THE STATE OF FREEMAN ACADEMY – PART 2
While there are enrollment and financial challenges, there have also been positive developments in recent years. That, along with a rich history, is giving consituancy motivation to find a path forward.
So what comes next?
That’s the question many are pondering as the Freeman Academy community takes a hard look at the future of the school and what that could look like. As Part 1 of this two-part story explained last week, two forces are at work and presenting significant challenges for the school that educates students in grades 1-12: An approved budget deficit and declining enrollment.
A special meeting of the nine-member Freeman Academy Board of Directors — with strong participation from the Freeman Junior College/Freeman Academy Corporation — was held at the Salem Mennonite Church Nov. 19 to face those challenge head on, and it proved to be beneficial.
Brian Paff, president of the board, said the takeaway from the participatory meeting — facilitated by a moderator from Ohio who has experience working with faith-based groups and in Christian education — was that the constituency wants to figure out a path forward so Freeman Academy can continue its 120-year-plus mission.
Paff says a follow-up meeting that includes the board and the corporation — hopefully with clearer direction — is scheduled for Sunday, Feb. 23 at 3 p.m., also at the Salem Mennonite Church.
“People should come ready to participate actively,” Paff says. “We do want to discern the collective will, get a better sense of the ideas, and to tap into the collective imagination of the corporation” — a body that includes faculty and staff and alumni of the school that will ultimately vote to approve any direction presented by the board, from closure to a reconfiguration of curriculum.
“I think people understand the context and some of the things that have contributed to where we’re at,” said Paff. “You look around at the Mennonite churches, which historically have been the bedrock for Freeman Academy, and you understand there are some significant challenges happening within those congregations in terms of numbers.
“And there are just fewer farm families who have historically sent their kids to FA.”
A closer look at the enrollment trend offers a hard reality.
In the years that followed the 1986 closure of Freeman Junior College, Freeman Academy saw an increase in the number of students, in part because of the addition of a junior high program beginning with the 1986-87 school year. According to enrollment numbers shared with the Courier each fall, student attendance increased from 55 to 60 in two years, was up to 98 by the fall of 1992 — when the school introduced a 5-6 program — and peaked at 101 in the fall of 1994. The average 7-12 class size that year was just under 15.
Numbers fell off in the remainder of the decade and ebbed and flowed in the 2000s, from as low as 60 in 2000-01 to as high as 89 in both 2005-06 and 2007-08.
Four years after that, the 5-12 enrollment dropped to 66, with most class sizes in the single digits.
The addition of a 1-4 program starting in the fall of 2012 offered a boost, and by 2014 enrollment had climbed to 86 — but it hasn’t been that high since.
In the past six years, the start-of-the-year student count has dropped each term, from 76 in 2019 down to 61 this past fall, when Freeman Academy discontinued the kindergarten program it had added in 2019.
“You can’t have a school if you don’t have students, or if you don’t have enough students to make is sustainable,” Paff says. “I’ve had people ask me (if Freeman Academy is going to close), and certainly our town hall meeting pondered that question. But we walked away from that meeting with a clear sense that we need to keep looking for ways for Freeman Academy to be sustainable.”
Encouraging trends
And not all is doom and gloom. The fact that the Freeman Academy Board of Directors has put together a steering committee for a new head of school to replace the outgoing Dr. Brad Anderson is a sign of a longer-term outlook.
The fact that Freeman Academy has been re-accredited by two different agencies in the past two years — with flying colors — serves as motivation.
And a robust international program that utilizes the former college dorm — Frontier Hall — has given regenerative life to the school in more recent years.
“I think something worth noting is that we’ve invested a lot of resources and time and energy into building up the dorm program,” Paff says, noting that while enrollment for more traditional students is down, those utilizing the boarding program is up, from 11 at the end of last school year to 20 today.
“So that’s encouraging,” he says, “and we are working through some new approaches to enrollment and retention.”
Anderson sees the boarding program — “and the diversity that comes with that” — as one of Freeman Academy’s greatest successes in his years here.
“In the middle of rural South Dakota, we’re able to bring students from major cities elsewhere in the United States, coast to coast, and from multiple other countries in the world,” he said. “Even other continents — Europe, Africa, Asia — are all represented just this year, and that’s a big deal.”
Anderson often thinks back to a Freeman Academy/Marion regional basketball game against Freeman Public two years ago, when at one time during the game all five players on the court attended Freeman Academy and came from different countries.
“That kind of experience is so valuable, because almost inevitably, these are students who come from cities of millions,” he says. “They’re coming to rural South Dakota, and part of that is the appeal to their families is safety, but they’re also experiencing just how important local relationships are and seeing it for themselves. And they’re also enriching the students who are here and the staff who are here and the constituents who are here.”
Anderson, who came with his family to Freeman in 2017 and has been head of school since 2022, also sees other positives in recent years. A closer look at the budget in terms of salaries has resulted in more competitive pay, although that comes with its own challenge.
“If we are going to level up, say, what we’re paying people, then we need to match that with increased revenue, and it’s going to take some time to do that,” he says.
One of the direct results of that challenge was a successful, year-long Cultivate 120 fundraising drive that concluded last July, in which more than $715,000 of a $900,000 goal was reached.
“I am very pleased about that as an isolated endeavor, but part of the goal of Cultivate 120 was to level up our donor engagement and sustained fundraising,” Anderson says. “We’re seeing that it seems to have accomplished significant growth in that area — people being activated and more personally engaged in what the school is doing, and its future.”
New approach
So — again — what comes next?
With closure appearing to be off the table, future discussions could very well lead to a reimagined look in terms of curriculum.
“Freeman Junior College and Freeman Academy have evolved many different times throughout their storied history,” Paff says. “One of the things we explored at the town hall meeting was, is there a reconfiguration we could explore that might promote more sustainability for this school long-term? I think there are a lot of different ideas of what that might look like.” And, he says, “there is some urgency in figuring this out.”
Anderson and Paff both say the value that FA offers — currently and historically through its Anabaptist roots — is exceedingly unique.
“There is so much positive energy around Anabaptist education focusing on the nurturing and caring for the whole person — restorative relationships and restorative disciplinary processes,” Anderson says. “There are a wide range of outcomes from that kind of education, from farming to urban to academic to professional. It’s all over the board.
“Preparing students to live meaningfully and thoughtfully, with purpose and with deliberation, in whatever context they go into — that’s a hallmark of Anabaptist education,” he continued. “And being able to offer that, in a declining Mennonite population context, to people who have never experienced it, I find that to be a compelling mission.”
“We have been grounded in Anabaptist values, but that has broadened both in terms of faculty and staff and in terms of student body,” Paff says. “And I think that’s a real gift that we’ve been able to experience. The reality is, we live in a world where people have very different viewpoints. What I value about Freeman Academy is that the faculty and staff and the students — and the entire community — is built around what brings us together. Even as we might have different ideas about some of the other things going on in our world and how our faith responds to that, we need to keep that (commonality) front and center. I think we need more spaces for that, particuarly in an educational setting, and that’s part of the experience of Freeman Academy.
“We live in a time where people are increasingly closing themselves off to the world beyond their own experience,” Paff concluded. “One of the things I really value about FA is that our students gain a very clear understanding of how big the world is and how, guided by their faith, they might fit into that world — and impact that world. And that’s really special.”
