Although classes started roughly a month ago, Chatt Academy Community School held their official grand opening ceremony Sept. 19.
As the students and staff cut the ribbon the community was introduced to the first immersive bi-lingual, public, tuition free, school in east Tennessee.
“The lessons our Chatt Academy students will learn in the coming years will prepare them to impact their communities and the larger world around them in numerous, meaningful and significant ways,” board member Dr. Nikolasa Tejero said. “As an immigrant I feel a particular sense of pride and gratification to be a part of this celebration.”
Born in Mexico Dr. Tejero said her family moved to Chattanooga when she was 10-years old.
“I am able to recall the challenges that I faced as a non-English speaker in a public school in a small southern U.S. town,” she said. “Today Chattanooga has experienced a transformation boasting a multiculturalism that was not evident when I first arrived here. We are gathered here today because we recognized the opportunities and challenges this transformation presented and Chatt Academy has answered that call.”
The school will take students, 6th-12th graders through a dual immersion model where native Spanish speakers will learn along with native English speakers. Dr. Tejero said by the time these students graduate, “All Chatt Academy students will have acquired bi-lingual skills including reading, writing and speaking in both English and Spanish. This is a monumental feat.”
Currently the school has 94 students. The school’s capacity is 100.
Chatt Academy Lead Founder & Executive Director, Nolan McDaniel, addressed students and families, founding members and the board, thanking them for their support.
“The toll of opening a school from the ground up takes on a person is not light,” he said as he thanked his family. “They have held me up throughout the last three years.”
McDaniel said the vision for Chatt Academy started years ago due to his mother’s personal experience. A young foster child growing up in Louisville Kentucky, McDaniel said it was teachers, coaches and educators that paved the way for his mother. She ended up receiving a full scholarship to the University of Kentucky.
“And maybe because those teachers stepped in for her, she became an educator too,” he said.
McDaniel went to law school and said he often volunteered at the middle school where his mother taught.
“During that time, I met two young men…who changed the entire course of my life,” he said. “Through a series of unpredictable and unplanned events these two boys became my family. They opened my world to a version of love, fun, challenge, and empathy I didn’t know existed.”
That experience changed his life.
McDaniel left his law career, becoming an educator. He spent five years leading and teaching schools in Harlem. But Chattanooga kept tugging at his heart.
“I knew that to be fulfilled in my work, I had to come back home,” he said. “I had an overwhelming tug to design a school that would be different.”
McDaniel said he listened to more than 400 stakeholders gathering their thoughts of what Chatt Academy should be.
“And out of these conversations came the idea of a fully bi-lingual school to support second language acquisition,” he said. “Chatt Academy is a school designed by our community.”
When the school’s concept was approved in April of 2022, McDaniel said the real work began. The team spent 18 months searching for a facility. They had to secure start up funding, hire their educators and go door-to-door to recruit and enroll the students.
McDaniel said it was worth all the effort because, “Schools change lives, and those lives change lives.”
For more information on Chatt Academy visit: https://www.chattacademy.org/