Supporters loaned millions to failed Tacoma private school. Were they repaid?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Sound Christian Academy closed in August 2025 after failed attempts at financial recovery.
- Two of the school’s creditors are in line to get paid once the school sells its property.
- School listed property at $7.95M; court documents suggest sale around Jan. 15, 2026.
Recent court filings provide more details about how attempts to save Sound Christian Academy from financial ruin fell apart and created a dispute among school board members and supporters.
The school board chair, another former board member and an outside financial expert filed declarations in Pierce County Superior Court Dec. 29, containing the school’s first major response to allegations that it failed to reimburse a former finance manager after he personally paid the school’s tax bill to the IRS.
Sound Christian Academy, formerly Tacoma Baptist Schools, opened in 1960 and reported a student population of about 300 on their website, though enrollment fluctuated over the years, The News Tribune reported. The school offered “quality, affordable, biblically-based K-12 education in a grace-filled, Christian environment in south Tacoma, WA for over 60 years,” their website once said.
In late February 2025, the school put out an urgent call for help on their Facebook page, saying that Sound Christian Academy would soon shut down if it couldn’t pay the bills, due to overwhelming debt. The community responded, donating over $210,000 in just five days.
In the months following, the school went back-and-forth in emails to families about the upcoming school year, initially saying Sound Christian was closing and then reversing that announcement after reportedly receiving a gift from “a very generous supporter.”
Finally, the school abruptly shut down in August. School administrators notified parents just days before classes were supposed to begin, reporting that a deal to refinance the school’s property and pay back the school’s creditors had fallen through, The News Tribune reported.
Weeks later, the school board posted a letter on the school’s website, expressing their grief about the closure of the school.
“We had a financial restructuring plan in place that offered a beacon of hope and a clear path to get beyond the debt,” the letter said. “It was a plan that would have secured the school’s future, and it was the result of countless hours of prayer, meetings, and negotiations. However, in an unexpected and heartbreaking turn of events, this solution fell through ... . Without these funds, we simply do not have the resources to operate.”
“ ... The building may be closing, but the spirit of this community, the faith it fostered, and the lives it transformed will never be extinguished. It lives on in all of us.”
It’s not clear exactly how many creditors the school has, but lawsuits filed by two of the school’s longtime supporters represent at least two major claims for the school’s funds.
Elizabeth Henning, a longtime supporter of the school who alleged she never received payment for loans totaling $500,000, filed a lawsuit against the school in January 2025.
Ron Nelson, a former school finance manager and board member who largely volunteered his services for 20 years, also filed a lawsuit in April 2025. Nelson alleged that the school had refused to reimburse him after he personally paid taxes that the school owed to the IRS, which put a lien on his home and threatened foreclosure if he didn’t pay the $304,000 sum.
The school’s Form 990 tax return for 2023 shows that Sound Christian Academy received millions of dollars in loans from individuals, mostly current or former members of the school’s board, or their family members. The form indicates the school was only in default on separate loans from Henning and her husband Dwane, a former board member, at the time of the filing.
Judges in both Henning’s and Nelson’s lawsuits awarded them judgments for the funds they’re allegedly owed, court records show. The sale of the school’s property may soon determine whether Henning, Nelson and any other creditors get any of that money in-hand.
Nelson “learned recently that the school intends to sell its land and buildings in a real estate transaction that closes on or about January 15, 2026,” according to his motion for summary judgment filed Dec. 11. That date is when Nelson expects the school, “no longer operational, (to have) publicly announced the sale of its real estate assets, and that it intends to distribute the sale proceeds to creditors,” he wrote in a reply supporting his motion.
The school’s sale price appears to have been listed at $7.95 million, according to a brochure available online from Kidder Mathews, a commercial real-estate firm. The Kidder Mathews website did not show an active online listing for the property Friday.
On Monday, the News Tribune reached out to Bruce Barker, the Kidder Mathews real estate investment broker listed on the Sound Christian Academy website as the contact for prospective buyers, to learn more about the sale and who is buying the property. Barker wrote in an email that he isn’t able to share information yet.
