A new private school will open this fall aimed at making affordable Christian education accessible to North Tyler.

Promise Academy will operate at New Days Community Church, at the corner of Broadway and Gentry, which previously housed Roberts Junior High and a juvenile detention center.

Initially the academy will offer only kindergarten and first grade, with 15 to 18 students per classroom. It will have a full-time teacher and a bilingual aid for each classroom.

“Every year we will add a grade. We will reassess if there is a need for us to keep growing when we get to fifth grade,” Sarah Cumming, head of school, said.

“We will see how the Christian education landscape is shaping up in Tyler six years from now and see if we need to continue on and do a junior high or if we can stop at fifth grade and create another section of kindergarten, another section of first grade, etcetera.”

A preview of Promise Academy will be presented 7 to 9 p.m. Friday at The Foundry, 202 S. Broadway.

The preview event will feature a video and speakers including the Rev. Reginald Garrett, pastor of New Days Community Church; Jay Ferguson, headmaster of Grace Community School; and Gicell De La Cruz, an alumna of Manhattan Christian Academy.

Promise Academy has incorporated and is applying for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. It also is in the process of deciding from which agency it wants to seek accreditation.

Many people in the Tyler area and also a few others around Texas are behind the movement to establish the new academy, Ms. Cumming said. They have been working on the project approximately 18 months, she added.

In Tyler, the main groups are New Days Community Church, which is providing space for the academy, and Grace Community School, which is serving as academic and administrative advisor. The academy also has a five-member board.

The church’s pastor, Garrett, said, “We think that in order to create more black leaders, you’ve got to have people with superior academic performance. We think our public schools are doing a great job based on the information they have, but we think there ought to be another element included, which is Christian education along with basic academic education.”

Garrett added that the church does not have the resources to put it together but has partnered with Promise Academy and Grace Community School to provide education along with a Christian environment.

Grace’s headmaster, Ferguson, could not be reached for comment.

The main mission of Promise Academy, Ms. Cumming said, “is providing accessible Christ-centered education in North Tyler, which is something that doesn’t exist right now in the form of an elementary school.”

There are many Christian schools in Tyler, she acknowledged, but said they are not accessible to North Tyler families.

Even if North Tyler families could afford to send their children to them, getting a child all the way to South Tyler, where the Christian schools are located, on time and picking them up while meeting the parents’ work schedule is difficult and makes it an impossibility to the majority of North Tyler families to have access, Ms. Cumming said.

Promise Academy will be accessible and affordable, she said.

Tuition will be on a sliding scale. Although the cost of educating a child at the academy is estimated at $6,200, the average family will pay $1,200, with some paying more and some paying less, Ms. Cumming said.

The academy is raising in the community the other $5,000 needed per student.

“We are looking for sponsors and partners to make up the difference between the actual cost and what the parent contributes,” Ms. Cumming said. She expects some families will be able to afford to pay the full cost of their child’s education at the academy.

“We are an open enrollment school. What that means is you don’t have to be a Christian to send a child to our school,” Ms. Cumming said. “Just get an application and apply. We will observe your child at play, assessing whether they are school ready and academically assessing them.”

“Since we are a Christ-centered school, we will pray about who’s applied and assess everybody and then choose our students.”

Promise Academy will be patterned after Manhattan Christian Academy, an urban New York school serving about 300 students in prekindergarten through eighth grade. Its students graduate at about a 95 percent rate compared to the graduation rate of about 40 percent for the New York public school system, Ms. Cumming said.

Ms. Cumming, who has taught at the Manhattan Academy and also served as a volunteer there, said the difference in the graduation rates is the strong foundation in reading and mathematics that Manhattan Academy gives its students.

“What Manhattan Christian Academy has done is focus intently on teaching children to read well and also to know their mathematics well.”

Besides teaching at Manhattan Christian Academy, Ms. Cumming has taught at Grace Community School. She has a Bachelor of Science degree in interdisciplinary studies from Letourneau University in Longview.

For more information about Promise Academy, visit www.promisetyler.org.