Pine Harbor Christian Academy is a private school located on Highway 61 between Hastings and Cottage Grove. PHCA serves both communities kids kindergarten through eighth grade. They recently held their one annual fundraiser for the year to raise money for student scholarships, in-house field trips, special speakers, student and family events, technology needs and more. The 2020 “Minute- to-Give-It” fundraiser took place October 19th to 23rd and students were encouraged to tell five people about the event.

Each year the PHCA Parent Boosters group set a fundraising goal – this year it was $25,000. Principal Scott Urban added an incentive to this year’s event – if the $25,000 goal was met, he offered to sleep on the roof of the school building for a night!

“The challenge was, we had to reach our goal and I would sleep on the roof,” Urban said.

“The goal was $25,000 and we beat it,” Urban proclaimed proudly, “and that was mostly for scholarships because we believe you shouldn’t have to be rich to come to a Christian school. We want to be able to have everyone come.”

Fundraising is not easy, and it can be tough keeping the excitement and momentum going when it is a longer fundraising campaign. PHCA helped motivate the students with mini challenges along the way. The first being at the $5,000 mark. Mrs. Schauer’s thirdgrade class won the chance to participate in the first challenge by filling up their ‘Tell five people’ checklist. Every student in the thirdgrade class told at least five adults about the fundraiser first. The challenge? Build a smore with chopsticks. This would be a race between Principle Urban and Mrs. Schauer. The results of the race were not disclosed to The Journal.

For the $10,000-mark, Principle Urban would do a Marshmallow challenge where he had to stuff his mouth full of marshmallows and say, ‘I love PHCA’.

“That was quite challenging, kids, don’t try that at home. I found out later that it was one of those stunts that you shouldn’t do because people have gotten hurt. But hey, the lord took care of me,” Urban said.

At $15,000 they held a sleeping bag hopping race down a hall. Mrs. Padmanbhan and Principal Urban were the participants. “Some people say it was a tie, some say she won, but I don’t know,” chuckled Urban, “I think I won by a nose.”

What makes this exchange more humorous is, Principal Urban is Raider Athlete, Senior, Linnea Urban’s father, so it is clear that the desire to win runs in the family. Linnea was the girls section champion for cross country this year. Logically, that means one more competition, right? Yes!

At the $20,000 mark, there was a “log cabin building” race using popsicle sticks. Build the tallest log cabin you can in one minute. The competition for Principle Urban for this would be second grade teacher Mrs. Roeker. “Unfortunately, I was one layer short,” Urban trails off dejectedly, “uhh. . . Mrs. Roeker is a very competitive teacher. We had to count several times just to make sure because we wanted to be accurate.”

Their “Minute to Give it” annual fundraising event culminated in a special challenge for Principal Urban once they made it to the $25,000 goal.

The hardest part of the actual sleeping challenge was what mother nature setup for Urban. During the day Friday, he had to shovel snow off the roof to have a dry sport to set up his shelter, an ice fishing house he borrowed from a caring parent. “I had agreed to sleep on the roof back when it was 80 degrees out,” he said. “Tonight, it’s supposed to get down to 31 degrees.”

While enduring the chilly evening on the roof, he offered students a chance to share in the experience by uploading video bedtime stories, as well as completing Minute-to-Win-It challenges and posting to the school’s Facebook page. He opted out of posting some of the sillier videos he created, perhaps there will be a blooper reel later?

Fundraising challenges are nothing new for Principal Urban – in past years he has found himself duct-taped to the gymnasium wall and having to shave his off beloved goatee. When asked about the added challenge of raising money during a pandemic, Urban responded, “People just gave because they know this is a great place.”

The funds raised do primarily go to scholarships, and this year, some did go to technology upgrades. PHCA was able to buy a Chromebook Cart and Chromebooks. The cart is a secure storage case that also charges the Chromebooks as needed. They are also upgrading the media center this year, purchasing some educational games for the classrooms and providing some inhouse field trips.

“It was a great night all things considered, sleeping on the roof,” Principal Urban said to start his morning recap.

“This loving community provided me a lot of sweet treats -so I was sugared up and ready to have fun with some minutes to give it games and read some stories. I slept pretty well until about four o’clock in the morning and rolled over and the cold hit my back and I looked at my phone and saw that it was like 30 degrees. It was hard to get back to sleep after that I dozed in and out listening to the hum of the highway and bellows of the train. Relaxing yes, rejuvenating no,” Urban continued.

Mrs. Schleppenbach, the school’s virtual coach and her girls brought Urban a large cup of coffee and he did enjoy that up on the roof while the students came to school. “Kids were full of energy as they were coming in seeing me on the roof it was the best part of the experience! It’s really all about the kids,” explained Urban.

Once he climbed up for the night, Urban only came down one time to use the facilities until the challenge was over. As part of the single trip down, he also welcomed the early morning staff and kids before climbing back up to greet the bulk of the students. “other than that I was up there all night,” Urban said.

Older students came in early to prepare Principal Urban a pancake breakfast while the rest of the student body and staff were greeted by Urban’s smiling face sitting in a lawn chair next to his shelter on the roof.

For over 38 years, Pine Harbor Christian Academy, a private Christian K-8 school with current enrollment near 100 students, has been training and equipping children in our community to believe, learn, lead, and serve. PHCA serves both Hastings and Cottage Grove students. Our students emerge as leaders, prepared to thrive in and bring hope to a rapidly changing world.

Principal Scott Urban enjoys a hot cup of coffee to warm up from his night on the roof in an ice fishing shelter. He stayed on the roof to greet students at Pine Harbor Christian Academy Friday morning as they came to school. “Kids were full of energy as they were coming in seeing me on the roof. It was the best part of the experience! It’s really all about the kids,” said Urban.Photo Courtesy of Melissa Millner.