By SALLIE SATTERTHWAITE
Staff Writer

This is the second in a series of articles comparing Fayette County's public and private schools.

What differences would a parent notice if she opted to pull her child out of public school and put him into one of the church schools now open in Fayette County? For that matter, what differences would the student note?

In this series, Sallie Satterthwaite goes inside some of Fayette's public and private schools to provide an indepth look at what's different, and what's the same.

Lutherans have been in the school-teaching business in this country for nearly 400 years, thanks to the philosophy of immigrating Swedes, Austrians and Saxons who wanted to enable children to read Scripture and Martin Luther's Catechism.

St. Paul Lutheran School on Ardenlee Parkway in Peachtree City is part of the largest Protestant school system in the United States. The congregation that built it is one of about 2,200 of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod's 6,000 congregations now operating schools, a tradition that dates from the denomination's establishment in 1847.

LC-MS schools are built and controlled by the local congregation, with building loans, teacher-training, and curriculum materials available through district and national offices. Most are elementary, but there are also kindergarten and pre-K as well as state-certified high schools, 10 universities, a boarding high school, and two seminaries.

St. Paul's principal, Gordon Stuckert, says the school is open to children of any religious background. While nationally about 50 percent of LC-MS students are non-Lutherans, at St. Paul the ratio is about 70 percent from other denominations.

St. Paul is in its third year, the first in its completed new building, and now has 183 students from 2-year-old pre-K through eighth grade. The two-story structure just off Ga. Highway 74 north was built to accommodate 300, and is equipped with a gym, a multi-purpose room that serves as an assembly-hall, chapel and cafeteria, and a computer lab that every child in the school gets to use at least weekly.

According to Stuckert, the congregation opted to put the establishment and building of a school ahead of a sanctuary. The church began as the vision of five people, he said, and has grown to a baptized membership of 212. Worship services are conducted in the gym.

The building's mortgage is $5 million, Stuckert said. Borrowed from the denomination's national office, it is being paid off by students' tuition and gifts of the congregation.

And yes, Stuckert said, the school does offer congregation members discounts on its $4,400 annual tuition for full-day kindergarten through eighth, but that difference is made up by the congregation itself.

Add to tuition an application fee, a non-refundable fee of $250 for books and supplies, plus the purchase of uniforms, and most St. Paul families have to weigh carefully the cost of a religious education — especially considering that some have more than one school-aged child.

“Limited financial assistance is available,” Stuckert said, “depending on how much is contributed to the [scholarship] fund.”

Can one assume that the principal would support a voucher system that returns state school tax money to parents who choose a church school?

“We'd have to look at that,” Stuckert said cautiously, “depending on whether it was coming from a source such as gambling.”

Such as lottery-based revenue? The principal hastened to state that this is his own viewpoint and the congregation might not agree about state funding. “That's personal,” he said. “That's just me.” His denomination is known for its conservative positions on issues more easily accepted by the larger Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

The Rev. Ron Janssen, pastor of the church, has an office in the building and is obviously well-known to students as he shows a visitor through the facility before school starts. They greet him with smiles and hugs, occasionally teasing, and apparently are comfortable with his use of a wheelchair.

He shows off the cozy library and a computer lab where every child in the school gets hands-on experience at least once a week. In one hall, a graphic exhibit of life-sized anatomical drawings explains the human body's various systems. All in all, however, the halls here are plainer than at Huddleston — but it is a large building and so far houses fewer students.

Outdoors, the facility's newness shows too. Playing fields are not completed, there is no schoolyard flagstaff, and grass does not yet entirely hide construction scars. The congregation's priorities were to give the students a place to learn until time — and money — allow for the addition of less critical amenities.

Classrooms are larger than at Huddleston; plans call for a maximum of 20 students per class. At present, some have as few as 12.

Besides an unstructured daily recess, there are phys ed classes from kindergarten to eighth grade and an after-school intramural sports program for third through eighth. Music is taught in each classroom, but a contract with an outside corporation provides band after school.

The most significant difference, not surprisingly, is that religion is just as routine a course at St. Paul as English and science, and is required each year. Janssen says, however, that any minister is welcome to come in and teach religion to children of his or her denomination in lieu of the Lutheran courses.

On a recent morning, as students are beginning to arrive, Stuckert tosses a handful of drawings on a table in the office. Delivered the day before to cheer patients at Fayette Community Hospital, they were rejected by the hospital, he says ruefully, because they were “too religious.”

In Sarah Haupt's room, her fifth-grade class of 15 gathers in a corner discussing how people get along, what real friends do or don't do, and that differences among people should not make them less valued. The kids wear school uniforms — blue-plaid skirts and cotton shirts on the girls, blue or yellow polo shirts for the boys, except on chapel day when they must wear ties.

St. Paul's faculty is Lutheran, with one exception, a member of Holy Trinity Catholic Church. Haupt, daughter of a New Jersey pastor and a graduate of an LC-MS college in Illinois, is in her first year of teaching. She moves with poise; the atmosphere in her room is calm and cheerful.

With no intercom, each class holds devotions four mornings a week. Pledging allegiance to the flag appears to be optional: no flag is visible in the fifth-grade room.

Today is Wednesday and the entire student body convenes for chapel. Members of the St. Paul Newspaper Club present a light-hearted exercise in laying out a newspaper, in this case, “The Heavenly Herald.”

The student body hears Scripture read, sings a hymn or two, and is led in prayer for safety during daily activities and class trips. Special thanks is given for a student who is recovering from surgery. A few swinging feet notwithstanding, the students are attentive. Chapel over, it's back to the classroom.

Haupt's class finished fractions recently, although she explains that the curriculum circles back frequently to review skills already learned. Today they would begin the metric system; their progress will be evaluated by a series of timed tests.

The language and social studies lesson focuses on Alaska and how life there has changed in the past century. In comparing life-styles of early Alaskans with those of the present, Haupt's fifth-graders are asked to read critically, to identify conflict and resolution, to interpret, and to project what the outcome will be.

One student protested when he read that Alaskans killed seals for food, fur and oil. Another challenged him: “You eat hamburgers, don't you?”

The first lad hesitated only a moment before responding, “Yeah, but I don't like cows. I like seals.”

People have to make choices according to their circumstances, Haupt interjects. “Neither life-style is better, just different.”

A spelling drill begins, with Haupt dictating at least 30 compound words: chalkboard, throughout, starry-eyed, grapefruit, furthermore. Vocabulary words were based on the reading lesson, and included tidal flat, precarious, tundra, delicacy and ptarmigan.

There is a noticeable range of levels in this class. Some hands seem permanently elevated; others fiddle restlessly, their owners appearing uncertain about what's going on around them.

With so small a student population, it would be impractical to have separate classes for advanced or slower students but, Haupt says, a few students move up or down to other grades each day according to their specific needs.

While the rooms and halls of St. Paul are not adorned with religious art, this school unmistakably has a Christian core. Anyone who has grown up in a mainstream Protestant Sunday School will feel very much at home here. The emphasis is clearly Lutheran in its focus on grace and what God has done for God's people.

A parent who wants his child to get religious or Biblical training in addition to standard academics will find that St. Paul draws on a long tradition of conservative Christian education. Its few shortcomings appear related to its own very brief history which, of course, time will correct.

Next week: A look inside Our Lady of Victory Catholic School in Tyrone.