Amanda Tran and Judah Freuler are the first two seniors to graduate from Rhea County Academy in Dayton, Tenn.
The students enrolled at the school when it opened 11 years ago.Read moreSignal senior nabs more than $1 million in scholarships2014 Valedictorians
In the fall of 2003, seven families opened a private Christian school in Dayton, Tenn., with 16 children in grades kindergarten through fourth and three state-certified teachers.
“My wife and I had talked about it for four or five years, but we didn’t have enough faith to do anything about it until February 2003,” says Tim Hostetler, founder of Rhea County Academy.
“We finally said, ‘If we don’t try it, we’ll never know if that’s what the Lord wanted. We had no teachers, had no building. We knew four or five people who were home-schooling their kids, so we had them for supper and proposed the idea. Three said yes, they would teach at the school,” recalls Hostetler, who’s also vice president of operations at Bryan College in Dayton.
He spent that summer preparing paperwork to meet state requirements. And in August 2003, Rhea County Academy opened in Grace Bible Church in Dayton. Just over a decade later, the school marked a second milestone on May 19: Its first senior class — Judah Freuler and Amanda Tran — graduated.