King’s Gate enrollment up at Surrey Hills Baptist Church
By Robert Medley
Managing Editor
SURREY HILLS – Wildlife biologist Laurie Gillum has been teaching youth about nature for most of her teaching career at a private northwest Oklahoma City school.
She has built a place outdoors to study.
For the sixth year, King’s Gate Christian School has opened at Surrey Hills Baptist Church at the southwest corner of Northwest Expressway and Mustang Road.
A nature preserve is being used to educate youth as they grow. Gillum instills the love of nature in students at an early age. Behind the church, in a wetlands area near a creek, she has started to build a growing outdoor classroom featuring nature. There is a Monarch butterfly waystation, a pollinator garden, a lookout tower and a creek where a beaver could be welcomed. Gillum has watched a generation of youth grow up, and this year, King’s Gate has added grade 11.
Next year, King’s Gate will be pre-kindergarten to 12th grade. There are plans to expand on nearby 40 acres too. Angie Steedman, the school’s director of communications, gave a recent tour of the school that is housed on the first and the second floors of Surrey Hills Baptist Church, 12421 N. Mustang Road.
THE STORY OF KING’S GATE
The school enrollment was up for the first day Wednesday, Aug. 17. The school had added 70 families this year. There were about 181 students.
“We’ve been growing every year,” Steedman said.
King’s Gate also has a pre-kindergarten and kindergarten at The Village Baptist Church.
Fall of 2017 was when Gillum had ideas for growth on the land in Surrey Hills.
“We’re bursting at the seams essentially,” she said. “I used to teach 50 kids. Now I teach 240 kids so that gives you an idea.” Steedman said, “We’re at the place now we’re making decisions that are big school decisions, things we grow into.” Expansion is expected especially with the population continuing to move into eastern Canadian County. State tax credits are ahead for private schooling.
“Now that there is a new tax credit it is going to make it more affordable for families,” Steedman said. “And I think the public schools are getting way too big. Families that are Christian families are finding that they don’t have a voice.
“Not so much in Oklahoma but it is starting to be that way depending on the school district. Parents don’t necessarily get to be involved in their student’s education.”
NATURE PRESERVE
Gillum walked into the nature area near the playground that backs up to a tributary of a creek that is just west of Mustang Road. It winds amid tall trees and heavy undergrowth, too dense to see anything but a wall of nature.
The creek was dry. But a painted lady butterfly was spotted. “It took me four years to build this, what I call phase one,” Gillum said. “We got here. This had been a vision at our campus. I looked out here and I saw wetlands and I said, ‘There it is.’ This came out of Bermuda grass.”
Students designed the pollinator garden. There is a vernal pond, a breeding area for amphibians.
The species breeding there are green frogs, American toads. The tiger salamander is known to the Okarche and Piedmont area. “We have seen them, but we don’t really have them breeding there,” Gillum said.
The observation deck is about 16-feet tall under a canopy of trees.
There are bird migrations and Monarch migrations to watch. “This part of Oklahoma is a major highway for Monarchs,” Gillum said. “The fact that they migrate 3,000 miles is kind of amazing.” The teachers help Gillum with the outdoor lessons. “They pass that on to their families and when they are in middle school this message of natural world protection, creation protection, gets out a lot faster because they are so excited,” she said.
“Elementary students are on fire to learn.”
Meanwhile, King’s Gate development director Corky Eshelman talked about what is on the horizon for the school. “Our vision right now is that we are really in the process of trying to acquire more property,” Eshelman said.
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