The Charter School of Educational Excellence (CSEE) has opened its new high school at 220 Warburton Avenue in Yonkers with a Sept. 15 ribbon-cutting event.
The school”™s founder and chairman of the board noted that the project overcame threatened lengthy Covid-19 construction delays and came in under budget.
The new $27 million building at 220 Warburton Ave. fulfills a plan to create a charter school to serve grades kindergarten through 12, with students from families of all economic backgrounds in Yonkers as well as other communities.
The high school is on the property that at one time was a church complex. In September 2017, CSEE purchased the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary property on Warburton Avenue for $2.4 million, according to records on file in the Westchester County Clerk”™s Office.
There had been consideration given to converting the church, which had been closed for a decade, into a gymnasium for the new high school but it ultimately was demolished. The presence of asbestos became an issue.
“With the opening of this new facility, our school will offer families access to a learning community that will nurture their children from the beginning of their educational journey until they reach college age,” said Eduardo LaGuerre, the CSEE”™s founder and chairman of the board of trustees. “I am grateful to our board members, teachers and parents who supported us through the past 16 years as we expanded from a small school with 250 students in a former strip mall to a vibrant, state-of-the-art campus that accommodates 1,129 students.”
LaGuerre said that the development, financing and construction of this high school took approximately four years.
“We encountered many, many, many challenges during the construction,” he said. “As soon as we started construction the pandemic broke out and we got word that we had to stop construction and I got panicky. But we were able to call the governor, we were able to call our mayor and before a week elapsed we got a waiver and the school was allowed to continue with its construction.”
LaGuerre thanked Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano and the Yonkers Economic Development Corp. for arranging $39 million in financing for the project.
“We didn”™t need all of that, so some of it is coming back, hopefully,” LaGuerre said of the funding. “Or we”™re going to use it to continue the expansion. We were under budget, we didn”™t tap the contingency and we”™re planning to do something, phase two.”
He said that phase two could involve opening up a wall and adding an audio/visual facility that includes an auditorium and studio for live TV broadcasting.
The 76,000-square-foot high school includes a competition-size soccer field and oversized classrooms. It includes a gymnasium equipped for live telecasting of basketball and other games taking place there.
The high school will offer culinary arts, automobile technology and health sciences programs that will position graduating students with skills needed to hep qualify them for immediate employment. For the students seeking to continue their studies, the CSEE”™s curriculum will include up to 24 college credits.
Spano said he generally has not backed specific charter schools but strongly supported this one because it has displayed such high standards.
“Our first priority always is to public education and making sure that our kids get that education and get the resources they need, but at the same time having choice added to the mix only makes us stronger,” Spano said.
The student body is expected to reach 1,026 children in the fall. About half the students are from Yonkers, with the rest predominantly from Mount Vernon and the Bronx. The CSEE began phasing in high school grades in 2019 and this fall the high school is teaching grades 9 through 11.
Instruction of 12th-grade students is scheduled to begin in the fall of 2022.
