Desert Adventist Academy

Desert Adventist Academy was established in 1953 and is part of the worldwide Seventh-day Adventist education system, which has over 6,700 schools. Seventh-day Adventist Christian education began in the Coachella Valley in 1953, when the Indio Adventist School began as a one-room, one teacher school. In 1977, the Palm Springs Adventist School was established to serve the needs of that area. As the schools increased enrollment over the years and outgrew their respective facilities in the early 1990s, plans were developed to combine the two schools and locate at the new Palm Desert Church site on Country Club Drive in Palm Desert until the Academy’s own site can be established in the future. After months of meetings and preparation, the five-church constituency made up of the Seventh-day Adventist Churches of Desert Hot Springs, Indio Spanish, Palm Desert Oasis, Palm Springs Filipino/American, and Palm Springs, adopted the Constitution of the Desert Adventist Academy at a meeting of the constituency held on April 10, 1994. The first classes of Desert Adventist Academy, kindergarten through ninth grade, started the 1994-95 school year as a split campus on the Indio and Palm Springs sites and were moved into modular units on the Country Club Drive site in Palm Desert on March 1, 1995. The 1998-99 school year began in the school wing of the newly built Palm Desert Oasis Seventh-day Adventist Church. Modular units were again moved onto the campus the summer of 2001 to provide classrooms for grades 5-8 and then again August 2004 for grades 3-4 and after school care. Upon completion of the final phase of the Palm Desert Oasis Church, which included church offices, board room, gymnasium, and more school classrooms, the modular units were removed in June 2009 and all the grades started the 2009-2010 school year in the school wing of the church. The Desert Adventist Academy operates in harmony with the guidance and direction of the Office of Education, North American Division of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Students in the Adventist education system on average score in the top 30% of nationally-normed achievement tests, performing better than 70% of other private and public schools nationwide.