Head of School Chris Browne teaches a class of young people at Greenleaf Friends Academy. He teaches upper school / high school students. (Photo by Jerry Paul)
By Gaye Bunderson
Greenleaf Friends Academy boasts a rich and long history: 118 years to be exact. What makes that especially unique is that GFA is, according to its website, the oldest private Christian school still in operation “west of the Mississippi River.”
The community of Greenleaf, located roughly five miles from Caldwell in Canyon County, is an agricultural hamlet made up of 812 people, according to the 2020 census. Greenleaf Friends Academy has 252 students, only about 10 percent of whom are from the little town. Its student body of junior kindergarteners through seniors comes from surrounding area towns like New Plymouth, Middleton, Caldwell, Nampa, Marsing, Wilder, and others.
A brief history of Greenleaf includes a migration in the 1900s by Quaker folks (aka the Religious Society of Friends), who flocked to Idaho from America’s Midwest. They found an aesthetic agricultural area they deemed worthy of planting farms and homes on. They named the town for a Quaker poet and abolitionist, John Greenleaf Whittier. They built a church in 1906 and named it Greenleaf Friends Church; and, in 1908, they built a school to educate their children in the way they thought most agreeable to their faith. Their young people would receive exceptional training in literature and ethics, among other things.
The school maintained that high level of learning – called a classical Christian education – for many years, and has returned to it after a lapse. Current Head of School Chris Browne explained, “Classical education built civilization. But in the 1930s, the country underwent industrialization. We went from teaching morals to teaching young people how to get a job working in a factory. Everything became more skill-oriented.”
The value of virtue was forfeited to the dominant trends of the day.
“We lost our North Star,” Browne said.
But he maintained that, “If you create a virtuous person who loves his neighbor and serves others, you’re creating a good citizen as well as a good accountant, or other occupation.”
Creating that person is an everyday goal for the school. With the return to a classical Christian education, students are trained, according to Browne, “in the Bible, the gospel, and the Christian faith, both formally and informally.”
The school offers courses in Latin, Ancient History, Modern and Medieval History, American History, and the Humanities, among many others. “After a number of years now, we’ve returned to our founding,” Browne said.
That includes studying such works as Plato’s “Republic,” Homer’s “The Iliad,” and Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics,” a look at virtue and happiness.
“We look at it all through a biblical lens,” Browne said, “and we talk about it. We seek understanding and truth – truth is very important.”
A 6-year-old in the first grade at CFA was well acquainted with the Latin phrase coram deo, which translates into “in the presence of God,” according to Browne. All lessons start early, including Bible studies for 4-year-olds – which isn’t about picking up a Bible and reading it from beginning to end but, for the very young, is about learning Scripture verses relevant to their age and stage of life. All students have a devotional time and a prayer class.
A walk through the halls of Greenleaf Friends Academy highlights both the school’s long history – some walls were built in the 1950s – as well as its love of art and beauty. Representations of famed artworks are displayed, and not merely for art education but for the love of beauty as well.
Browne said the children are, of course, also taught all the essentials of a traditional education, such as how to write a grammatically correct sentence or tackle a math problem and solve it. It’s just that the academy also wants them to be familiar with the classics, works of beauty, and the value of kindness.
Said Director of Spiritual Life at GFA, Caleb Daniels, “I think the greatest benefit to our student culture and climate has been having a clear vision of who we want to be as a school and centering everything we do around that vision. When I first arrived, there was a desire to switch to a classical Christian model from a leadership level, but a hesitancy at jumping in with both feet. … Finding ways to live out our calling to be a community that is ‘Christ-centered, joyfully classical, academically excellent’ has been a helpful guiding star for me as a teacher and director of spiritual life and for our community overall.”
Parents with children in the GFA system attest to the importance of the academy’s emphases.
GFA Director of Development Jennifer Airheart has a 13-year-old daughter enrolled in the school and said, “As a parent myself, I take a lot of comfort that my daughter is not ‘lost’ in a large class with too many students. Teachers are interested in her development; she’s safe; she’s got a good grip on what is right.”
