If plans continue on pace, high school students at Liberty Christian Academy will be attending classes in a different building next fall. Having outgrown its current space, the school is in the process of renovating another facility on campus in preparation for the 2021-22 academic year. 

The new high school classrooms would be housed in the building behind the current school, located on the North Service Road in Wright City. 

“We are growing in population, so we decided to take advantage of that building,” said project coordinator Rebecca Bauer. “We looked into other options, like possibly building a new facility. We had some initial testing done on this space and decided to go forward with it.”

The facility was previously owned and most recently used by the Wright City R-II School District. When Liberty Christian Academy took over the school buildings in 2006, it initially used the extra space for some classes. However, because the building didn’t have air conditioning, it was decided to no longer house classes there and the building closed in October 2006. It has since gone unused.

“Because we were a smaller school, we didn’t need both buildings back then,” said Bauer. “That back building kind of sat vacant. The roof had rusted, but it’s 20-gauge steel so we were able to save it.”

The 10,000-square-foot space will house six classrooms, an office, a large multipurpose room and cafeteria. It is connected to the current building by an awning, allowing students to pass back and forth during inclement weather.

“It’s a really great structure,” said Bauer. “It’s turning into a pretty awesome space.”

The project is anticipated to cost the school around $300,000. 

While there is still work to be done on the outside of the building as well, attention has been focused on the interior to make the space functional for teaching. Aesthetics will follow.

“We’ll put a new exterior wrap on as we fill it with students and increase our population,” said Bauer.

Bauer said a decision had to be made to expand the school space, as enrollment continues to grow at a rapid rate. Typically Liberty Christian experiences approximately a five-percent growth rate, but over the past year that number grew considerably.

“We had a huge jump in growth, and we assumed it was because not everybody wanted their kids to have to do virtual school, since we were in-person all year,” said Bauer.

Currently, Liberty Christian has 148 students enrolled in kindergarten through 12th grade. This has forced some teachers make compromises on use of space and created challenges for certain classes.

“Right now a lot of our elective teachers don’t have a good solid space, so this will open up some room for those more elective type classes,” added Bauer.