCA teacher Leah Melcher seconded. "Whether it’s through media, what they listen to, what they watch. And it’s so sneaky and so subtle, and it’s so important that they understand what the truth is. That there is right and wrong, and it’s not based on one person or the next. It’s so important that children get a more traditional education, but also understand what truth is and what a biblical worldview is so that they can become critical thinkers in a world that is – or in a way that’s counterculture."
Bergman described the Virginia school system as "disappointing" and one that doesn't allow students to think critically.
"And if they have their own opinions that disagree with culture, they’re labeled bigots, homophobes," she said.
"We’re being silenced," she continued. "If we don’t align with the left agenda, their beliefs, we’re labeled discriminatory when they’re the ones who are discriminated against… I think what's going on in our culture and society speaks volumes about where the American people really stand on certain values."
Melcher agreed that so many families have been attracted to schools like CCA because too many public schools today seem to be teaching in a way that "leans more Marxist or socialist" and is more focused on the community rather than the individual.
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"In private religious schools, there’s more of a relational aspect that is genuine, and it’s focused on the child as a learner…and I think parents are craving that and students are craving that," Melcher said. "They don’t want to be just another number. They want to be a name. They want to be a person. They want to contribute to the class in a way that’s authentic and genuine."
CCA parent Katie Cockerill said that while tempers have certainly flared around the issue of education, parents are by and large looking for the same thing.
"I think there has been a side of the issue that has a lot of anger and vitriol involved in it," Cockerill said. "But I think that what a lot of parents are looking for, is hope. They just want hope for the future and the next generation."
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