The building formerly known as West Park Elementary will open its doors once again to students for the 2026-27 school year, as Portage Leadership Academy, which held its grand opening last Saturday morning at 1071 Jones Avenue in Ravenna.
“It has been incredibly exciting,” Superintendent Darryl Lindsay told The Weekly Villager. “The first week we had the building I was out front trimming bushes and doing landscaping. I put up a banner and had 20 cars and neighbors stop by and ask what is happening. A lot of them are just excited to see the property and the building come back to life so it has been very exciting.”
Portage Leadership Academy, which will operate under the umbrella of Accel Schools, a tuition-free, public charter school, will officially open its doors for classes on Aug, 18.
As The Villager previously reported, the Ravenna School District closed West Park Elementary last year due to budget constraints and sold the building to Magnolia Realty Holdings LLC, a real estate brokerage company, for $775,000.
Less than a year after the longtime elementary school closed its doors, Accel Schools negotiated a leasing agreement with Magnolia Realty Holdings to re-open the school under a different academic model.
The Portage Leadership Academy is the latest in a long line of new charter schools opening in the state of Ohio. Accel Schools currently operates 77 charter schools and 15 online schools in the state.
Lindsay, who also serves as a Regional Vice President for Accel Schools, said that Portage Leadership Academy will open for students from kindergarten to the fifth grade and in each subsequent year, the school will add another grade until it can accommodate students from kindergarten to the eighth grade.
“Our team is looking for school buildings to bring opportunities to families and I jumped in when I saw this building,” Lindsay said. “My own kids, my nephews and a lot of friends and family will be enrolling here.”
Lindsay added Portage Leadership Academy has completed its staffing, recruiting teachers from across the Northeast Ohio area and teachers who previously taught in the Ravenna School District.
He noted that the Academy has already received over 100 student applications, which meets the number of students they hope to have enrolled by the time school starts.
According to Lindsay, a Streetsboro resident, Ravenna had a need for a different school like the Academy.
“Leadership skills have become a lost skill among kids, so we are reintroducing leadership skills to prepare kids for after school,” Lindsay noted. “A part of it is I am a community member and I understand the community and the needs here. There was some discussion on what the model would look like and why that is needed here. Ultimately, we agreed: let’s move forward.”
He added that in addition to instilling leadership skills in children at a younger age, the Portage Leadership Academy’s goal will be to not only prepare students for high school but life beyond graduation.
“We focus on growing sharp minds, building character and embedding leadership skills into our daily schedule,” Lindsay said. “Every morning starts off with an assembly; every single day we reinforce leadership skills and then we celebrate those throughout the week. They change weekly for our kids.
Lindsay had served as the principal of Canton College Preparatory, a charter school owned by Accel Schools. He said that the new Portage Leadership Academy in Ravenna will draw inspiration from the model used in the Stark County charter school.
“That experience was incredibly rewarding,” he said. “It really shaped who I have become as a leader.”
He acknowledged that there were not many schools like Portage Leadership Academy in Portage County, the Bio-Med Science Academy in Rootstown being the exception. Although the Academy is a different school than residents are accustomed to seeing, Lindsay said the fact that they have already received so much interest is promising sign of things to come.
“I wish that every student in the district and their families were satisfied that their kids’ needs were being met but the fact that our enrollment has taken off shows me that there really was a need and this will be an effective program,” he said.
