Community Christian School is remodeling through the summer.

Classrooms are being added, space is being maximized, with a new fire-detection system and ADA-compliant bathrooms, and a new playground is being constructed.

“We’re excited with what’s going on,” Doug Spencer, CCS board president, said. “It’s a function of growth, and the opportunity to make improvements in the facilities … and make it a lot more usable for us.”

He added, “It’s really nice improvements that will be beneficial for us.”

The efforts are being overseen by the Christian school’s new administrator, Lisa Goedken.

Goedken started at the school on July 1.

“I’m very excited about being here,” she said. “God really planned all of this in order. I did an application on the fifth of June and the eighth the board met. Within 10 days, I was offered the position and I was over here looking for housing and that type of thing. It happened really quickly.”

Goedken began in business administration, in medical offices.

“And then I did a year of K-12 vocal music at a school, filling in, and decided I wanted to get my elementary ed degree. So I went back to school,” she said.

Goedken went to the University of Northern Iowa, and continued to teach at the former Walnut Ridge Baptist Academy in Waterloo.

“I taught there for a year and decided I liked the administrative part, so I went back to UNI to get my principalship, which was another three years,” she said. “The family was used to me being in school, so it wasn’t too bad.”

After teaching for three years, Goedken went into administration and after half a year became the school’s head administrator.

“I was in that position nine years, which, I was the longest serving principal there,” she said. “During that time, we changed the name of the school to Waterloo Christian School, because it had truly become a community school. That’s the biggest draw here at Community Christian. It’s multiple churches working together.”

Already, Goedken enjoys seeing the progress being made at Community Christian.

“It’s nice to come to a school where things are in progress. You don’t have to come in and go, how can I motivate the school?” she said. “There’s a lot of energy with that and we want to use that energy.”

Renovations are taking place on the school’s second floor.

“We took out two smaller classrooms and opened up the stairway, building two new classrooms there, redoing the restrooms, enlarging those, and then we have a large chapel area,” she said. “As we continue to grow, the plan is to continue to make more classrooms up there.”

Goedken will help CCS to continue its mission of providing Christian-based education.

“There are a couple of different approaches to biblical education,” she said. “What we focus on is looking at all the subject areas… through a biblical lens. It takes God’s word as the standard. So when we look at another subject, take science, for instance… you look at all the intricacies and looking at it and knowing there’s a grand designer, and being able to see the different pieces and learn more about it that way.”