Wisconsin Christian school ‘busting at the seams’ may expand into former college campus space

Ozaukee Christian School (OCS) started in 1990 with just six students in a church basement.

Its founders felt called to provide a nondenominational evangelical Christian education. While the students kept coming, a permanent building remained elusive.

In 2018, OCS purchased a former strip club, the Spearmint Rhino Gentlemen’s Club, and transformed it into a school building for its 60 students.

But then the COVID-19 pandemic hit – and as public education began to unravel, private, Christian and home schools started to soar.

OCS now has 140 students, double what it had five years ago.

Interim Head of School Chris Bergstresser tells The Lion the school is “about to bust the seams” of the renovated strip club. So, it’s made an offer to purchase the former campus of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee at Washington County (UWM-WC).

“It’s 220,000 square feet,” Bergstresser noted. “It has a full gym, a performing arts theater, soccer fields, tons of parking, state-of-the-art science labs, engineering labs, STEM facilities, art, pottery, all sorts of opportunities [for] programming that we want to have with our high school.”

UWM-WC closed in June 2024 as part of larger cuts in the University of Wisconsin system. It had just 285 students.

Until now, OCS has only offered grades K-8. But parents have been clamoring for a high school as well, since there is only one other Christian high school in the area.

With the college campus capacity at 1,200 students, OCS would easily have enough room to add more grades and students.

OCS has offered $3 million to purchase UWM-WC’s facilities and surrounding land – significantly cheaper than if OCS tried to build its own facilities from scratch, Bergstresser said.

“This is just another example of God working through OCS and opening doors for us as we continue to grow,” he tells The Lion.

Because of its growth, OCS has been able to gain accreditation through the Association of Christian Schools International, participate in the state’s school choice program and partner with 27 local churches.

Bergstresser credits the school’s success to its balanced emphasis on academics and spiritual health.

“We pride ourselves on academic rigor, academic excellence,” he says, though adding “we put more emphasis on the spiritual side because that’s the success. We can produce kids that have book knowledge, but when they have book knowledge that comes from a biblical worldview, now you’re really arming them for success in this life.

“The feedback that I hear from parents about schools is that they love coming here because their kids are getting a good quality education and they’re also getting fed spiritually.

“That’s what’s important to our parents.”

As a father of four OCS students, Bergstresser can personally testify to the benefit of the Christian learning environment.

“We saw our kids thrive, spiritually, academically, socially,” he recalled. “They came out of their shells, and it was like a caterpillar coming out of its cocoon and turning into this beautiful butterfly.

He says there is “story after story like that, hearing how when students come to OCS, they thrive.”