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Students and faculty of Valley Christian Schools in Cerritos, California, have always been proud of their school’s commitment to each student’s academic, social, and spiritual growth. But what they weren’t prepared for was how to accommodate its growing student body.

By Jennifer Walker-Journey

Built 50 years ago on 31 acres of land just south of Los Angeles, Valley Christian grew to house a collection of buildings for students from preschool to 12th grade. By the year 2000, school leadership realized the facilities needed to grow in order to meet not just the space needs of its students, but their academic needs, as well.

“The high school, originally designed for 350 students, had nearly 700 students,” said John Rinks, Valley Christian’s development director. “And what was built as a state-of-the-art school in 1960 was no longer that.”

Another issue was that staff, administrators, and faculty were scattered throughout the campus in offices that fit wherever there was a nook or cranny space.

“By 2005, we had offices spread all over our large campus, making it difficult for students to find who they needed. And bummer if they needed to talk to two staff members – they could be on opposite ends of the campus,” Rinks said.

With these concerns in mind, school leadership turned to LPA Inc. Architects to develop a master plan. The idea was to “paint a picture for the city to see what the big idea was for the campus,” said Wendy Rogers with LPA. The master plan addressed both the immediate needs and future needs as enrollment grew. The plan was then broken down into as many as four phases.

“In any kind of private school project, there is a delicate balance between need and the ability to raise funds to pay for the project,” Rogers said. “That’s just how the economy makes things work now.”

The first phase would hone in on new state-of-the-art science and math labs. It also included a Student Services Building that would serve as one centralized area for school faculty and staff. And, it provided a special room for academic support services where the psychologist and learning specialists work with qualified students.

The initial phase also included a new entry that would not only help the flow of student traffic through the large campus, but also complement the school’s spiritual foundation. Future phases would add a second gymnasium and a new auditorium.

The high school expansion plan featured 141,000 square feet of new construction that included classrooms, science and math labs, gymnasium, performing arts center, and a chapel. A new parking lot that feeds directly to the new entrance was also created. But the most dramatic part of the plan was the detail.

“Whenever LPA approaches a project, we like to get a look at the whole picture and then zoom into the details,” Rogers explained.

For the Valley Christian project, the detail is seen in the entrance, which is created with limestone cut from the Judean hills around Jerusalem. The entrance gives way to a “Walk of Faith,” a long pathway of nice paving stones and light posts with banners and signage containing Bible verses.

Jerusalem limestone was just one of the Biblical elements the school wanted expressed in the outward design of the campus. Other elements included “a cathedral-like tower in the entrance lobby with a soaring ceiling raising our sights toward God, two LED-backlit crosses on the exterior of the tower to proclaim our allegiance to Christ to our community in a visible way at night, and a stately olive tree in the front,” Rinks said.

Inside, the buildings were made less institutional with warmer colors and wood accents in addition to stone. Materials were also selected to be sustainable and energy-efficient, abundant windows allow in generous amounts of natural light, and classroom proportions were designed with high performance in mind.

The end result was a campus that students, faculty, staff, and the community as a whole are exceedingly proud of.

“We have a greater sense of pride in the school,” Rinks said. “We believe our enrollment has picked up thanks in part to the new buildings. It used to be hard to convince prospective new families that our school was academically top notch when we looked old and dumpy, but now our external appearance matches our internal quality.”

LPA Inc. is one of the largest integrated design firms in California. The firm provides architectural, planning, landscape architecture, interior design, engineering, and graphic/signage services from early program development to project closeout, www.lpainc.com.

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