Taíno CoLAB
Charter High Schools
Design-forward, community-centered charter high schools built on the 4D Quantum Learning Matrix. Opening in New Haven and Waterbury, Connecticut in 2027.
Part of a
Growing Movement
Taíno CoLAB Charter High Schools are designed from the ground up as living laboratories for next-ready learning. Named in honor of the Taíno people — the Indigenous communities of the Caribbean and parts of the Americas — these schools carry a deep commitment to cultural pride, community, and the limitless potential of every young person.
Each school is a node in a growing network — connected by a shared framework, a shared mission, and a shared belief that education must evolve to meet the world students are inheriting.
Year 1 enrollment: 120 students. Grades 9–12 over four years of growth.
Taíno CoLAB Schools
A New Model for a New Era
“Most schools serve their communities. Taíno CoLAB is built with its community — and it sends students back out into it.”
For decades, the community school movement has brought vital services into schools — health care, mental health support, family engagement, wraparound programs. That work matters. But at Taíno CoLAB, we believe it is only the beginning.
We call our approach Community School Model 2.0 — a generative, bidirectional ecosystem where the school and community are in constant relationship. Not a hub that receives. A living system that gives and grows.
Community School Model 2.0Here's what that looks like in practice
Generative Relationships
Our partnerships are not transactional. Organizations don't just come to us to deliver services. Our students go to them — to learn, to contribute, to solve real problems. Every community partner is a co-educator. Every neighborhood asset is a classroom.
Community as Curriculum
The history, challenges, and genius of New Haven's Fair Haven community are not background. They are the content. Students study what matters here. They design solutions for what's broken here. They celebrate what's alive here.
Students as Contributors
We don't prepare students to eventually give back someday. We develop them as active contributors now — to their school, their neighborhood, and the broader ecosystem of change. Service learning is not an add-on. It is a core dimension of how we learn.
Educators as Community Members
Our teachers and staff are not visitors. They are neighbors, advocates, and connectors — embedded in the community's life, not just the school's schedule.
Families as Co-Architects
Families don't receive information from us. They help design what we build. Their wisdom, their lived experience, and their vision for their children shape the school from the inside out.
This is how the Taíno lived — not in isolation, but in yucayeques: villages where each person's well-being was bound to the whole. That is the spirit we are reviving.
The result is not just a better school. It is a generative community institution — one that strengthens the neighborhood it lives in, produces graduates who lead it, and builds the kind of future that families here have always deserved.
At Taíno CoLAB, the community doesn't support the school. The school and community build each other.
Two Schools.
One Vision.
Taíno CoLAB Charter High Schools
Taíno CoLAB Charter High Schools New Haven will serve 120 students in grades 9–12, rooted in the cultural heritage of New Haven's Latinx and BIPOC communities, with the 4D Quantum Learning Matrix at the core of every learning experience.
Taíno CoLAB Charter High Schools
Taíno CoLAB Charter High Schools Waterbury extends the CoLAB network into one of Connecticut's most resilient communities — bringing innovative, future-ready education to students and families who deserve extraordinary schools. The Waterbury campus will be designed in deep partnership with local community organizations and leaders.
How We Design
CoLAB Schools
Framework-First
Every design decision — from schedule to space to curriculum — flows from the 4D Quantum Learning Matrix.
Community Co-Design
Schools are designed in partnership with families, community organizations, and local leaders from day one.
Inquiry-Based Culture
From the first day of school, students are treated as thinkers, makers, and contributors — not passive recipients.
Whole-Human Focus
Academic achievement, social-emotional development, and civic identity are developed together, not separately.
Why Taíno?
The name we chose is not decoration. It is a declaration.
The Taíno people were the original inhabitants of the Caribbean — a civilization rooted in community, harmony with the natural world, and a deep sense of shared responsibility. They built sophisticated societies across what are now Puerto Rico (which they called Borikén), Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and the Bahamas. They were farmers, artists, healers, and storytellers. They developed sustainable agriculture centuries before European science caught up. They built lives of meaning, ceremony, and connection.
When we named this school, we were not reaching back into history for nostalgia. We were reaching back for wisdom.
Community
The belief that no one thrives alone. Learning happens in relationship. We build school as a place where students, families, and neighbors are not served by the school — but are the school.
Environmental Stewardship
Named for the Taíno earth mother goddess — the sacred source of all life, fresh water, and the living natural world. The Taíno were ecological stewards centuries before that word existed. Our students inherit that responsibility.
Health & Well-Being
The recognition that a child who is not whole cannot learn. We design for the full human being — emotional, physical, social, and spiritual.
These values are not ancient history. They are alive in New Haven today — in Fair Haven's Puerto Rican and Dominican families, in the languages spoken on Grand Avenue, in the music, food, and ancestral memory carried across generations through migration. The Taíno were never extinct. Their descendants are our families, our students, our community.
This is what education philosopher Paulo Freire called liberatory learning — education that does not simply prepare young people to fit into the world as it is, but develops in them the consciousness, the creativity, and the courage to help build the world as it should be. At Taíno CoLAB, we are not just teaching skills. We are cultivating the whole human being.
We believe in the continuity of past, present, and future. The Taíno understood time not as a straight line, but as a living cycle — ancestors, the living, and those yet to come, all in relationship. That is how we design learning. We meet our students fully in who they are today. And we prepare them to lead in a world that doesn't yet exist.
We honor where our students come from. Whether a student's roots are in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, West Africa, Central America, or anywhere else in the world — every heritage carries wisdom worth knowing. At Taíno CoLAB, we invite every student to explore their own cultural identity and to learn alongside the Taíno values that ground this school: community, care for the earth, and the belief that we are all connected.
Where you come from is not a limitation. It is a source of power.
Taíno CoLAB. Rooted in the past. Alive in the present. Building the future.
Join Our Community
Taíno CoLAB opens Fall 2027. Whether you’re a family, a community partner, or an educator — there’s a place for you here. Let us know who you are.
Taíno CoLAB abre en otoño de 2027. Ya seas una familia, un socio comunitario o un educador, hay un lugar para ti aquí.
Families
Familias
Are you a family interested in Taíno CoLAB? Add your name to our list and we will notify you when the lottery opens in Spring 2027.
¿Eres una familia interesada en Taíno CoLAB? Añade tu nombre a nuestra lista y te notificaremos cuando abra la lotería en la primavera de 2027.
Register Family Interest
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Community Partners
Socios Comunitarios
Is your organization interested in partnering with Taíno CoLAB? We are building a generative community ecosystem and we would love to connect.
¿Tu organización está interesada en asociarse con Taíno CoLAB? Estamos construyendo un ecosistema comunitario generativo y nos encantaría conectarnos.
Explore a Partnership
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Educators & Staff
Educadores y Personal
Are you an educator passionate about community-centered education? Join our founding team interest list and we will notify you as positions open.
¿Eres un educador apasionado por la educación centrada en la comunidad? Únete a nuestra lista de interés del equipo fundador.
Join the Founding Team
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