After flooding takes out Iowa Christian school, community rallies to bring it back

From being five feet underwater to like new on the inside, Rock Valley Christian School is experiencing quite a transformation.

The smalltown private school in northwest Iowa suffered near-total destruction from flooding in June but will reopen to all 215 students on Sept. 4.

The community has simply refused to let the 112-year-old school die.

“We’re actually at the point of getting our classrooms back together, which is very encouraging, and such a welcome sight to see desks and chairs back in the classrooms,” Principal Marcus De Jager said in a video posted on the school’s Facebook page last week. “It is truly humbling to see the support that Rock Valley Christian and our community is getting from people that we know and people that we don’t.”

Rock Valley’s rapid recovery tells the story not only of heroic support from the community – which is on the path to raise $1 million for the school – but of a greater culture of unity among Christian schools in the area. 

Nicki Kuiper, head of an association called Heartland Christian Schools, says there is precious little competition between Rock Valley and eight other member Christian schools in northwest Iowa.  

“I consider our Christian schools kind of like a family: we all know each other well and we’re all working together,” says Kuiper, whose network includes 27 schools across Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota and South Dakota. “We’ve made a lot of effort to spend time together, to celebrate together, to worship together. We really care about what’s going on in each other’s schools.” 

Besides gatherings facilitated by her organization, area private school principals meet monthly to discuss issues, problem solve and encourage one another. This has led to a spirit of camaraderie and a desire for mutual benefit among the schools.  

Randy Ten Pas, principal of Hull Christian, temporarily paused fundraising for a new $4.7 million building after the flooding. His school, and many others, have pitched in to help Rock Valley get back on its feet. Volunteers have poured in from everywhere. 

“In one Saturday it was all clean,” Ten Pas says of the strength of the volunteers. “We’ve told them they can come here and use our copier machine. Other schools have donated desks, supplies and even curriculum.”

Josh Bowar, school relations director for The Center for the Advancement of Christian Education at Dordt Univeristy in Sioux Center, Iowa, helped come up with a comprehensive plan to restore the school, including fundraising, coordinating volunteers and even assisting with mental health. It’s called Welcome the Warriors and has raised more than half of its $1 million goal for Rock Valley after just three weeks. Gifts have come from people in the community and those outside of it with little or no connection to the school.

Bowar, whose organization exists to “walk alongside Christian schools” to help them grow and flourish, says there is a strong sense of shared mission between the schools in this region.

“We’re in different locations, but at the end of the day, we are all trying to accomplish the same thing, and that is to provide students with the best possible Christian education,” he says. “If parents choose that Christian education is the best fit for their kids, we want their kids in the schools. 

“It’s accurate that there is that friendly competition always, and that keeps us sharp and moving forward, but there’s a continual reminder that we are all working towards the same goal in the same mission.”  

Bowar and Kuiper, of Heartland, acknowledge the unity among schools is strengthened by the agrarian society around them. Neighbors know each other and are used to helping out and sharing resources. “It’s just what we do,” Kuiper says. “It’s part of the fabric of how we run our schools, so it just seeps into how we treat each other as family schools.” 

But Iowa is also one of the nation’s success stories in terms of school choice, a battle won thanks to unity among Christian schools of different denominations and cooperation among private schools. 

The state’s Education Savings Account program started in 2023 and will be available to all residents in 2025, allowing parents to use state money to put their children in the school of their choice, be it public or private. 

Christian school groups advocated strongly for the legislation. 

“The Iowa Association of Christian Schools has a great working relationship with the Iowa Catholic Conference,” says Bowar, who is also outreach director for the Christian schools association. “We’ve got to make sure that we’re representing all of the non-public schools in Iowa, and we’re doing that by making sure we’re on the same page and working together. It makes things so much stronger because you have that shared voice and numbers behind that voice.” 

Bowar said groups from South Dakota, Oklahoma and Ohio have asked for help passing similar legislation in their states. 

For schools in Northwest Iowa, unity isn’t just part of the culture; it’s part of following Jesus’ prayer for his body to be one in a fragmented, and sometimes hostile, world. 

“There’s enough in today’s world that is seeking to divide us and would like nothing more than for a Christian school to not do well or to not keep enrolling kids or keep growing,” Bowar says. “And so, we’ve got to stick together around that and just remember that we’re better together.” 

Iowa, and Rock Valley, can definitely agree with this.