Hidden Treasure Christian School

Hidden Treasure Christian School is a private Christian school for special needs children in Greenville County, South Carolina, and was probably the first evangelical Christian school in the United States founded to educate both the physically and mentally handicapped.[1] The school is a member of the American Association of Christian Schools.[2]

Hidden Treasure Christian School, Taylors, South Carolina

History

The school was organized in 1981 by the Rev. John Vaughn (b. 1948), pastor of Faith Baptist Church, following a 1978 house fire that severely burned his wife and two-year-old daughter, Becky.[3] Vaughn was encouraged to start the school by the Rev. Bill Maher (1928-2002), an evangelist with cerebral palsy and a significant speech impediment.[4]

Facilities

For twenty years the school was located on Hammett Street in Greenville before moving, in 2000, to the Faith Baptist Church campus on West Lee Road in Taylors. The current 28,500-square-foot building includes classrooms, offices, a chapel/cafetorium, a technology center, a speech therapy room, a testing room, a home economics lab, a teachers’ lounge and workroom, and an apartment used to simulate daily living situations. John McCormick (b. 1954), an Ed.D. graduate of Bob Jones University, has served as administrator for more than thirty years.[5]

Curriculum and finances

The school has emphasized both a low student-teacher ratio and an Individual Educational Plan (IEP) for each child. Teachers taught three to eight students, often with the aid of an assistant.[6] The school began with two students in 1981. By 1982, it had four, in 1989, thirty-eight, and in 2002 eighty-five, with thirty children on a waiting list. School enrollment peaked at ninety-four students in 2003. After Hidden Treasure increased tuition in 2004, enrollment dipped, then rebounded; but during the Great Recession, enrollment declined significantly.[7] Hidden Treasure students have included K5, elementary, junior high, and senior high school-aged children.[8]

About half the school budget is derived from tuition with the remainder raised through private and corporate donations.[9] Families from at least fifteen states have moved to the Greenville area to enroll their children, and several teachers also relocated to teach at the school.[10]

Notability

In 1997, a national radio show featured Vaughn and the school; and former Gov. Jeb Bush, Former Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sen. Tim Scott, and presidential candidate Steve Forbes have visited. Bush praised Hidden Treasure as an example of the positive benefit of school choice, and Scott provided an internship for a graduate at his Greenville office.[11]

References
  1. Alyce Atkinson, “Hidden Treasure,” Greenville News, November 19, 1996, 1B. In 1993 the school published Joe P. Sutton, ed., Special Education: A Biblical Approach (Greenville: Hidden Treasure Christian School, 1993) as a resource for other Christian schools.
  2. AACS website Archived 2015-12-10 at the Wayback Machine.
  3. John and Brenda Vaughn, More Precious Than Gold (Taylors, SC: John C. Vaughn Evangelistic Association, 2010), 20-26, 39-40. According to the school website, Mrs. Vaughn sustained third-degree burns over 65% of her body and her two-year-old daughter sustained third-degree burns over 95% of her body. Though initially neither were expected to live, both did. (Brenda Vaughn [1948-2013] eventually died of Hepatitis C contracted from a blood transfusion.) "Becky is one of only a few children to survive an almost total body burn along with its many complications." Ten months later she was released from the Shriners' Cincinnati Burns Hospital in Ohio. Hidden Treasure website.
  4. Vaughn, 211-12; Bill Maher, Beyond My Dreams (Greenville, SC: Ambassador, 1996), 114-117.
  5. “30th Anniversary," HT Report, July 2013.
  6. Hidden Treasure website.
  7. HT Report, September 1989, 2002; July 2010. There were 36 students in 2014.
  8. Hidden Treasure website.
  9. Local businesses such as Publix, the SC Food and Dairy Council, Blue Ridge Security, and BMW have supported Hidden Treasure, but BI-LO has been its largest contributor, even initiating a customer rewards program to benefit the school. HT Report, 1991, 1994, 1996, 1997, 2003, 2007, 2011; Julie Howle, “BI-LO Non-profit group leaders welcome BI-LO’s contributions,” Greenville News, November 10, 2004, 1B.
  10. Atkinson, “Hidden Treasure,” 1996; “Hidden Treasure Christian School: Past, Present, and Future,” HT Report; “Teacher Spotlight,” HT Report, Winter 2003; Vaughn, More Precious Than Gold, 215-16.
  11. “School Founder to be on National Radio Show,” Greenville News, January 16, 1997, 2D; “The undercover senator: Tim Scott goes anecdote shopping in S.C.,” Island Packet, May 7, 2014; Rudolph Bell, “Bush calls for higher education reform during Greenville stop,” March 17, 2015; “Senator Scott Welcomes Rachel Lewis to Internship Program in Greenville Office,” 16 September 2015.

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