School board members say they thought finance manager paid school’s taxes as a ‘gift’
Sound Christian Academy’s attorneys filed a response to Nelson’s motion for summary judgment Dec. 29, disputing their obligation to reimburse Nelson for his payment to the IRS.
The school alleged that Nelson “intentionally failed to collect, truthfully account for, and pay the Internal Revenue Service payroll taxes for SCA employees.” The board only became aware of the unpaid taxes when Nelson emailed school leaders that the IRS had filed a levy against the school’s bank account for $304,000, the school alleged.
“Nelson erroneously contends that the Board was aware of the IRS debt, therefore, he was acting on behalf of SCA when he personally paid the IRS debt,” the school’s response alleged.
Seongbae Kim, the school’s board chair, wrote in a separate declaration that he returned from an out-of-town trip in 2024 to find the school’s bank account completely drained.
“On May 10th, I show a withdrawal of $171,687.53. That has brought our cash balance to ZERO,” Kim wrote in an email to Nelson, then-interim head of school Matt Richey and board chair Carrie Jo Timmer. “It says Notice of Levy, IRS.”
He went on to ask for answers about whether the school had unpaid taxes and how much the school owed.
“I am praying that this is just a misunderstanding,” he wrote.
Nelson wrote back in an email also included in court documents, saying that: “There is much to tell you to explain.”
He did not pay the IRS for multiple quarters from 2022 to 2023 “to be able to make ends meet,” he wrote in the email.
“I have been working this without telling the BOD because I believed that the BOD would have moved to close the school,” Nelson wrote in his email. “And since it was a decision I made to get through a super difficult time, it was on me to negotiate or pay, so I did not tell the BOD.”
Both Kim and Carrie Jo Timmer, who served as chair of the board for the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 school years, wrote in separate declarations that they “understood and believed that Mr. Nelson was paying the delinquent IRS payroll taxes as a gift to the school.”
Shortly after learning of the situation, the board removed Nelson from his position of managing the school’s finances and sent out an email to families, court documents say.
A parent forwarded that email to The News Tribune last year.
“The individual responsible has since taken full accountability and has made a significant personal contribution towards rectifying this financial obligation,” the email to families, dated May 15, said. “We have no reason to believe that there is any further wrongdoing by this individual or that the individual gained financially in any way. This individual no longer holds a position at SCA.”
Finance manager contends that he did not create school’s debt
In a reply supporting his motion for summary judgment, Nelson responded to the school’s allegations against him, drawing upon declarations from the school’s former director of business and finance, Sarah Halverson, and former consultant and interim executive director, Richard Johnsen.
“The debt at issue was SCA’s unpaid taxes due under federal tax law,” the reply alleged. “SCA, not Nelson, owed the tax debt right up to the point the IRS elected to pursue Mr. Nelson and forced him to pay it.”
Nelson argued that the board never told him to alert them about unpaid bills to the IRS or other creditors. The established practice was for Nelson and his team to manage the school’s creditors, he alleged.
Nelson “reasonably assumed from a 20-year course of conduct that the BOD had authorized him and the finance team to manage SCA’s financial affairs, including this delinquency,” the reply alleged. “And until the levy, he had every reason to believe the matter would be taken care of as he would have to absorb the initial loss and then, he expected, would obtain a promissory note from the school to reimburse him ‘two or three years’ later.”
As for allegations that Nelson appeared to be paying the IRS as a “gift” to the school, Nelson contended that his request for a promissory note would have made clear he had no such intention.
Richard Johnsen, a former consultant and later interim executive director for the school, defended Nelson’s conduct in an earlier declaration dated Oct. 5, 2024. Nelson helped the school obtain over $2 million in gifts, loans and other financial assistance during his service to the school, Johnsen wrote, and helped the school make other decisions such as selling one of their properties to secure “vital cash at a critical time.”
Johnsen also addressed the school’s email to families about Nelson’s actions.
