We are happy to announce the launching of the Lutheran bilingual high school, with two classes of first-ever freshmen. We house the high-schoolers in the “Historical gymnasium building” in honor of and remembering the almost 150 year dream of higher Christian education in Martin.
To summarize: we are “occupying” six rented buildings downtown Martin.
Pavilion A is completely renovated and thermally insulated, including windows exchange; we manage all this during summer months so that no obstacles are caused to the education process. We also reconstruct one floor of a school ca. 1 mile north of us, where we move the freshmen and sophomores.
For the first time we open three classes of first graders, a new tradition. All-the-more do we realize the necessity of finding and settling in a permanent home for the school, especially since the High school is still about to grow for three more years.
During the year 2015 we finally manage to come with an adequate and permanent solution to cover our school building needs. The Christian Education Foundation arranges for a 2 million Euros bank loan and we purchase former Printing press building, neighbouring our current school property. In June we begin a major reconstruction work targeted to house three years of high school students and all middle school. At the end of September, we are finally ready to move the education process into what we call “The New School Building”. Meanwhile the entire building of an enlarged Preschool is being reconstructed, with two large-size classrooms, two bathrooms, changing room, allowing for upscaling the Preschool to house 70 children.
We are continuing in preparing a new dining hall in the New School Building.
By changing the layout of the 3rd floor of the New Building we have prepared adequate space for 4 years of high schoolers and the entire middle school, including specialized ESL classrooms, IT lab, install interactive white boards, school furniture and lockers.
In January we launch major construction of a new dining hall with seating capacity over 240. The ground floor of the New Building thus serves all our feeding needs, including complete kitchen equipment. Two more classrooms are added on the third floor of the New Building.
New chemistry and physics lab are opened and equipped.
While a full-size gym still has long ways to go, we purchase a 40 seater school bus to shuttle the students to a sport hall in the neighboring town.
We have a major reason to celebrate, as we send out to universities world-wide our first graduating class.
Plans are made for an outdoor classroom plus two new classrooms are opened on the ground floor of the New Building. Eventually they will serve as Arts and Crafts center and Music and Dance studio; yet temporarily we need to use them as regular classrooms plus need to fundraise for the necessary Arts supplies and Music equipment.
We are still not at the end of our pilgrimage; and we are not certain about what the future will bring for the school. Yet we can confidently claim our faith – just as our edifices confess – that the Lord has helped us thus far. With the hope that He will continuously lead us, we are all-the-more grateful and praise His name.