On the night of Oct. 4, Mike Barker knew he faced an uphill battle.
He and the school board for fledgling Christian school, Ambassador High School, had little more than a vision and a prayer. They also had a $500,000 bid before the Redondo Beach Unified School District Board of Education to lease a surplus school site at 320 Knob Hill. They had only $1,000 in their bank account and they faced competition from the one of the most accomplished development firms in the South Bay, Mar Ventures, who’d won the first round with a bid of $502,027.
Things did not look promising. School board member Arlene Staich sharply questioned Barker regarding Ambassador’s financial wherewithal given their small bank account.
“To me, that is just not a responsible bidder,” Staich said.
But then a sequence of occurrences unfolded that were perhaps not miraculous but certainly unexpected. Barker increased his bid to $528,000. Mar Ventures did not follow. And then an emotional Staich – with chants of “Give the school a chance!” emanating from a packed audience – broke a 2-2 tie to support the school’s bid.
Ambassador was given a chance. The proposed school’s director of development, Evan Chase, couldn’t help but shed tears. “Everybody was cheering,” he said. “It was amazing. What was so remarkable and touching for me to witness was not everyone had the same faith but they were supportive of the school.”
Barker was simply thankful.
“I wish our financial position was stronger, so that was important,” Barker said. “We didn’t have the money, so I really appreciate the board voted for us. I was really thankful just for the opportunity they gave us.”
But Barker also realized that the battle had just begun, and it would indeed be uphill.
He and his board have until June to raise a first payment of $120,000 and need about $500,000 to open school doors by next September. They intend to completely revamp the old school site with an estimated $7 million in upgrades. All totaled, their goal is to raise somewhere upward of $11 million. They have $13,000 thus far, with another $10,000 pledged.
Barker remains convinced there is a market for a Christian High School in the South Bay.
“There is a large Christian community that is concerned about the options they have for a high school,” Barker said.
“We found, after Mike began talking about this, that this has really been in the heart of a large section of the community,” Chase said. “I thought it was my dream. It turns out it’s the dream of countless people.”
It’s a dream that began five years ago. Barker, an administrator with Tustin Unified School District who formerly worked in Torrance Unified, was introduced to Pastor Chris Cannon of King’s Harbor Church in Redondo Beach. Cannon was looking for someone who would lead the charge to create a Christian high school in the South Bay.
“So with my administrative experience, as a former principal and now director of secondary education, I said, ‘Maybe I should use what I’ve got and try to start this on my own time, to do this as my outside of work project,” Barker recalled.
The first challenge was finding a site. It isn’t an easy task – few places readily accommodate a high school. Barker and his wife, Christine, met with various church groups, and in a few instances tried to lease church properties without success. In 2007, RBUSD declared the Knob Hill facility – formerly Patterson School – as surplus. The first request for proposals, however, sought a little more than a million dollars annual lease revenue. The Ambassador board could not even meet the minimum bid.
Barker readily admits that by 2008 he had given up. But as the economy crashed and Knob Hill property took an additional valuation hit from the passage of Measure DD – which requires a citywide vote on significant zoning changes – the school district was forced to lower its minimum bid amount. Earlier this year, the RBUSD school board reduced it to $500,000 annually.
It was an amount the Ambassador board felt they could make work. Barker, aware of neighborhood concerns regarding any change from the site’s current use, starting going door-to-door, sharing the Ambassador vision and listening to concerns. The Knob Hill Community group, a group formed specifically to represent neighborhood concerns, embraced Ambassador.
And then, on Oct. 4, the unlikely happened and Ambassador emerged with its golden chance.
“This is David versus Goliath,” said Cannon. “Goliath, to me, is the odds. This economy, this time of year – you probably couldn’t ask for more improbable odds to generate the income they need just to open the place, just to put down the down payment. It’s almost insurmountable. But I told Mike, if this is what God wants, it’s going to happen, and the whole city will know there is a God in Redondo Beach….Not that the city of Redondo Beach needs to know, but if this happens it will have been almost indisputable it happened with the help of God. That is why I almost kind of welcome this.”
The plan is to open school doors next September with an initial class of 50 to 100 students and eventually grow the student into a 400-student campus. Barker, who would serve as headmaster, has lofty academic aims for Ambassador. He believes it would become among the top ten academic high schools in the nation. His job at Tustin focuses on helping improve high schools, and he comes to the table with some clearly defined ideas.
One program Barker is particularly excited about is called Pathway Seminars and combines real-world interaction with four years of in-depth research into a subject of the student’s choice that he or she might also be considering as a career later in life. The program would include a one-on-one mentorship and internships in that field of study.
“What you are doing is building a student’s own capacity to become, not an expert in that field, but really well-versed,” Barker said.
Ambassador also intends to offer interdisciplinary courses that integrate literature and history, for example, or math and science, as well as provide an intensive focus on developing writing skills for all students. Beyond academics, the school plans to offer a full array of athletics with a special focus on beach sports, such as beach volleyball and surfing.
“We are providing students with something more than what they would get in another school,” Barker said. “Those are just some of the things we are thinking to build into the school besides smaller class sizes and better counselor to student ratios – to give students opportunities they would not have somewhere else.”
“It’s the high school I would want to build if I could build a high school,” Cannon said.
The school also intends to highly involve its students in the community through service projects, somewhat based on the highly successful community-building model of the Christian non-profit Sharefest. This component, in fact, is at the very heart of the school’s mission – the name Ambassador itself comes from biblical scripture.
“What the scripture is about is how our true home is in heaven and we are here as Christ’s ambassador’s to this world – those who reach out and serve, those who try to hold themselves a higher standard, accountable to how we live in God,” Barker said. “We are his ambassadors to the world in love and service. That is a message we want students to walk.”
“Our first vision is Godly community impact: what kind of impact does our school, and our students, have on the community,” Chase said.
The school will also offer Bible study and chapel services. Barker is emphatic, however, that Ambassador is not meant as a rebuke to public education. He notes that he has two children in public schools and both he and his wife work in public schools.
“We have just given 20 years of our life to public education,” Barker said. ““I think free and public education is essential for our society to grow. It’s essential. This school is an alternative for students currently in private schools or being home schooled who need something different than what a public school can give them…I am a firm believer in public education, but I don’t think it can meet the spiritual needs of all kids. And by law, it can’t – so that is one aspect of opening a Christian high school, truly taking care of the spiritual needs of students on top of academic needs.”
The reality is that Ambassador is unlikely to come to fruition, however, unless a few particularly large donors, or financial partners, show up quite soon. Oaks Christian High School in Westlake Village, for example, didn’t get off the ground until a single philanthropist gave $40 million.
“I really believe there is one person that can write the check,” Cannon said. “I tell people all the time, you don’t need 50 donors, you need one person who has a vision for this high school and says, ‘You know, this is what I’ve been saving my money for’ and writes a check for $500,000…and says, ‘Go start.’”
Ambassador is holding an open house on Dec. 15 at 6:30 at 320 Knob Hill. For more info, see www.ambassadorhigh.org. ER
