State $2M Unspent, As Charter Nears Start

An all-boys charter school slated to open this fall in rented space in Newhallville still has $2 million in state money available to help it buy a building of its own — at a location yet to be determined. 

That charter school is called the Edmonds Cofield Preparatory Academy for Young Men.

According to the charter school’s founder and board member, Rev. Boise Kimber, the new school will open its doors to its first cohort of fifth-graders this upcoming August. 

The school will launch out of rented second-floor space at 794 Dixwell Ave., an ex-school building that the child mental healthcare provider Clifford Beers purchased in March 2024 from the APT Foundation.

Kimber and John Taylor, the CEO of the charter school management company Elevate Charter Schools, said that Edmonds Cofield is currently seeking parents of rising fifth-graders interested in applying to be in this first class. They’re looking to launch with 75 students.

“We’re about a third of the way to that,” Taylor said about enrollment.

Taylor said the school hosts an open house every Wednesday at 6 p.m. at 794 Dixwell, where parents and guardians ​“can hear about the value-add of a single-gender education.” 

“They’re going to hear that it does matter for boys to be in an environment where the program both academically and socially-emotionally is geared 100 percent towards young men,” Taylor said.

Kimber first won permission from the state Board of Education back in March 2023 for an initial certification for the planned new charter school, which is named after two late New Haven Black community leaders, the Revs. Edwin Edmonds and Curtis Cofield.

In December 2023, the state awarded Edmonds Cofield a $2 million grant to support the charter school’s ​“acquisition and renovation costs.” At the time, Kimber told the Independent the school planned to use that state money to purchase 311 Valley St., the site of the former West Rock STREAM Academy public school building.

Nearly a year and a half later, what’s the latest? Has Edmonds Cofield spent any of that $2 million state grant? Are they still looking to buy 311 Valley?

Matthew Cerrone, a spokesperson for the state Department of Education, said that this $2 million grant is still with the state Office of Policy and Management (OPM) since it hasn’t been requested yet by the state’s education department. ​“We request for an allotment when the project is in the works, and this hasn’t moved forward yet,” he said.

Chris Collibee, a spokesperson for OPM, said that there is no time limit on the allocated funds. 

That means Kimber’s school will continue to have access to this $2 million in state funds for as long as the school is around.

Per the state bond commission’s original December 2023 approval, the charter school must use these funds for ​“acquisition and renovation costs.” They cannot be used for rent, and they have to be used in the City of New Haven, though they are not tied to any one particular address such as 311 Valley.

Asked if the charter school still hopes to buy 311 Valley, Kimber said that the school’s management company is ​“looking around for a building.” They haven’t found one yet. They might wind up buying a different former public school building, depending on New Haven Public Schools’ (NHPS) plans for its properties. 

“We haven’t yet made a decision about school properties that may become ​‘surplus’ in the context of a facilities master plan,” NHPS spokesperson Justin Harmon told the Independent when asked if the district plans to sell 311 Valley to Kimber’s charter school. ​“Any surplus facilities will revert to the city, and they will decide how to repurpose them.”

When will the district know exactly which properties it deems ​“surplus”?

“One of the purposes of the facilities audit we are undertaking is to inform decisions about further mergers and about the facilities footprint that we should work to maintain over the long-term,” Harmon said. ​“As I understand it, that study will also give us a rationale for declaring certain buildings to be surplus. The study should be in hand in the next few months.”

In the meantime, Edmonds Cofield Academy is gearing up to open its doors in rented space at 794 Dixwell this fall as it continues to look for a property to purchase.

Clifford Beers Executive Director Ilaria Filippi confirmed for the Independent that her organization has a two-year lease with Edmonds Cofield Academy that began last June. The charter school had initially planned on moving in this current school year; Kimber said the school pushed back its start date by a year as it works to recruit new students.

Filippi said that 794 Dixwell’s second floor is all ready for the charter school to move in, now that Clifford Beers has completed repairs to the building’s roof with the help of $300,000 in city funds approved by the Board of Alders. She said her organization completed those repairs a year ago.

As for the rest of the building, Filippi said that Clifford Beers plans to open on July 1 two ​“school readiness” programs on the building’s first floor. Those two classrooms are already outfitted, and will have a total of 38 students between the ages of 3 and 5 years old. Clifford Beers has applied for the relevant licenses from the state Office of Early Childhood Development for those programs, and is on track to open them this summer.

Filippi also said that Clifford Beers plans to apply again for state Community Investment Fund (CIF) dollars to help fix up the rest of 794 Dixwell. ​“The building has been vacant for a very long time,” she said. ​“Our intention is to create a mixed-use building for programming and other community activities” at that site. ​“It needs to be brought up to code,” thus the organization’s application for state financial help.