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z AUGUST 1 - 7, 2016 z CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS
Breakthrough’s newest spot will get Head Start By RACHEL ABBEY McCAFFERTY rmccafferty@crain.com @ramccafferty
On Aug. 16, Breakthrough Schools will officially open the doors on its newest educational option, the E Prep & Village Prep Willard Campus. It’s not the first new school the charter school network has launched, and it’s not likely to be the last, either. John Zitzner, president of Friends of Breakthrough Schools, said the operator would like to grow the network to 19 or 20 schools by 2020. It will have 12 schools on 10 campuses after E Prep & Village Prep Willard open. “What Alan and I have said from the beginning is we’re in this to fundamentally change the face of education in Cleveland. And we think you can’t do that with two or three schools,” Zitzner said. “But maybe with 20 schools, we can make an impact.” Alan Rosskamm, CEO for Breakthrough Schools, said the network wants to be “part of the solution for Cleveland.” Breakthrough gets asked to start schools in other communities, he said, but it wants to work in the city. The driving force behind the network’s planning process is “need,” he said, whether that’s determined by community demand or by the data, like the Willard school. But that doesn’t mean opening a new school is old hat for Breakthrough. A lot of work goes into this kind of launch, from revamping the building to hiring the teachers to creating the arrival and dismissal plans. Zitzner said the first year is the toughest in terms of getting families
Mark Lenart, owner’s representative for Breakthrough Charter Schools, shows off the plans for the E Prep & Village Prep Willard campus. aware of the school. “It’s a big lift to fill the first few classes and the first few years,” he said. And E Prep & Village Prep Willard is a bit unique for Breakthrough. The school will share a building with a Head Start program, which Rosskamm said he would like to see as a trend going forward. It has previously shared space with a preschool at one of its Intergenerational Schools, and the Centers for Families and Children will open a preschool at one of its Citizens Academies this fall. Breakthrough has a variety of school models in its portfolio. Zitzner said Breakthrough intentionally made E Prep & Village Prep Willard smaller so Head Start could stay on the Willard campus. It will offer a strong feeder system to the school, he said, and one that Rosskamm said will be made up of kindergarten-ready students.
Jacklyn A. Chisholm, president and CEO of the Council for Economic Opportunities in Greater Cleveland, which runs the Head Start program, said the group thought pairing with Breakthrough would be a “marriage of strength.” She wants the school to be a model for future PreK-8 programs. The school will start with three kindergarten classes and one first grade class in the fall, each with about 30 students and two teachers, according to an email from vice president of communications Lyman Millard. By the 2019-2020 school year, the Willard campus will house preschool through 8th grade. Anita Brindza, executive director of community development corporation Cudell Improvement Inc., thinks the new school will be a “great opportunity” for the community. A number of lofts and homes have
The cost of buying and rehabbing the old school will be about $7 million. gone into that area in the past 10 to 12 years, she said, but the Willard building has been underused. She hopes that having a public school option that doesn’t require those families to cross a major street will encourage them to stay in the area. Here’s an overview of the work Breakthrough has put into E Prep &
Village Prep Willard in the past year:
The building Friends of Breakthrough Schools bought the building at 2220 W. 95th St., in the Cudell neighborhood of Cleveland, in March. The network doesn’t have the funding to build new, so it’s always watching for “old
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