The Community Education Building, Bank of America’s gift to Delaware’s charter school movement, will not open until the 2014-15 school year, 12 months later than planned.
The delay will allow the building’s operators to “get it done right,” said Riccardo Stoeckicht, Community Education Building president.
But the delay was a major reason for two new charter schools, which had hoped to lease space in the building, to defer their planned openings from 2013 to 2014.”
Last February, Bank of America announced that it was donating the building at 1100 N. French Street, known as Bracebridge IV when it was built in 1997 by the MBNA Corp., to the Longwood Foundation, which would transform it into a home for high-performing charter schools that would primarily serve lower-income Wilmington residents. The foundation created the Community Education Building as a separate entity to oversee the facility
“The focus for this project is to facilitate delivery of a world-class education,” Stoeckicht said. “And we’re not going to deliver world-class education, it’s the schools” which are chosen to lease space in the building.
Several schools filed applications last summer to lease space in the building, which covers 281,000 square feet on nine floors. It is expected to host three or four schools and a total of about 2,400 students. Kuumba Academy, a charter elementary school now located at 519 N. Market St. in Wilmington, was the only applicant to confirm it had been selected.
Building Plans Affect Opening of Charter Schools
He would not discuss the status of other applications, saying that making any statements could impact others’ perceptions of the schools’ plans, but organizers of the First State Montessori Academy and Academia Antonia Alonso indicated that finding a home in the Community Education Building was part of their plans.
In a posting on the school’s website, Oliver Yeh, board chairman at First State Montessori, wrote that the school had applied for space at the Community Education Building but the review process determined that it was “not a perfect match.” Yeh’s message indicated that the school will seek other sites in the Wilmington area and may reapply at the Community Education Building.
Kathy Laskowski, a board member at Academia Antonia Alonso, a dual-language immersion elementary school program developed with the support of the Latin American Community Center, said site selection and the delay in the Community Education Building’s opening were factors in the decision to defer the school’s opening for a year.
“The Community Education Building would be easy. It’s a great setup,” Laskowski said. But other options are also being explored, both downtown and on the Wilmington riverfront. The site must be convenient to Wilmington’s Hilltop neighborhood, from which the school expects to draw many of its students, she said.
Space to Take Shape with New Tenants in Mind
Two key reasons for delaying the building’s opening, Stoeckicht said, are a desire to have all the support services the schools will need in place when they begin holding classes and to avoid construction work in the building while school is in session. “This will be a win/win for everybody because it allows us to optimize our planning,” he said.
“This building will have a culture, and our goal is to develop it intentionally,” he said. By having tenants identified a full year before the building opens, “we can engage the tenants; create a building council; and work to ensure that programs matching the needs of the school are connected with the infrastructure.”
That infrastructure, Stoeckicht said, would include shared facilities such as a cafeteria, library, music and dance rooms and an indoor play area. Some sort of health clinic, possibly including dental services, is likely, as well as accommodations for after-school enrichment programs, he said.
Kuumba Academy is looking forward to being the building’s first tenant, Head of School Sally Maldonado said. Kuumba has asked to occupy 40,000 square feet “but that has to be negotiated,” she said.
Kuumba, which now serves kindergarten through fifth grade, is asking the State Board of Education to authorize it to operate a middle school, serving sixth through eighth grades. If that request is approved, the school could grow from its current 249 students to about 855, including a preschool program, Maldonado said.
Kuumba’s board of directors has a long-term goal of expanding to include a high school, Maldonado said, “but if there’s a great high school option for our kids [in the Community Education Building], we might say that’s OK.”
Ideally, Stoeckicht said, schools chosen for the building would combine to serve the full K-12 spectrum.
Other Applicants Rival for Charter School Space
At least two groups that are applying for state authorization to operate charter high schools are interested in locating in the Community Education Building.
Cristina Alvarez, founder of the proposed Delaware Design Lab High School, puts it bluntly: “We’re going for broke. That’s where we want to be.”
Nash Childs, chairman of the board of directors of the proposed Delaware MET High School, said the building is ideal for his school. Its educational program will have students spending two days a week in internships and the downtown location is close to dozens of such opportunities.
However, Childs said, the Delaware MET board is also looking at two other downtown sites and a third one on the riverfront.
The Community Education Building’s next solicitation of prospective tenants will occur this summer. Applications must be filed by Aug. 1 and selections will be announced by Sept. 15. An independent panel of national education experts has been hired to review the applications, Stoeckicht said.
Stoeckicht would not say that the building’s selection process is more rigorous than the one the state uses to approve charters. But he did say that “the big challenge is closing the urban achievement gap, and I can say we are totally in alignment with the Department of Education on that point.”
Applicants must demonstrate that they will follow “national best practices” for charter schools, and “we want to make sure there are indications that the schools will perform” at a high level, Stoeckicht said.
“We hope to have the impact, as [an educational] village, to transform the educational experience of 2,400 children,” Stoeckicht said. “If the building succeeds, it raises the bar, the schools close the urban achievement gap, they will have growing applicant pools, and that can have a ripple effect throughout the city.”