Enrollment Increase and Grade School Renovations
Not long after Cesar Chavez opened, MPNE was renamed "The Leona Group" in honor of Bill Coates' mother, Leona Coates. This name change reflected MPNE's change in focus from a quasi-public think tank/advocacy group to a privately owned, for-profit corporation.
Cesar Chavez initially opened with grades K through 3 and shared the St. Gabriel school building with the Vista Nuevas Head Start program. The founding principal of the Cesar Chavez Academy was Dr. Carlos Lopez – whom later left and became Superintendent of the Oak Park School System. As Cesar Chavez continued to grow, Vista Nuevas eventually left portion of the building they were using for another building just down the street from St. Gabriel's and Cesar Chavez took over all of the available space in the St. Gabriel school building. In order to bring the school building up to code and to properly educate the students of Cesar Chavez, the building required approximately $3.5 million dollars of renovations which included fire prevention systems, gutting of the former high school on the first floor to turn it into a hall/cafeteria area, and numerous other infrastructure repairs. The costs of this renovation were covered by the Archdiocese of Detroit and repaid through rent payments from Cesar Chavez to the Archdiocese of Detroit.
Read more about this topic: Cesar Chavez Academy
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