Brown County Christian School Principal William Hoffman has been on the scene for around two years, and is spearheading the rebuilding process at the former Victory Life Academy to provide another viable education option to Brown County residents.
“We want to let the community know that we’re here, we’re not going anywhere, and that we just want to be a partner with families and make the school great again,” Hoffman, 37, said.
The road to Brownwood began in Oklahoma for Hoffman, where he taught public school in Durant for four years before joining the private school sector for six years.
“I got a message from Pastor Craig Smee at Victory Life asking if I ever thought about moving to Brownwood, and at the time we didn’t know anything about Brownwood,” Hoffman said. “I asked what was going on and he said he needed a principal for our private school. We came to check it out and fell in love with the city and the town and felt at home and decided to make the jump and move down here.”
Regarding the changes Brown County Christian School has and will experience since his arrival, Hoffman said, “It’s been Victory Life Academy for years and then we changed the name when we came down to Brown County Christian School. We’re currently in the process of moving the school under a local school board, local leadership, and running and it under a newly formed organization my wife and I are starting called Central Texas Education Center. We’re going to be running the school through that organization which gives us the ability to have more local freedom for the students to make it a Texas school again.”
Hoffman said of the perks created by the lower enrollment at BCCS, “Small class sizes allow for our teachers to have more one-on-one interaction with the students. We use a video-based curriculum but they’re not watching videos all day long. Our teachers live teach some subjects and the teachers will pull them over into reading groups. There’s a lot of small group interactions which provides students and parents a chance to get immediate feedback.”
The interaction with the students is the most rewarding aspect of his job, Hoffman said.
“It’s the fun I get to have with the kids and watch them grow,” Hoffman said. “The staff I have is phenomenal at what they do and they make it fun. We go from Pre-K all the way through 12th grade. I get to dance with Pre-K kids and high five middle school and high school kids. I find that rewarding, being able to greet the kids, see their smiles, help walk them through their tough times if they have some, just being there.”
As for the future of BCCS, Hoffman said, “We’re working on building who we are in the community and redefining the culture. When we first came down my heart for the school was not to be tucked away on the parking lot hiding, but to find more ways to get involved in the community and find ways that we can serve and be a blessing. We try and make it as low cost to families as we can. We have scholarship programs available that families can apply for that doesn’t cover the full amount of the tuition, but there are opportunities to lower the tuition costs. We just want to be an option for parents. My heart is not to have the division between public and private schools, but to be an option for families to try something different for a season and be here to assist them.”
He continued, “I hope we continue to be an option for families. We’re not tied to one denomination or one church. We do come from a biblical world view in how we educate, but I hope to see our sports program come back, to see some different avenues in our arts come back. We’re in a rebuilding process to let the community know that we’re here, we’re not going anywhere, we just want to be a partner with families and make the school great again.”
Hoffman and his wife Sarah, who was recently named Executive Director of the Brown County United Way, have four sons – Kaleb, who just graduated from Early High School and will head to TSTC in Waco, along with 8-year-old Eliada, 6-year-old Joshua, and 4-year-old Abel.