By Nick Mattera
Offering a unique classroom experience and a focus on teaching important moral lessons, Master’s Vineyard Mission Academy is not your typical school.
The academy that opened on Sept. 8, educates its 23 students in two separate multi-grade classrooms.
Despite the school’s relatively low enrollment, Master’s Principal Christina Webber said the new school has outgrown its current location in the Packard Court Community Center and is looking to relocate to a larger facility.
“We have currently outgrown our current location,” Webber said, adding the cramped space impacts enrollment. “As of right now, we have a few openings, but as the school year progresses we have placed many students on our waiting list.”
The principal said she hopes to find a new building for the 2010-11 school year.
Webber said the school’s classrooms are designed to combat the concerns that parent’s have with the local public school systems.
“Parent’s are frustrated with declining academic levels and especially low reading levels,” Webber said. “They are also concerned with the violence and disrespect that is commonly found in local schools.
Webber said that far too often in the public school system, students are being passed along, just for the sake of being passed along.
“If a student is being disrespectful or is falling behind in a public school setting, they are far too often just being brushed under the rug,” Webber said. “Not here. We deal with those issues head on.”
She said the multi-grade classroom setting plays a large role in being able to achieve that.
“Multi-grade classrooms give children the opportunity to be able to work at different levels all in the same room,” Webber said. “In many cases we know that a seventh grade student may not be at a seventh grade level in all subjects.”
The classrooms are divided by grade the younger students from Kindergarten to fourth grade in one room and grades five and up in the other.
This system allows students to not feel as if they are being left behind or anxious, it allows them to learn, Webber said.
“If a student needs help with a particular subject or on a particular assignment often times an older classmate will assist them with it,” she said.
Falls Administrator for Curriculum and Instruction Carol Gold has toured the school and met with Webber. Gold told the Falls Board of Education last month that she believes the school is “providing substantially equivalent instruction.”
Webber’s husband James is the pastor of the Seventh-Day Adventists church located on Hyde Park Boulevard In Niagara Falls. She said she work’s alongside her husband in the ministry.
Webber said that only three of the school’s students participate actively at the church, proving that the community — regardless of its church affiliation — has found Master’s Vineyard a suitable educational opportunity for their children.
She said the school focuses on a “Christ-centered” learning environment that encourages the student mentally, physically and spiritually.
Through this learning system, students begin to understand that there is an importance to moral and faith-based learning, Webber said.
“Most parents want the God factor involved in their children’s learning,” she said. “These parents have faith, they believe in God and they want that to be a part of their child’s life.”
The school provides busing to its students as well as a healthy, vegetarian breakfast and lunch program.
Webber said unlike many private school’s, Master’s Vineyard offers a flexible tuition plan that makes the school an option for parent’s who wish to send their children to be in a private school.
“Parent’s who may have previously not been able to afford a private education can come here and take advantage of the flexible tuition that we have, through the family discounts that we offer, it now makes a private education a reality.”
Master’s Vineyard is located in the Packard Court Community Center, adjacent to Ruth Nicoletti Field. Webber said that the working relationship she has with the Housing Authority helped her chose the current location.
“Niagara Falls was the perfect place to bring our educational system,” Webber said. “Seventh-Day Adventists boast the world’s second-largest educational system behind Catholic education.”
