Principal keeps full calendar

PALMER -- Kathleen Kelly is principal of Matanuska Christian Schools. MCS has one campus, located in a building that the school purchased from the Matansuka Electric Association. It's right across the street from the Palmer public library. Kelly enjoys working at the school because it's such a busy place. There's a calendar on the wall in her office with over-sized date blocks to write-in all the business.

"There's always something going on," Kelly said of MCS. "There's basketball games and Christmas programs and class pictures -- I think I like September the best, starting a new school year. But really I like all of it."

There is also a stethoscope on the office wall. Kelly is a registered nurse and it's a safe bet she's got a decent manner with kids, having raised two sons of her own. Kelly home-schooled her two sons, Brendan and Thomas, until the family decided they wanted their sons to attend a school.

"My one son, Brendan, took to home-schooling real well. He was like a sponge. My younger son has dyslexia. When we came over here they had a Slingerland method teacher and they used intensive phonics and that was a big help," Kelly said. "…When we were home-schooling I wanted to be the mom. I didn't want to be the person who was forcing him to sit down and read."

This year Brendan is at University of Alaska Anchorage and Thomas is at Peninsula Junior College in Washington State. Their mom also went to state universities. She studied micro-biology at Oregon State University and earned a bachelor's of science degree and then earned a nursing degree from Idaho State University.

Kelly's husband Michael, is a fisheries biologist -- she calls him a "real environmentalist -- who had a job offer here in Alaska in 1979. Despite the fact that she grew up in Washington state, Kathleen said she wasn't exactly sure about Alaska when she and her husband set out to move here.

"But he's in heaven here. He's a fisheries biologist so he gets to go fish all over in Alaska and get paid for it," she said.

In the 1980's when Brendan and Thomas needed a school and the family settled on MCS, Kathleen became a playground monitor and a teacher's assistant. Then she became a teacher. Then an administrator. This year, she is not only the principal at MCS, but also teaches grade-school mathematics, English to junior high students and science for high-schoolers.

"I can teach up to eighth-grade math," she said, picking up a sixth-grade mathematics text. "But if it's algebra, forget it. Every teacher has to find their limits."

MCS has 132 students this year, ranging from four-year-old pre-schoolers to high school seniors. The school was originally founded in the early 1980s by the Matanuska Assembly of God in Palmer. The school is now an independent entity and this year's students come from 29 different congregations around the Valley.

The state of Alaska has curriculum requirements that need to be me for private schools to issue state-recognized diplomas and MCS first high school graduate received their diploma in 1990, according to Kelly.

In a time when so many Americans are school-aged it would be hard to miss the public policy debates on education and Kelly said private school educators are no different than anyone else in that regard. Topics such as high-stakes testing, Alaska studies, or school hours are just as apt to be discussed among MCS teachers and parents as they are among public school families.

"We need to watch those things so that our kids are ready to go to university," she said. "At this point, we are not required to do the bench markings, but we do SATs every year and tests for all grade levels that we can see how they perform on a national average."

At MCS students also have bible study every day and there is an all-school chapel every Wednesday. Kelly said several Valley ministers are involved, including Pastor Peter Gallardo of Family Christian Center in Palmer and Pastor Rick Van Tassel of New Beginnings and Pastor Ken Gabel of King's Chapel in Wasilla, among others.

"We have a variety of speakers who come in and encourage them in their walk with the Lord. In this day and age you have to make good choices," she said.