Flint, Michigan—Construction is officially underway on the Flint Cultural Center Academy, a charter school being constructed in downtown Flint. Here’s a breakdown of what the plans are for the school. Additional images including a campus site plan, floor plans, and more interior and exterior artist renderings.
• Set to open in fall 2019 for about 300 students in kindergarten through fifth grades. Enrollment will expand annually through 2022 when the K-8 school will serve up to 650 students.
• A free, public school. There is no tuition to attend.
• A 78,000-square-foot, two story school featuring 37 classrooms, a gymnasium, cafeteria, and kitchen as well as multipurpose classrooms. Four special education classrooms are included in the building designs.
• Students will spend at least 90 minutes a day studying at one of the Flint Cultural Center campus cornerstone institutions: Flint Public Library, Flint Institute of Arts, Longway Planetarium, The Whiting, Sloan Museum, and Flint Institute of Music.
• EL Education, a national nonprofit organization specializing in K-12 education, will help the school build its curriculum.
• Enrollment is open to students who live in Flint, Genesee County, and throughout the rest of the state (as required by Michigan law governing charter schools).
• If the school receives more applications than it can enroll, students will be selected using a lottery system. Additional enrollment information will be available in early 2019
• The lead design and construction partners are Flint-based companies THA Architects Engineers and E&L Construction Group.
• The charter was authorized through Grand Valley State University, the leading charter authorizer in Michigan.
Marjory Raymer served as the founding publisher and managing editor of Flintside. She launched Flintside in March 2017 with a coalition of support from Flint's leading advocates and helped it grow into the Flint area's largest nontraditional news outlet with an online readership of more than 180,000 users.
An award winning journalist with more more than 20 years experience, she started her career as a political reporter with short stints at the Ionia Sentinel Standard and Traverse City Record Eagle, before coming to Flint in 2000. She climbed through the ranks and became the first woman to serve as editor of The Flint Journal. She went on to serve as news director for MLive and all 10 of its newsrooms statewide. Prior to launching Flintside, Raymer served as head of marketing and media relations at the University of Michigan-Flint. She left Flintside in November 2019 to serve as director of communications for the City of Flint.
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