It's the start of a new school year on the new middle and high school campus of Eugenio María de Hostos Charter School — the city's oldest charter school and the only one that is bilingual.
Students walk to the new $54 million complex on Joseph Avenue, or step off school buses, heading inside. The secondary school is a combination of new construction, joined with a renovated, century-old church. A ceremonial ribbon-cutting last month drew dignitaries to tour the facility, but it was last week that the halls and classrooms filled with students for the first time.
For Julio Vázquez, EMHCS co-founder and board chair, expanding the school to serve students from kindergarten through 12th grade was the goal from the beginning.
"Not only that, the parents demanded that we go to high school," Vázquez said. "They wanted their kids to be from K to 12 here. We have consulted the parents all the way when we created the middle school and the high school."
For several years, students in ninth through 12th grade attended classes on the fifth floor of the Eastman Kodak tower on State Street.
School officials said Kodak was a good partner, but the office building wasn’t the best fit and further limited school unity.
"That was the challenge, is trying to still feel like we're one school, but in three different campuses," said John Harris, Chief Operations Officer for EMHCS.
Harris said all the high school students were situated on a single floor of the building, with the ninth floor used for physical education and lunchtime.
"No real room for outdoor activities, sporting events, and things of that nature, so we knew we had to do something in the building to have our own," Harris said.
The expansion is financed through a combination of grants, donations, and naming rights, but most of it comes from tax-exempt bonds, according to Nikki Kersbergen, chief financial officer for the school.
Securing a 5% interest rate for the bonds is especially important because charter schools don't receive the same state funding as public school districts for buildings or other capital expenses, Kersbergen said.
"For example, I worked in Geneva before this, and because of their poverty rate, if they spend $1,000 on building, the following year, the state would give them $850 back. So they get 85% back of what they spend, and that doesn't happen for charter schools," Kersbergen said. "Everything that we do has to come out of pocket for buildings.”
The school's current bond payment is $3 million annually for 30 years. EMHCS has an operating budget of $21 million this year, meaning the bond payments account for roughly 14% of the overall budget.
Vázquez was president and CEO of Ibero American Action League in the late 1990s when he, along with Miriam Vázquez and Eugenio Marlin, began planning for the school. The three co-founders wanted to create an educational alternative to the Rochester City School District’s bilingual education program.
"They implemented the program as a deficit model, where the kids were isolated and treated as a special program type of thing," Vázquez said. "We were advocating for a school from K to 12, all bilingual, where all the students felt welcome, and where we celebrated bilingual."
EMHCS opened in September 2000 with 120 students in kindergarten through second grade. Today, it serves around 1,100 students in kindergarten through 12th grade with the capacity to eventually service 1,300 students.
The new campus includes a Section V-approved gym, state of the art science rooms, a freshman academy, and a Caribbean Preparedness and Response room to help individuals find family members who aren't able to be in touch with after a hurricane or some sort of disaster event in Puerto Rico.
With the facilities now in place, Vázquez said school leadership can focus its attention more on academic achievement and maintaining the facility.