The teacher-to-student ratio is comfortable for both the instructors and the young people, at 11 to 1.
Airheart continued, “The kids here are different – they’re polite and respectful. Teaching that at school is gold.”
Along with the history of the founding of Greenleaf, Greenleaf Friends Church, and the academy, there is an engaging chronicle of the generations who’ve attended the school.
Enter Ken and Devonne Hibbs.
Ken’s great-grandfather came to the area in 1906 to homestead; his parents were missionaries, and there have been five generations [on his maternal grandmother’s side] to attend Greenleaf Friends Academy. Ken himself attended in his youth. Years back, Devonne came to Idaho from Nebraska with her parents and also attended GFA. As a grownup, she married Ken, and the couple had three children attend and graduate from the school. They now have three grandchildren attending.
“One hundred and nineteen of our relatives have come here,” Devonne said, explaining she undertook an informal count that included cousins and other kin.
She enjoyed telling stories about a grandson who is a fifth generation student, now in the fifth grade. Asked recently what his favorite song was, he replied, “It Is Well with My Soul,” a hymn written in 1873 by a man named Horatio Spafford following the deaths of his four daughters in a shipwreck.
She also recounted a story about her teenage granddaughter who, at a beauty shop getting her hair done one day, was asked what classes she was taking in school. To say the least, the other people in the room were amazed by her answers as she told them about studying Latin and “The Iliad.”
Airheart humorously explained that while her daughter was reading “The Aeneid,” an epic poem about the origins of Rome written by Virgil, she was so impressed by it that she excitedly told her parents, “You have four months to read this!” Wanting to share her daughter’s enthusiasm, Airheart started reading it – “Yes, I am tackling it. All 496 pages,” she said.
Some locally well-known faces around town in Greenleaf and other area hubs have attended GFA. Brad Holton, the former mayor of Greenleaf and current county commissioner, is an alumnus of GFA’s class of ’75. Also, the current mayor, Ryan Schnuerle, has children who attended; and some pastors presently and previously serving churches in the Treasure Valley were also educated there.
The school was originally a ministry of the Friends Church but is now interdenominational.
As Head of School, Browne defined his job as “more like a superintendent than a principal – it’s like an old-style headmaster.” In his role, he is in charge of “teacher training, marketing, admissions, and fundraising, including the auction.”
The auction is an annual event that has been going on at GFA since 1951. “That’s how we got our gym,” Airheart said. “The auction supports and generates the funds – it’s the juggernaut – and we auction a little bit of everything, from Quaker quilts; to farm and garden supplies; to furniture; to teddy bears and smaller things; to a rifle for a hunter. We want to make sure there’s something in the auction to interest pretty much anyone.”
This year, the auction was held March 13-14, 2026 – its 75th year.
“It is one of southern Idaho’s longest-running fundraising events,” Airheart said. Another popular fundraiser is a fall gala.
Parents pay an average tuition of $6,100 for a child. “It’s affordable and still brings in revenue. While other Christian schools in the valley cost around $10,000,” Browne said, “we do more with less.”
Similarities to other schools include an “actions have consequences” policy for discipline. That may include time out or what Browne called “serving the school.” That’s when kids have to miss recess to scrub baseboards.
The school also offers intramural sports, and Airheart explained, “We have an intramural basketball team for the students to compete among themselves. However, our varsity boys basketball team is a member of IHSAA Division 1A, and secured a spot in the Idaho state championship playoffs for the first time in almost 20 years. They went on to win the consolation finals.”
GFA’s mock trial team also advanced to the state competition. Once again, Airheart spoke for the school: “In just one year, our team went from the bottom of the rankings to placing in the top five in the entire state, competing against some very big high schools, and they came home with the Ethics Award. We are so proud of these kids!”
Devonne Hibbs told one last, poignant story about a grandchild. Her daughter was looking around at public schools, but when Mrs. Hibbs’ GFA-schooled granddaughter saw what the public schools were teaching, she didn’t want to go. Why? “I already know all that stuff,” she said. A stellar recommendation for the GFA curriculum and its Christ-based policies.
For more information, go to gfaschools.org.
