From the Principal’s desk . . .
Pop open the Martinelli’s® , the ink is dry on our new, long-term lease! On Friday, June 27, 2008 the school signed a long term contract with the Huntington Beach City School district for our current school site. The Lord has provided a place for us to call “home”, we haven’t been able to say that for nearly 20 years! He orchestrated events for our good and inspired gifted people to help us.
A special thanks goes to John Byers who was our board appointed, chief negotiator on this project. John is a member of the board of directors of the BCHS Foundation but more importantly he is the father of Drew, a senior, and Matt, a 2007 graduate.
Another huge thank you goes to our community who put up signs, added their names to petitions and let their voices be heard loudly and clearly to the district that they wanted Brethren Christian to stay put! John Veale and David Hoppes were instrumental in leading much of this effort. John and David are Huntington Beach residents, BC Parents and BC alumni. David is our industrial arts department chairman and teacher.
The lease, which covers 35 years, has three parts. The first part guarantees us 15 years with no option on the part of the district to cancel for any reason. This part extends our lease through the 2023-2024 school year! (Our seniors will be well over 30 at this time.)
The second part guarantees us the option to renew the lease for three five year periods. This extends it the 2037-2038 school year. We can opt out at this point if we want to. (By this time our seniors will be nearly 50 and their own children may have graduated from BC!)
During this second 15 year period the district can only cancel our lease in the event that there is an unanticipated, vast demographical change in Huntington Beach forcing the district to re-open this site as a public school. This is highly unlikely to happen and would require them to reimburse us for certain major expenditures on this campus. We would also have a minimum of three full years of notice to find another location.
Finally we have an additional five year option in which the district may cancel the lease without opening the site as a school but they must give us three years notice. This extends the lease through the 2042-2043 school year.
Stay tuned as we are now beginning plans to honor the Lord’s provision for us by developing our facility to match the excellent standards of our programs!