In a highly competitive round of grant applications, One City Senior Preschool was recently selected to receive a $500,000 grant from the state Department of Public Instruction.
“This grant is so huge. It helps us in launching our school and paying salaries,” One City Founder and CEO Kaleem Caire tells Madison365. “Schools are a very costly business and about 80 percent of your costs are tied up in people and you got to have the money to pay the people to do the great work with the kids. These funds will really help quite a bit.”
One City and Madison’s Isthmus Montessori Academy, who received a grant for $750,625, were among 26 new or expanding charter schools in Wisconsin to receive more than $17 million from the U.S. Department of Education.
“The federal government has given the Department of Public Instruction of Wisconsin money to support the development of charter schools,” Caire says. “They’ve given the state $96 million to support chartering over the next five years and we applied as the first group to help get support for the implementation of our school and they gave us $500,000.”
That comes to about $100,000 a year for five years for One City, located in the heart of Madison’s south side.
“Staffing is our biggest challenge … we’re looking for the right people with the right mindset that really wants to dive into this work. We’re looking to hire teachers that are really mission-driven and really have a focus and a deep commitment to making sure our children are really ready for school success and that they succeed down the pathway of elementary school,” Caire says. “It’s not easy work so we’re looking for people who want to get in with us and help these children with whatever difficulties they might have.”
One City’s goal is to have 60 students enrolled by the fall. “We’re at 40 right now. We can have a maximum of 82,” Caire says.
In May, One City announced that it had chosen Bryan Grau to serve as One City Senior Preschool’s founding school principal where he will be working with One City’s leadership team, staff, parents, board of directors and partners to establish an elementary school in the fall of 2019. Grau’s first day was yesterday.
“It’s so great to have Bryan on board. He has a ton of experience in education. He’s had so many years in teaching in a classroom and he’s had significant and varied leadership responsibilities,” Caire says of Grau, who also the founder and developer of Nuestro Mundo Community School, a dual-language immersion (Spanish/English) public charter school operated by the Madison Metropolitan School District that serves children in grades K-5. “He’s worked in another state with a different orientation towards training and developing principal schools. He has so much experience. We’re excited.
“The fact that he’s gone through both the challenges and the opportunity of developing a charter school in Madison is big,” Caire adds. “He’s had a huge impact on what we teach here with Nuestro Mundo and dual-language immersion. I feel like we got a real winner by hiring him.”
One City’s Senior Preschool will open in September 2018 and will feature a tuition-free, year-round and extended day 4K and kindergarten program. Caire is still busy raising money for Phase 2 renovation of our the facility, the development of grades 1-6 public charter school, the growth and expansion of its Junior and Senior Preschools, and the tuition scholarship needs of families with 1-to-3 year-olds who have a significant economic need.
“I’m really excited. Our charter school contract has been signed. We’ve gotten the grant,” Caire says. “But we’re still pursuing funds because we want to develop an outstanding space for children. We’re looking to integrate grades 1-6 in the future. We’re going to start with at least grade 1 next year.”
For more information about One City Schools, click here.
