The Academy for Learning and Leadership has become one of Milwaukee's newest charter school projects. A ground-breaking ceremony was conducted this week for phase I of the project, a 21,000-sq. ft. extension of the LaVarnway Boys and Girls Club facility located at Center and North 15th Streets.

The expansion will house 10 classrooms, an early childhood center, a family services center and administrative offices. The initial phase is expected to be complete by September 2003 and can support an enrollment level of 210 of children ages birth through eighth grade.

Plans for phase II and III, to be completed by 2007, include three small elementary schools on a campus on the Boys and Girls Club site. When finished the schools will allow for 180 children ages birth to five years and 450 children in first through eighth grades. The latter phases also include plans for a children's health center, family services center, gymnasium and library.

"The dream is to have a child-focused family center right in the heart of the city," says Sherry Street, marketing consultant for the charter school. Street also says that while the new charter school is not directly affiliated with the Boys and Girls Club, it will allow for the community center to get a much-needed face-lift in the process.

M.Camille Mortimore, Ph.D. is founder of the Academy, and has taken a philosophical approach of building leadership in not only the students but also the staff at the school. "Everyone involved in the school is a learner," says Street. Even Mortimore carries the title, Head Learner, of the Academy.

Street says the hope is that a good portion of the enrollment will come from residents of the surrounding North Side community as well as from members of the Boys and Girls club. She also says that the schools financial partnership with Legacy Bank has served as a catalyst for talk of further development projects in the area, including acquirement of city-owned lots for housing developments.

"It is the dedicated and focused purpose of the Academy of Learning and Leadership to impact this devastating waste of human potential -- child by child -- starting right here in the LaVarnway community," says Mortimore.