• Our first Principal, Lamar Bell, passed away in November 2009 from colon cancer.
• We have a new Principal, Lonnie Kallmeyer.His wife Sherry is splitting the lower learning center duties with Mrs Beaman.
• We graduated five seniors: Ana Elsey, Jewelya Humphrey, Jacob Oliver, Brennen Nichols, and Brandon Wilson. Our high school learning center is now down to two students.
• We didn’t have enough girls for a volleyball team.
• Had barely enough for a basketball team. We played in tournaments in Eufaula, OK and St Clair, MO. We then went to Regionals and won 3rd. We lost in the first round at ISC.
• We had over 90 people registered to the blog! Unfortunately, almost all of those were spammers and porn site operators. It was pretty disheartening. The webmaster deleted all of the users and we will start over.

There was a lot of change in the school and student’s lives, and not all of it was good. Some students suffered loss and others left us. Some students endured many trials in the family life. It was a really rough year. The webmaster has not unscathed in this, thus the reason for so little update in the blog or website. I have talked to the pastor about the future of the school and what plans there are for the website, but the future is a little cloudy. I think the sense is we are in a “wait and see” mode. We will know more in the fall. I apologize for so little information, but we will post more once we know more. Behind the scenes the webmaster is working on the 3rd edition of the website. Stay tuned…

The following students won medals:

Mariah Overstreet - 5th Place  Female Illustrated Storytelling

Brandon Wilson - 4th Place  Discus

Mariah also won 1st Place in an Bowling open event. We found out later that Brandon placed 7th in Shot Put and missed 6th Place by only 4″.

Ana Elsey placed 12th in both Bible Memory and Female Illustrated Storytelling.

Here are some pictures for your enjoyment.

Bro Haggett tailgating Bro Wilson

We’re Here!

More Pictures can be seen at http:www.gracenglory.com/html/ISC2009.html

Videos (Be advised, they are not professional quality!):

 Arron’s 100m Dash

 Brandon Throwing the Discus

 Brianna’s Female Solo

 Mariah & Brianna’s Duet

 Brennen, Brandon, Brianna’s Mixed Trio

Free Time! - The kids bowling

You will see pictures and a new feature coming soon…videos! We will be putting video streams of the student’s performances at ISC along with pictures. Be advised the videos are not high quality as they were taken with a hand-held camcorder, but you can at least see what is going on.

We will be posting news about the school here as well. Be watching for news and changes at the school right here.

We have used blogs for when the students go to Regionals or ISC, but this has been a very manual process. The webmaster had to create the page, add text, format it, add images, format the images, and then upload everything to the webserver. While enjoyable, it is also very cumbersome and it took a lot of time, and a considerable amount of work to maintain.

Our hosting company, 1&1, made a deal with Wordpress, a widely used company that makes publishing software that many other well-known blogs use, that allows its customers to use Wordpress to create a blog. Right now, since the blog process is manual, the webmaster has to create a separate page for each blog topic (think each year of Regional and ISC competition as a separate blog page) and there is not an easy way to categorize and archive posts. The advantage for the new blog is that the webmaster now gets to use powerful tools to create a very nice blog page and has to do very little work to maintain it. It also gives the website the ability to archive posts.

This is a very good thing!

It also gives others the ability make posts or comments on blog entries. This makes the website more interactive. This is also a very good thing!

The biggest limitation of the website is that currently everything must go through the webmaster.  Understand this is not The webmasters‘ website! It belongs to the staff, students, and their parents. It also belongs to the sponsor of the school, the Bible Baptist Church of New Franklin. There is no reason why the stakeholders of this ministry should not be allowed to make comments about the school or the activities that occur there, or add content to the website. In fact, it should be encouraged. The blog will help others to contribute to the website.

It will also allow others outside of the school to make comments and ask questions as well. There are many in the local area who may want to ask about the school. There are other Christian schools we have met at competitions or activities that we have developed relationships with who may want to communicate with the school. The blog will allow this to happen.

It goes without saying that the blog will be moderated, but for the most part content will not be edited unless it is offensive, or it needs editing due to really bad grammar or spelling. Just remember this is not MySpace or Facebook.  Blog entries are usually made by an approved contributor and represent that person’s opinion, or may even reflect the view of the ministry’s leadership. However, the comments to each entry will belong to any who wish to make a contribution.

The webmaster sincerely hopes you enjoy the blog, and that you feel free to make a contribution. If you are from another Christian school that we have had dealings with please feel free to say something. We would love to hear from you!