Keswick Christian School
| Keswick Christian School | |
|---|---|
| Address | |
|
10101 54th Ave N St. Petersburg, Florida 33708 United States |
|
| Information | |
| School type | Private |
| Religious affiliation(s) | Christian, Protestant |
| Established | 1953 |
| Founder | Ruth Munce |
| Grades | 2K-12 |
| Color(s) | Green & White |
| Mascot | Crusader |
| Website | http://www.keswickchristian.org/ |
Keswick Christian School is a private, pre-Kindergarten-twelfth grade, Christian school located in the outlying area of St. Petersburg, Florida. It was founded as Grace Livingston Hill Memorial School in 1953. It had an enrollment of around 650 students in 2007. It has an interdenominational student body, mostly of Protestant background. The campus spans 30 acres (120,000 m2), set among tall oak trees reminiscent of its once rural surroundings, and is about half of a mile outside Seminole, Florida, whose city council annexed the school into its city limits in 2000. The school is accredited by the Association of Christian Schools International and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
Following a temporary location started with help from Roy Gustafson and her other friends at "the Baptist Church on 22nd Avenue South" in St. Petersburg in 1952, Ruth Munce founded Grace Livingston Hill Memorial School in 1953, naming it after her mother, an author of more than 100 Christian-themed romance novels. Munce felt called by God to establish this private educational facility because no other Christian school existed in Pinellas County, so she purchased a 13-acre (53,000 m2) site, an old chicken farm off Seminole Boulevard on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, Florida. Munce's philosophy that "God would be the sum of the equation, the Bible a textbook" was put into motion. Classes were held in the chicken house and log cabin-style farmhouse. Munce taught Bible and English courses and remained principal of the school for 15 years, bringing enrollment to as many as 200 students a year. In 1968, at age 70, she undertook an eight-year stint teaching at Nairobi Bible Institute in Kenya.
Headquartered on the same site as the school were Keswick radio stations, WKES-FM and WGNB AM, and the Southern Keswick Bible Conference. Bill Caldwell operated these facilities, and to him, Munce turned over the school in 1961. The following year, the school name was changed to Keswick Christian School to reflect its new ownership. The Keswick name is said to come from a holiness movement that originated in Keswick, England, in the late nineteenth century. By 1970, the school's enrollment rose to 480 students, giving the Board of Directors ample reason to expand the school to offer a senior high, which was completed in 1975 with the first senior class graduating in 1978. Also around this time, the school became a mission of Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, an affiliation that lasted 18 years.
...
Wikipedia