Hope Academy is preparing for the future. Although the exact details remain unknown, teachers and administration are working hard to develop a quality high school program. I want to share with you our current vision for high school.

We hope to be accredited for the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) curriculum. We will not test in 2009 but we will test in 2010 after we run the full two-year curriculum. This is an international curriculum that works with a variety of upper grade curriculums: International Baccalaureate (IB), Advance Placement (AP), US high school diploma, or the A levels offered in England. We will still offer credit hours and grades parallel to the exams offered in 10th grade. Our children will have the advantage of having portable credibility that is transferable to other institutions.

As we examined all the options for 11 and 12 grade curriculum, we chose the AP program. AP classes count towards college credit and are very challenging. This does not mean that all students must take AP classes. AP is for some students that are prepared for this level of work. The AP course offerings will depend on our capacity. If we have qualified teachers that can write and submit course plans, we will offer AP courses.  

There are also options to take AP courses by the internet. This is a great option if we are not able to offer these classes at Hope.

There will be several different graduation requirements offered at Hope. These are not finalized yet, but should be finished by spring 2008. The first one will be the minimal amount of classes that a student would have to take to graduate. Next, would be for students applying into a regular college or university. The last would outline the requirements needed for a very high quality university.

Our course descriptions for our current classes are available but these will change next year. We are in the process of developing our course descriptions for 11 and 12 classes.

Our school, as a whole, is several years away from accreditation. We will begin in early 2008 working with the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC).

We may have up to 57 students in high school (9-11) this next year.

This past year we provided opportunities for students to visit a disabled orphanage. We would like to expand that so that we have students learning from English teachers, doctors, workers with homeless, volunteers that serve elderly, deaf services, and many other possibilities. This will be part of our graduation requirement. We need your ideas and help to make this a mentoring time.

One of our goals is to develop student leadership. One possible way of doing that is to have several high school students to participate in a student leadership conference in Hungary. This occurs every September and is an excellent opportunity to stimulate and develop our teens for spiritual growth and school leadership. We need to begin to raise awareness, expectations, and finances to make this happen.

We will always be recruiting for teachers. This is all of our responsibility. We will subscribe to services that are supposed to match teachers and schools. Realistically, our best recruitment in the past 5 years has been parents sending out word of our need, and encouraging their contacts to respond.

We are a school in development.  Right away, we cannot be everything we envision. Because God has led us up to this point, we know where we are going, and will do the best to get there with the highest quality possible. The quality will improve over time as we develop teachers and administrative personnel. We welcome you in this process.

Sincerely and by His grace,

Charles Hardison
Director, Hope Academy Bishkek