A charter school in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, has decided to demolish a former Catholic school facility and construct a 70,000-square-foot facility for the charter school's Upper Academy.
The Valley Breeze reports that leaders at RISE Prep Mayoral Academy will move forward with demolition of the former Our Lady of Victories School.
Rosalind DaCruz, founder and executive director of the charter school, said the decision followed months of feasibility studies on whether to restore the old parochial school or start from scratch.
"We had started with the hopes that we could restore and renovate a lot of what was there just because of the history," DaCruz said. "But we also found, through working with our architects and engineers, that we could get more educational space for our kids, more classrooms and more learning opportunities, if we demolished and started from scratch. It was just going to be a lot more cost prohibitive to try to renovate what was there versus build new."
RISE's campus now serves students in kindergarten through grade 10; 9th and 10th-graders are temporarily housed across the street from the main campus at the Boys & Girls Club.
RISE acquired the 1.5-acre Our Lady of Victories property last year. Under state regulations, RISE will finalize the purchase after the Council on Elementary and Secondary Education votes on the project's stage two approval. If that goes according to plan, the project could break ground in April 2026, and the facility could open around July 2027.
Plans for the three-story Upper Academy call for 26 classrooms, small-group learning areas, art and music rooms, counseling and career guidance suites, a multipurpose cafeteria and assembly space, and a full-court gymnasium.
The design incorporates a garden-level floor and two upper stories, surrounded by a landscaped courtyard, student drop-off areas, a bus loop, and bicycle parking.
The facility is designed for about 400 students in grades 9 to 12 and will operate without the use of fossil fuels, using an air-source heat pump system for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning.
DaCruz said the total cost of the project is expected to be about $40 million. Most of that will be paid for via a bond that RISE Prep takes out and then pays for out of its operating budget.
