LAWRENCE — Eighth-grader Heilys Checo read her poem at the podium by a white I-beam that will crown the new Esperanza Academy when it opens in the fall of 2026.
Heilys’ poem was about place, finding her place with others at Esperanza, which, in Spanish, means hope.
Heilys, who will be moving on from the academy to a college-prep boarding school in the fall, read to the crowd gathered in late May for a ground blessing and beam-signing ceremony.
A four-story, 30,000-square-foot building will rise here on North Canal Street, near Pemberton Park and the Merrimack River.
It will be a historic accomplishment, the product of a dream that started 20 years ago, a tuition-free middle school for Lawrence girls from families with financial need and excitement for realizing their potential through learning and working together.
Esperanza opened in 2006 as a middle school and will expand in the coming years to a K-8 school.
Now, with $33 million raised for the new school, it is one of the largest private investments in Lawrence’s history.
The new academy is poised to become the first tuition-free K-8 independent school for girls in the United States, said Nina Bowman, president of Esperanza’s board of trustees.
The school will have expanded classrooms for STEM and the arts, a justice library, a community kitchen, a school bodega, ensuring access to essentials at no cost, and vibrant spaces for music, art, and drama, Bowman said.
The bodega will provide students essentials such as notebooks, pencils, markers. A bodega is also a strong symbol, a girder of neighborhood life where people greet each other, friendships start and grow, and where stories are told.
“It’s a bold investment in the brilliance, in the creativity and the limitlessness of girls from Lawrence, past, present and future,” Bowman said of the new school.
Viviana Cordero Garcia, the chief alumni success officer, acknowledged the ground the school will stand on is the ancestral land of the Penacook people, an Algonquin speaking nation whose relationship with this land was deep and sacred.
Padre Daniel Vélez-Rivera blessed Esperanza’s journey and recalled when the idea for an Episcopal school in Lawrence first arose, 20 years ago as a joint effort led by Grace Church in Lawrence and Christ Church in Andover.
“Holiness and hope have brought us here to this moment,” he said.
Principal Delia Durán-Clark pulled a rolling travel bag to the podium, a symbol for the school moving from its current home on Garden Street.
The bag carries “20 years of love, justice, wisdom, leadership, service,” she said.
These qualities, nurtured daily at the girls’ middle school, will carry forth to the new building.
“We will bring our stories, we will bring our mission, we will bring our values,” the principal said.
Head of school at Esperanza, Jadihel Taveras, said in an earlier interview, from more than a year ago, that support for Esperanza students continues after they graduate from the academy, extending through their high school and college years by offering academic, school search, application, career and other assistance.
He said 100% of its students graduate high school and 77% from college.
At the ceremony was Kyara Cruz, a rising senior at Proctor Academy in New Hampshire and a 2022 Esperanza graduate.
She was among the students and adults who wrote encouraging words and signed their name on the white-painted I-beam, continuing a long-held tradition for new major building construction projects.
Kyara plans to study forensics in college. She said the encouragement and positive energy she experienced at Esperanza made it possible for her to attend the college-prep school.
Her sister has been accepted at Esperanza and will start there in the fall and be among the students to attend the new school when she is in 6th grade.
Heilys said in an interview after she read her poem that Esperanza is a home for her where she has felt encouraged to try things that she might not otherwise try.
“A safe home that I can come to every day,” she said.
It is a place where she feels she is seen for who she is.
What is it that she wants people to see?
“I want someone to see this strong young lady who is trying to make a future for herself and who is working hard to make her family proud,” she said.
Hannah Eisner is in her sixth year teaching social studies at Esperanza.
Students and staff at Esperanza practice hope every day, Eisner said.
There is a continuum at the school and Heilys is part of it.
“She builds relationships with younger students and passes on the knowledge she got from older students and continues that,” the teacher said.
The next generation of students will do the same, only in a new school and place.