Building A Brighter Future

Do you remember your high school years?  Do you remember walking the illustrious halls of your Alma Mater filled with spacious hallways,  lockers on both sides of the walls, huge cafeteria that served multiple food options and large classrooms?  Do you remember watching the hallways fill with friends or foe upon the ringing of the transition bell?  Although those memories may not be important in the grand scheme of student opportunity, it is a strong trigger of happiness when reflecting on high school life.  We would like to give our students, at T-Squared Honors Academy, the opportunity  to have even more fond memories of their high school life as well; and yes, a building can make the difference!  

T-Squared Honors Academy, a public non-profit entity, opened in 2014 to offer an exceptional educational alternative to underrepresented families in Warrensville Heights and surrounding communities. The school serves 121 students in grades 7-12. The demographic statistics are 99% African American and 1% Other. Currently, 54% of the enrollment is eligible for Free/Reduced lunches. After only five years of operations, T-Squared has made great gains towards achieving its mission to outperform local districts and become one of the best charter school programs in Ohio by  receiving a “C" on its most recent local report card.   This year, the state superintendent as well as the deputy superintendent of the Ohio Department of Education took the time to actually come and visit our program.  We were honored by their presence, but saddened by the humbleness of our building.

Unfortunately, our successes academically are not strong enough to overshadow the building's inadequacies.  We are housed in a 14,000 square foot factory front office building that can only house the max we have received. The classrooms are very cramped and small for high school students, the hallways are sometimes not wide enough for the students to walk past one another without touching and we don’t have enough space to grow.  Meeting new people was a very important part of my high school experience, but it becomes difficult when a school cannot enroll anyone new because they are limited in capacity.  Programming is a concern as well because we do not have enough classrooms to allow for these opportunities. Moreover, the condition of the building has caused parents to withdraw some of our great students so much so, the outside of it has stopped parents from even picking up enrollment packets.   The location is also a downfall as we sit in the middle of an industrial park where there are no sidewalks and cars have slid off the road onto the front lawn do to a curve where speeders fail to exercise caution.  Our hope was that the academics of the school would overshadow the visual of the building, but unfortunately, that is not so.  

Hence, we started searching for a new home and one was found.  We have located a school building in a nearby city and we are in need of funds to assist with repairs, new furniture and more resources so that our scholars can experience not only a great academic opportunity, but also the excitement of being in a real high school!!  

Please support us in our plight to raise money for our dream building.