Our History
The mission of St. Luke School was developed by a collection of St. Luke Church members, board members, staff and parents in 1998 when the school was established. St. Luke Church already had a well-regarded Early Learning Center, and there was significant interest in expanding that into a school aged program. Overwhelming support was generated from stakeholders and St. Luke School was born. From the late nineties until 2003, all classes were held in the Early Learning Center.
St. Luke School started with Kindergarten and added a grade each year, and by 2002-2003 there was a desire by parents to continue the educational program to serve the middle grades
as well. Again, church members, staff and parents studied the expansion and determined that there was significant demand for adding the middle grades. St. Luke School separated from the Early Learning Center, a Headmaster was hired, and grades 6-8 were added for the 2003-2004 school year. The school’s enrollment for that year was over 200, and included 36 students in the middle school.
St. Luke School Today
St. Luke School has continued to grow, and now has a student body of over 560 and a staff of 70. The school is organized into 48 classrooms that hold classes in five buildings, including the main school building (referred to as the 318 building), the middle school, St. Luke Church, Ministry Center, and Early Learning Center. The main school building is the remodeled Columbus High School building originally built in 1898, and the anchor of St. Luke School’s vibrant downtown campus. We are only blocks away from Columbus State University’s downtown riverfront campus, the RiverCenter for the Performing Arts, the CSU Coca Cola Space Science Center, the Muscogee County Government Center, the Columbus Riverwalk, the Springer Opera House, and many downtown businesses, law offices and financial institutions. There are two Media Centers on our campus, with over 11,000 print volumes. All classrooms are equipped with an interactive whiteboard system (either SMARTBoards or Aquos Boards) and one teacher station. Additional technology used on campus comes in the form of Chromebooks (one-to-one in the Middle School and a mobile lab in third, fourth, and fifth grade), a dedicated 20-station computer lab for whole class and individual use, and iPad and iPad Mini devices available for student and teacher use.
The St. Luke School student body is comprised of over 560 students, with the following demographics: 50% female, 50% male; 82% Caucasian, 8% African-American, 5% Multi-racial, 3% Asian and 2% Hispanic; 48% Methodist (with 61% of that number coming from the membership of St. Luke United Methodist Church), 16% Baptist, 11% non-denominational, 6% Catholic, 4% other Protestant (but not affiliated with a particular Church), 3% unknown, 2% Presbyterian, 2% Episcopal, 2% Assembly of God, 2% Anglican and Lutheran, 2% Seventh Day Adventist, and 1% non-Christian faiths (Islam, Judaism and Sikh). St. Luke School is proud of the diversity of its student body, and is open to all academically qualified students without regard to race, religion, creed, sex, or national origin.