Ednovate, Inc. is a Charter Management Organization designed and developed by the USC Rossier School of Education in 2012 to close the graduation gap for high-need students in Los Angeles. Ednovate operates 5 charter high schools and East College Prep (‘EC’) was the second to move into a permanent facility. In the 2017-2018 school year, ECP had 282 students enrolled in grades 9-11, but the school was split between two sites.

NMTC financing helped Ednovate acquire an existing 11,085 sq. ft. building that ECP was leasing from a private landlord and construct a new 20,000 sq. ft. education building addition. In total, ECP now has 31,085 sq. ft., allowing the school to scale to 460 high school students. In addition to 20 classrooms, the educational building also includes a multi-purpose/lunch room, teacher’s lounge, teacher workspaces, an outdoor sport court and administrative space.

Civic Builders provided $8.0M of New Markets Tax Credit Allocation to the project to fill a funding gap because of Ednovate, Inc.’s lack of accumulated surpluses to contribute to the project. The buildings opened during the 2019-2020 school year.