This was news we had been anticipating for months.  The day could not have ended better, and I could not close the book that night without telling the staff!

The email came from Tim Shuman, Regional Director for International Schools of the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI) at 9:52 PM on Friday night, July 20.  He wrote that the National Accreditation Commission of ACSI had just met and had voted unanimously to grant boarding accreditation to Oakdale Christian Academy! Oakdale is the first school in the U.S. to receive this designation.

For many years, ACSI has offered boarding accreditation to schools outside the U.S. that serve U.S. and other western nation students. Only recently did ACSI decide to extend boarding accreditation to U.S. boarding schools, and Oakdale Christian Academy was selected to be the first school the enter into this process.

In order to be approved for boarding accreditation with ACSI, Oakdale spent over a year developing its “self-study” document, a comprehensive process of demonstrating and documenting the ways that it meets ACSI boarding accreditation standards. To verify the contents of our self-study, an external review team from ACSI visited campus in April to take a close look at Oakdale and investigate the strength of our boarding program.

In April, they recommended full accreditation, and the National Accreditation Commission, after their own careful review, approved that recommendation on July 20, 2018.