The Jackson family is one of those families you’re just grateful to have around, even after the kids have all graduated and moved out. Smart, well traveled, talented, generous with time and talents, the last five of their eight total children graduated from HCHS in 2023.
Both Dr. and Mrs. Jackson’s first names are Stacy and Stacey, courtesy of their Southern mothers. The two Stacies, with even the same middle initial, first met in high school in northern Texas, near the Oklahoma border. They dated off and on through the University of Oklahoma, then lived and traveled throughout the South and Midwest until they landed in Grand Rapids, Michigan in the early 2000s.
The Jackson family settled at Holland Christian largely thanks to their son Josh ’11, an 8th grader in 2007 about to graduate from Ada Christian. His dad was switching jobs that year from teaching at Calvin University to Hope College, and thought it might be a good time to check out a few additional schools for their kids.
Josh liked Holland Christian they said, because it was “just the right size”–not too big, not too small, just right.
Plus Josh quickly met a friend, an upperclassman who shared a locker with him, since they had started renovating the high school that year. Things only got better as Josh joined the cross country team, and plugged into academics.
The younger four Jackson children started at Holland Christian at various grades and times, since the family traveled through Europe much of that first year: Jacob ’14 started Holland Christian in 7th grade, and “loved middle school.” Jonah ’16 eventually started in 5th grade at Pine Ridge. Mallory ’19 started Pine Ridge in 3rd grade, homeschooled for 4th and 5th, and then returned to HC from 6th grade on.
The Jacksons started their lengthy history of volunteering at Holland Christian with Pine Ridge winter playground duty, dragging little preschool Anna ’23 along in her snow pants. “That was probably a mistake, but it was a good way to get to know the staff,” they laughed.
But the volunteering also helped the Jacksons participate first hand in every single HC building and program, including HC²—except for Forest School which didn’t exist back then, of course.
“For us [HC²] was a game changer,” Stacey said. “Anna was the youngest, and needed more social stuff to do—it’s not fun to do PE with your mom, or art. Plus [Holland is] a homeschool town, too, so we were able to do a lot of things: dance, sports, and had a lot of fun.”
The Jackson family as a whole jumped into the whole spectrum of co-curriculars with both feet, literally: All three boys ran cross country, all five kids were active in orchestra, three kids were involved in theatre in some way, several were also involved in “Scripta,” the annual HCHS student-run artistic publication. At various times the Jackson co-curriculars also included soccer, tennis, track, and middle school basketball, besides the arts: “We had five kids, and all in sports! We were going to every orchestra concert, play, weekend sports with cross country,” Stacey said. “So we had a full calendar. If our kids were there, then we were there. Our calendars were crazy!”
“The boys always loved [their cross country coach] Mr. DeKruyter so they have great memories of going to meets and stuff,” Stacey added. “They all ended up doing orchestra, so we’d chaperone Disney trips. Their best memories were the Disney trip—the fact that [the band and orchestra teacher] Mr. VandenBerg pulls that together every couple years—that’s a lot of work! It’s not necessary that he does it, but I think for the kids that go when they look back on their memories of high school, that’s a big memory. Riding the bus for 24 hours! The only things that we weren’t involved in [in high school] were football and basketball.”
Neither of the Jackson parents grew up in a Christian school, and “wouldn’t have even known what a Christian school would be,” Stacy said, explaining that in “Our public school growing up, they said the Lord’s Prayer before football games, they did prayer requests—it was the South!”
It was through the Jacksons’ time living in St. Louis—after first living around the country including Pittsburg, Rice University in Houston, then Dallas—that they came to experience and appreciate Christian education. At the time the St. Louis public schools were in flux, including long bus routes and metal weapon detectors at the doors. So the Jacksons found a small Lutheran elementary school to send their kids to while living there.
The family later came to appreciate HC’s version of Christian education, particularly with its larger size. “We’re very Reformed, although we were in the PCA before coming up here,” Stacy said. “We found (that the Christian faith at Holland Christian) was adequately ingrained in the fabric of what [students] learn in the classroom, in the intellectual engagement of the classroom, with spiritual appropriate kinds of discipleship that didn’t seem like [the school was] trying to take over for the church.
“We liked that when [our kids] got to the high school, we were fine with a little more breadth of perspectives in high school, as long as that doesn’t go outside the foundational things that go outside Scripture. Our kids were surrounded by tons of teachers who are doing a good job.
“In terms of the mission of the school in the fabric of the lives of our kids, no organization in our lives has had the impact on us and our family that Holland Christian has,” Stacy emphasized. “That doesn’t mean it’s been perfect. But it’s 120 years old or whatever for good reason—it’s been doing this a long time and with the size of the community—it all just seems to be the right size.”
Overall, the Jacksons appreciated the academics at Holland Christian as well—tall praise coming from a rigorous academic: “I think academic-wise they were prepared,” Stacy said, “though I’m a college professor and I’m always finding areas where they could have more. But I’d say on the language and literature side, I think they were fully prepared. But in terms of integrating world view into a host of things, history, Bible classes—it really helps them in college to dissect and understand even when they had a prof who maybe was coming from a point of view they didn’t agree with, they could really sit back and think about what the assumptions were. So I think that that was formed well.”
After his first few years of playground duty and band chaperoning, Dr. Stacy was nominated for the HC Board of Trustees, where he served for 11 years total. Honestly, from Holland Christian’s perspective, this was an incredible gift, not just for the longevity, but especially since Dr. Jackson’s main areas of expertise in leading Hope College’s Department of Economics and Business are organization strategy and structure, along with executive team and leadership development:
“That’s just a complete joy, being on the Board—it was absolutely awesome,” Stacy said, going on, however, to describe the necessary growth and changes the board went through while he was on it. “But it was just a great group of board members who said ok, how do we get better, we’ve got to get out of the minutiae, and so it did,” he said. “I was shocked at how the people God brought in weren’t trying to be in charge, but who wanted to be strategic leaders for the school and wanted to oversee the head of school. It was incredible.”
Now that all five Jackson kids have graduated and moved on to Hope College or into their careers, the Jacksons still relish the HC community as a whole: “HC is full of people who if they didn’t trade mission for money, it wouldn’t work,” Stacy said. “To really be at a Christian school like HC, you have to make trade offs—it’s just amazing the number of great teachers and staff who come here and trade mission for money.
“There’s lots of families from Holland Christian we’re still friends with that we would have never met otherwise,” Stacey added.
“We just feel very fortunate that HC was part of our lives,” Stacy concluded. “It held up the triangle idea, so we feel that it was a partnership with them and our church.”