“The Board’s public misstatements targeted at Ron are disparaging and unbecoming for those who profess Christ, amounting to a disconcerting attempt at scapegoating him for what was a well-known, chronic, decades-long financial crisis due in part to marginal Board participation and leadership performance,” Johnsen wrote. “The Board’s effort to publicly blame Ron, and then abandon him when he was forced by the IRS to pay for the school’s debt, is particularly unjustified considering the role Ron took upon himself, virtually alone, for two decades to keep SCA from financial ruin.”
Ann Murphy is a professor at Gonzaga University School of Law who formerly served as an IRS attorney for 15 years. ASked about the case, she wrote in an email to The News Tribune that the IRS held Nelson responsible for unpaid payroll taxes via a provision called the Trust Fund Recovery Penalty.
“It is pretty much impossible to avoid and has been referred to as ‘draconian,’ even by the IRS,” she wrote.
She gave an example of how the penalty works: say she had a company with two employees, and had to withhold money from their wages to pay taxes to the IRS. The company struggles to bring in enough profit one year, and ends up covering necessary expenses with money it was supposed to withhold from the employees’ paychecks.
“Anyone in my company who was responsible for these payments is personally liable,” she wrote.
Will people who loaned thousands to Sound Christian Academy be repaid?
If the school sells its property, Nelson and Henning are likely in position to get the money they say they’re owed.
On Dec. 5, Pierce County Superior Court Judge Philip K. Sorensen issued a judgment in a lawsuit against the school. The court awarded Henning a judgment of over $635,000 for breach of contract and another $25,100 for attorney fees and costs, both with an interest rate of 12% per year.
Henning’s attorney, Chris Pierce-Wright wrote in an email Friday that “Ms. Henning had attempted to reach a resolution with Sound Christian Academy regarding her loans but did not receive any serious engagement.”
“Although she is disappointed to see the difficult financial situation the school is in, she is hopeful that the sale of the school’s property moves forward so that she and any other people owed money can be made whole,” he wrote.
Because of the court’s judgment and the deeds of trust Henning has with the school, she is likely in line to get paid from the sale of the school’s property, Katie Axtell, an adjunct professor at the Seattle University School of Law, said in an interview Friday. Axtell practiced law for 20 years, spending the first decade working in the area of creditors’ rights.
“ ... if they sold the real property in the sale, lien creditors and holders of deeds of trust get paid out of the proceeds of the sale,” Axtell told The News Tribune.
A search of the Pierce County Auditor’s recorded documents database shows that Henning and her husband had multiple deeds of trust recorded with the school in 2021 and 2022.
Axtell explained that Nelson wouldn’t be able to claim funds from the sale until he had a court judgment, as in Henning’s case. Pierce County Superior Court Judge Grant Blinn granted his motion for summary judgment Jan. 9, his attorney confirmed. Summary judgment means that the court agrees there are no genuine issues of fact in the case and the case doesn’t need to move forward to a trial.
Nelson provided a statement via email on the court’s ruling.
“I was vindicated when last week a Pierce County Superior Court Judge ruled in my favor and awarded me the funds I was forced to pay the IRS on the school’s behalf for its payroll taxes back in May 2024,” Nelson wrote. “At the time, I asked the school to reimburse me by simply providing a promissory note to be paid in two or three years, but the Board refused and terminated me, even after I had served for 20 years, unpaid, as the school’s senior finance manager. When the school wouldn’t even respond to my emails, I had to hire an attorney who requested that the school enter into Christian mediation to try to resolve my claims out of court, but the school even ignored him. “I was so grateful to be a part of the school. I and the finance team never missed a payroll, and the school remained open for those 20 years. Sadly, in the year after I left, I understand the school missed payroll and ultimately closed its doors in August 2025.”
Nelson’s original motion for summary judgment noted that he “promptly brought this motion ... prior to the school selling its assets and placing them beyond the reach of this action.” Axtell, the Seattle University law professor, said Nelson may have been concerned that the school would sell off its property and pay other creditors first, before the court issued a judgment allowing him to get a piece of the proceeds.
