Announcements
Made to be a Blessing
by John Davies
I have been thinking a lot about God’s blessings in the last while. Sometimes we take for granted what we have, or we even think of what we have as an entitlement. I want to turn yourAnd I will make them and the places all around my hill a blessing, and I will send down the showers in their season; they shall be showers of blessing. Ezekiel 34:26mind to the blessing of God in your life and the fact that he makes you a blessing to others in the context of home learning with Heritage.
I began my teaching career working for the public system and enrolled my own kids in it. I grew very frustrated trying to make the system work for the needs of kids and particularly for my own two boys. Fighting for what my own kids needed when they were in public school created in me a view that my kids were entitled to support.
We made the decision to homeschool and decided to give up a lot of things to do that. It was not an easy transition but God brought us to Sayward for a reason and through coming here we met Janet Rainbow who introduced us to HCOS. It was here that I realized the blessings we have, and changed my view to seeing how God has made me a blessing.
Do you know that we are incredibly blessed in this Province? Where else in the world do you have the freedom to have your child learn at home, but also the provision of government funds to support you? What is even more amazing has been the funding for kids with special needs. Having the resources as well as the flexibility to create unique learning situations in the home has meant a huge blessing to many families with Heritage.
We had 7 funded students during the 2005-2006 school year and now we have 110! With the size we have more flexibility to support the needs of students, as well as some new challenges. This year we created a Learning Services program with four consultants to help students that have dyslexia, ADHD and other issues. We are finding and developing ways to do this through our home learning model that is a challenge, but an exciting one.
The direction we have taken on special education funding is that of blessing rather than entitlement. We want to ensure that the majority of the funding for a student goes to the individual, but at the same time we want to meet the needs of students without funding. One of the amazing ways this happened this year was through bringing Linda Kane to give us some workshops around BC. This led to a number of families doing a neurodevelopment program to support their child. You can find out more about this on our Wiki site and I would encourage you to attend the workshops at the CHEC convention at the end of April. (http://hcos.centraldesktop.com/specialeducation/)
I mentioned growth brings new challenges. We have been blessed by Kelowna Christian Centre who backs the school with a significant line of credit that allows us to operate in the months up until the end of October when we actually get the first installment of funds from 
the Ministry of Education. We cannot grow bigger without solving the fact that for each 15 special needs students we accept we put about $50,000 more pressure on the cash flow and line of credit. Do we shut the door, and effectively keep the blessing to ourselves? This would return us to an entitlement position.
If we see ourselves as blessed, and the fact that we can bless others, we must continue to accept students with needs into our school. But this means we put more of the funding back into the school each year to allow for growth and reduces each child’s budget significantly. This direction is, I believe, one of blessing. What I have received can now go to blessing the next family and continue to bless other again. In other words the blessing is multiplied. What is the result of this? Are we going to lose out? No… if you read the second part of Ezekiel 34:26 as a promise you will see that God will send down his showers of blessing.