Kids get head start at new Leaguers facility in Newark

The name plates were not even on the doors yet. Half the classrooms were still empty shells.

The staffers, standing a few rows deep in a nearly empty blue-carpeted room, held hands. Many prayerfully closed their eyes. The Rev. Christopher James spoke.

"Surround this building with your angels," he said in a string of prayers greeted with more than a few "Amens" as the Leaguers, one of Newark's largest nonprofit organizations, opened its new $23.5 million headquarters.

"It's another recovery for the city of Newark, and it shows Newark is still on the move," said Veronica Ray, the executive director and the building project's often-described-as visionary.

It'll also shift many of the preschoolers in its Head Start programs out of church basements and into state-of-the-art classroom space.

"Such a difference," said teacher Jean Gerosolina as she engaged preschoolers in a bright classroom with an interactive "smart board" and the kind of parental involvement the nonprofit agency so highly prizes.

"It's nice. I like it," said 4-year-old Saivion, whose father, Brian Wilson, was by his side.

The new 48,000-square-foot building on University Avenue has underground parking for 75 cars and 22,000 square feet of Head Start and community space. But on opening day Friday, seven of the 14 classrooms were empty and unfinished.

"As soon as we find the right foundation. That's my job," Walter Frye, the number-crunching chief financial officer, said of the $250,000 or so needed to complete the space. "Naming rights?" said the man who got his MBA at Wharton and once played basketball at Morgan State in Baltimore. "I'm a sports guy."

As CFO, Frye has been on an acquisition tear. But, in this case, it's not corporate entities but Head Starts that have lost their funding amid tighter federal monitoring, he said.

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