‘God is faithful’: How one homeschool mom started a tuition-free Christian school for children of incarcerated parents

In the late 1980s, Robin Khoury was a new homeschool mom facing opposition from friends and family members who didn’t understand her decision to teach her oldest son at home – and weren’t shy about it. 

“That was definitely the pioneer days of homeschooling,” she recalled in an interview with The Lion. “No one I knew had ever heard of it before.” 

The pressure was so intense that one day she cried out to God from her kitchen table. What she heard in response was surprising. 

“I heard him say, ‘Someday you will have a school for poor kids.’ And that was all he said,” Khoury recalled. “It wasn’t exactly what I was in the market to hear that day, but you know, God is faithful.” 

The opposition eventually eased. Her son graduated from homeschool and earned a full scholarship to Oklahoma City University. After finishing homeschooling her second son, Khoury got involved in prison ministry – and that’s when everything changed. 

“I was at a summit on women’s incarceration, and the speaker said, ‘The minute a child’s mother goes to prison, they begin to struggle in school.’ And when she said those words, I was back at the kitchen table with God, and it was full circle. 

“And he said, ‘These are the kids I was talking about 20 years ago, and this is the school I want you to start.’ And so I incorporated Little Light Ministries the next day. And from that moment, it took us three years to get the school up and running.” 

Tuition-free, barrier-free 

Little Light Christian School – now known as Light Christian Academy – opened in 2012 with six students. It quickly outgrew the church where it met and was later gifted a 10-acre parcel in the heart of Oklahoma City’s ZIP code with the most formerly incarcerated individuals. 

Initially, enrollment was limited to students who had an incarcerated parent, because Khoury said research shows many students struggle even after a parent is released. “Most children never recover from that academically,” she said. 

The school has since expanded to include any students from its ZIP code and six surrounding ZIP codes with high poverty or incarceration rates. 

“We’ve noticed over the years that poverty and incarceration seem to be linked together,” Khoury said. “Most people who are in prison are poor people. 

“We are just in the infancy of actually becoming a neighborhood school because we want to reach into our neighborhood. We’re hoping that we can prevent some of these low-income students from pursuing a life of crime and show them the Jesus way and a relationship with the Lord that will change the trajectory of their family forever.” 

Light Christian Academy, which is tuition-free, attempts to remove all barriers to attendance and success. It spends about $35,000 per child, funded primarily through private donations, including from churches. 

The state’s Parental Choice Tax Credit, made widely available last year, provides some support. To help families, the school built the application into its own enrollment process. 

Students receive two hot meals a day, transportation, uniforms and school supplies – “all the types of things that are barriers for low-income students being involved in a private school,” Khoury said, “and some can’t sustain being in public school for these reasons.” 

The staff sees the school as a mission field, and the environment is intentionally evangelistic. While students don’t have to be Christian to attend, parents must consent to a biblical worldview education. 

A complete turnaround 

Jesus Christ at the center makes all the difference. 

“Two years ago, a little boy named Jayden came to us,” Khoury said. “He was telling his teacher, ‘I’m going to cut you with a knife, I’m going to hurt you,’ and he was saying these things to his teacher and classmates.” 

Jayden spent a lot of time in Principal Kristy Cook’s office and with other staff, but the problems persisted. 

Things came to a head, and he was close to being asked to leave the school when Khoury tried one more thing. 

She brought out a children’s Bible and showed Jayden Jesus on the cross. Jayden prayed to accept Jesus into his heart and learned to sing “Jesus Loves Me” with hand motions, as well as the hymn “Blessed Be the Name of the Lord.” 

He had drawn a picture of a demonic-looking pig and told people, “That’s the devil, that’s my friend,” Khoury said. “I said, ‘He’s not your friend, and the next time he appears, you tell him to go away.’” 

Khoury then left for a trip to Israel, hoping for the best. 

“About halfway into my trip, I got a call about how great Jayden is doing,” she recalled. “The school said, ‘We haven’t had one episode since you met with him.’ He absolutely did a 180.” 

“He is now the one student always going around saying ‘God loves you’ and giving everyone hugs,” said Cook, who previously worked at a school in Malaysia. “He’s always asking people, ‘Do you know Jesus?’ It’s such a blessing to see such a complete change in him.” 

A shift in strategy 

In May, the school celebrated its first graduate, Jasmine, who joined in fourth grade and nearly graduated with an associate degree thanks to dual credit classes. 

She earned scholarships to attend Mid-America Christian University, where she plans to study psychology. 

Khoury and Cook supported her with college visits, applications and transcripts, but the experience made them realize they lacked the resources to help multiple students graduate at the same time. 

That led to a big decision: beginning this fall, Light Academy will only serve grades K-4. 

“In middle school, kids start wanting to do sports and cheer and dance and all that type of thing that we really don’t provide,” Khoury said. “So we decided we would do better by them to focus on the academics and the relationship with Jesus in the early years and then let other schools take care of those things later on.” 

The school helped upper-grade students transition to local Christian or public schools using the Parental Choice scholarship. 

Khoury said the school hopes to someday expand again to higher grades but for now is focused on growing K-4 enrollment. 

“We believe in having no more than 10 students per classroom,” she said. “We could hold 75 kids on this campus comfortably without making changes like adding mobile classrooms, but our emphasis is not on trying to run up the numbers. We pray every year for the students that God wants us to have.” 

Political support 

Gov. Kevin Stitt has visited the school, and students sang behind him at a February rally at the Statehouse for the school choice scholarship. 

“During COVID, when they were giving money to schools, he told the lady in charge of it, ‘However you structure this, you make sure that Little Light Christian School is able to participate.’ That was very sweet of him,” Khoury said. 

State Superintendent Ryan Walters also responded to a letter Khoury wrote requesting a simpler accreditation process for micro schools to qualify for school choice funds. 

“I wrote him a letter saying, ‘If you want to make private education more accessible to these little micro schools, you need to accept this easy-to-get accreditation, and don’t make them get one of those five-year-long ones that take a lot of time and money and things that none of these micro schools are going to have,’” she said. “Next thing I know, the state is accepting that deal. 

“He never told me it was my letter or anything – we never talked – but I am feeling certain that it was my letter that persuaded him.” 

Looking ahead 

Khoury and Cook said they’re not aware of any other schools specifically serving families affected by incarceration. One in Texas tried but stopped after a year. 

But need is there: One study estimates more than 5 million children will have a parent incarcerated at some point. 

“We’re about helping other people expand the kingdom of God, however that looks,” Khoury said. “We’ve learned an awful lot in 14 years now about what things work and what don’t, and there is a micro school explosion. We have never felt like, as of yet, that God gave us the specific call to expand, but we would entertain the idea if someone wanted to do it.” 

The most rewarding part, the leaders agreed, is seeing students give their lives to Christ. 

“Since I’ve been here, we’ve had two baptism services for our students,” Cook said. “And several times, we’ve had students come to us and say they want to accept Christ as their Savior.” 

Some students aren’t at the school long because of instability and family transitions, but staff members hope to make the most of each opportunity. 

“Our concern is that every child that God gives us, we are His hands and feet,” Cook says. “And sometimes we don’t have them for long, so the time that we do have them, we want to tell them all about God as much as we can every moment of the day.”