It was a shining moment for Rotarians as they were educated on a local homeschooling group.
Deanna Franklin, founder and president of the Shine Christian Academy School, presented to the Rotary Club of Lloydminster on Dec. 1 about what her organization does.
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“We’re made up of families that homeschooled or had kids in the public system and saw a need to do something kind of different,” she explained.
The school started just outside of Lloydminster as the world was coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We originally started in Streamstown at the old hall,” said Franklin. “We saw a need coming out of COVID. I think we all have seen over the years, some flaws in the public education system.”
Arie Christian Academy out of Calgary is the governing board for the school.
Franklin knew she wanted to start something for homeschooling kids in the area and a Facebook ad helped her start the journey.
“I knew I wanted to start like a co-op or a homeschooling pod or something. I just didn’t know what it looked like,” she said. “I actually saw an ad on Facebook one night and it said they were looking for students for their private Christian school in Calgary. So, I emailed the guy and I said, ‘how do you do this?’
“He reached out to me and said, ‘We started as a homeschool co-op and were looking to become an accredited school.’ We just teamed up with them. They came down from Calgary and told us what they did and how it worked. We partnered with them right from the beginning.”
The Lloydminster campus is a new addition for the growing organization.
“We have 30 students between our two campuses,” she said. “We started our Lloydminster campus last year, 2024. As people were hearing what we were doing in Streamstown, we were getting more phone calls and emails.
“The Church of Christ over by the Archie Miller is where we’re located here in Lloyd, we rent the basement.”
The homeschool co-operative offers a unique format for their education.
“As a home school co-op, our students are doing a homeschool program called ACE, accelerated Christian Education,” said Franklin. “It’s an individualized program tailored to each student’s needs. If one student is really strong in math, they can be working at a Grade 5 level math, but maybe a Grade 3 or 4 English.”
For each of the students that attends the academy, their programs are tailored specifically to their needs.
“We have lots of different activities the kids attend and we try to keep them busy all the time,” she said. “Kids, I would say, weren’t necessarily made to fit in a desk for six hours a day. A lot of the students that come to us, actually, their parents are like, ‘They have ADD or ADHD,’ instead, we meet them where they’re at.”
Franklin says she’s enjoyed her time working with kids but realized academics isn’t the only thing that’s important in schooling.
“We feel that having life skills and a relationship with Christ is the most important. We do all kinds of different home life skill things,” she said. “So, we do like a home ec program where we’ve done canning and candle making. We do different field trips where we can expose the kids to different things.
“We are very much life-skill oriented. We want to raise up people that can make a difference and critically think.”
The school currently runs with seven staff total.
“We have what we call supervisors and monitors, we don’t have certified teachers in what we do because we are not an accredited school,” said Franklin.
Despite not being an accredited school, students going through the program have a few options for the diploma they’ll receive when they graduate Grade 12.
“If you go right to our Grade 12 level with the ACE curriculum, you can get an out-of-province diploma,” she explained. “If you want your students to have an Alberta diploma, we would have to do some online courses and earn credits that way.”
Being a bi-provincial city, the option to get a Saskatchewan diploma is something the academy is looking at.
“We haven’t had to deal with any students that age yet,” she said. “Our Lloydminster school is very young. Our oldest student I believe is 14.”
Franklin says funding is a little more complex for them as they only get $901 per student per year. Outside of a small tuition they charge per family, they do a lot of fundraising.
“We are a non-profit with the charity status, so we can do donation receipts,” she said. “Lots of fundraising and donations are definitely required.”
The school runs events throughout the year to help with fundraising efforts, including a steak night fundraiser, a Mother’s Day high tea and a comedy night fundraiser.
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