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Salin Bank has made the Fort Wayne Urban League (Ft. Wayne, IN) and the charter school it founded, Thurgood Marshall Leadership Academy, an offer it may not be able to refuse.
The bank owns the former Village Woods Middle School, where Marshall Academy orginally hoped to locate, and had offered to sell the building to the Urban League for about $180,000. The school and the Urban League couldn't come up with a funding source, so the school has located in Zion Lutheran Church's former academy on Weisser Park Ave. near the intersection of Hanna and Creighton streets.
But at the school's board meeting on Monday, Board President Will Clark notified the board that Salin has offered to give the school the building for free. But Clark said the building will still require millions of dollars in renovations and insurance in the meantime, if the league or the school is interested.
He said the league has requested 90 days to make a decision.
The offer sparked a conversation about the option of a high school branch of Marshall Academy, another K-8 school or possibly a pre-kindergarten program.
"If we see success, there will probably be pressure to do it again, but we've got to figure out what our priorities are," Clark said.
Marshall Academy opened Monday for its first day of classes, and during the meeting Monday the board congratulated Principal Nicole Chisley for a successful start.
Urban League CEO Jonathan Ray said seeing students in their uniforms learning in classrooms was "simply amazing." He said it was rewarding to see months of hard work, writing a proposal, applying for a charter, staaffing the school and finding and fixing up a building come together for the first day of school.
To read the full article, please visit: http://www.news-sentinel.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120821/NEWS/120829950/1005/biz
