Whitman Academy operates under license as a Jordanian company, the Foreign Educational Services Company, W.L.L., which is a non-profit organization. The company uses the trade name, Roy and Dora Whitman Academy, in carrying out the purposes of the company. There is a Board of Education elected by the parents of children attending the school, friends of the school, and people who contribute or have contributed to the school. The Board of Education establishes the policies under which the school operates.
Whitman Academy is licensed by the Ministry of Education as a school for foreign students. Jordanian citizens are not eligible for admission unless they also have a passport from a different country. Students must also be fluent in English. This year there are students in attendance from ten foreign countries. The school is a member of the Association of Christian Schools International.
History
In 1994 God brought together three families, with children in kindergarten through sixth grade, with an experienced, certified, American teacher – and Whitman Academy was born. Today Whitman Academy has expanded to over 135 students in a 5-story building, with an international staff of full-time and part-time teachers.
Whitman Academy was named in loving memory of the American, Roy Whitman, and his British wife, Dora.
Roy came to Jordan in 1925, and in 1930 began his work in the previously unevangelized city of Amman. Roy and Dora Whitman helped establish basically every group of evangelical believers currently ministering in Jordan. For 61 years they faithfully labored for the Lord not only in Jordan but in other, neighboring, Arab countries, encouraging and strengthening Arab believers. Although the Whitmans were never blessed with their own children, many Arab Christians consider them their spiritual parents. We desire to see our students follow the Whitmans’ example of faithful, loving perseverance in God’s work.
Roy and Dora Whitman in the mid-1930s