With staff turnover in recent years and with a number of staff retirements, Zion has been forced to shift duties and responsibilities among current staff while hiring new staff to fill a variety of roles. Here are the following changes and additions to staff for the upcoming 2024-2025 school year.
Julie Warners is going to take a step back from her teaching duties this year as she cares for her son Randall as he continues his cancer treatments. We still hope to see her around campus helping out, but our prayers are with her, Randall, and their entire family.
Our early childhood programs have been updated and improved! The Pre-Kindergarten name will change to Junior Kindergarten (JrK). JrK will shift from 2 days a week throughout the year to 2 days a week the first semester (Monday & Wednesday) and 3 days a week the second semester (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday). We want to welcome Emily Hutt as the new JrK Aide. Emily is a familiar face at Zion as her children are students at Zion. She has also been a longtime volunteer as part of the Parents Guild and Boosters. Kindergarten will move from 3 days a week throughout the year to 4 days a week (Tuesday – Friday) throughout the year. These changes and improvements allow for younger students to have more time in the classroom to learn the academic skills they need to move on to 1st grade, but also more time to learn social skills.
The upcoming 3rd grade class will continue to be a split class to better support our students. Kristie Post will transition from teaching one section of 2nd grade to teaching half of the 3rd grade alongside Chelsea Otten, who will teach the other half.
The upcoming 5th grade class is a large class and will benefit from being split. Elizabeth Botsko will teach one class and we want to welcome Emma Sietsema, who will teach the other half. Emma graduated from Hope College with an Elementary Education degree and spent last spring as a long-term sub in the 5th grade at Zeeland Christian School.
Zion has been looking to add to the Learning Enrichment Services by hiring a paraprofessional that will provide assistance to a special needs student. Mary DeBoer and Erica Nijenhuis have previous experience and will both assist in this area in addition to their other duties at Zion.
Following Mr. Carlson’s retirement, the middle school science classes have been vacant until now! We want to welcome Kellie Vander Kooi who will be Zion’s Secondary Science teacher this coming school year. She has already been a part of the ZCS community since she is currently a ZCS parent.
Last spring, Caryn Simon welcomed a son into her family. She will be taking a step back from her teaching duties, but not entirely. She will continue to teach World History and Modern History. When she was on maternity leave last spring, Tim Tjapkes filled in as a long term substitute. Zion will welcome him as a full-time employee this fall as he takes over US History, Civics, and Post Modern History. Following Joel Carlson’s retirement, Tim will also take over Environmental Science and Physics.
For administrative changes, please reference the email that the ZCS Board sent out.
