Canterbury Brook Academy of the Arts [CBA] has arrived in the City of Newburgh and has moved into its new facility at 267 Van Ness Street. A Community Open House will be held on Sunday July 21 from 12 to 2 p.m. and 3 to 5 p.m. for community members and families to learn more about the school and programs, meet the staff and to welcome CBA to the community.

CBA, a fully incorporated arts and academic institution, is under the direction of founder Kelly Trotta. The school provides students a full academic course load right alongside a full arts curriculum every day. The school has students enrolled as young as kindergarten and are accepting up to the 10th grade.

The program focuses on individualized instruction with a 10 to 1 student to teacher ratio. Trotta also announced six new staff members will be joining the CBA community going into the new school year.
The new facility for CBA came about when the school was renting the second floor to hold their spring musical Peter Pan and were utilizing the theater and a classroom for additional storage. The facility is under the ownership of Grace United Methodist Church, led by Pastor Carlos R. Figueroa Colombani.

CBA previously operated out of 103 Executive Drive in the Town of New Windsor and before that, the New York Military Academy Campus in the Village of Cornwall-on-Hudson. The goal was to stay in New Windsor but the requests of parents for elements that were typically found in a standard school building could not be met with the New Windsor building. The request to be the only tenant in the building could not also be met.

“Right at the beginning of the month of June, we really started shopping this concept of what else could we do if we can’t make it work here, we’re going to have to make it work somewhere,” said Trotta, “We came across this building here on Van Ness and it checks every single box of everything that everybody has been asking us for, and then some.”

After concluding the production of Peter Pan and going back to New Windsor, Trotta came to learn that the entire facility was available for them. The building is a three story school building that includes a gym and stage, classrooms and other amenities that would satisfy the parents requests. Most of the updates as Trotta explained were mainly cosmetic and the faculty and staff are working to get classrooms ready for students and spaces converted into studios for art and music. CBA now rents the school for its program.

“I would say that we’ve reached our true vision of the school at this point in our growth, which has been very rapid, we were ready to take on, or needed to take on, much more of a facility than we’ve had in the past,” said Trotta. “We [CBA faculty and staff] can feel that we are finally where we want to be.”

With the new move, the reaction of the school community has been mixed, said Trotta. While some families were excited about the move and looking forward to their children having more available opportunities and amenities, there has been negative feedback from incoming families.

The negative feedback as Trotta explained has mainly come from the location of the school in the city, not the program itself. Addressing those concerns, the tuition for those incoming families have been completely refunded. Trotta recognizes there is a stigma of the city which has posed as a challenge but since being on Van Ness Street, it has been a positive experience for the school community and CBA is looking to support the community however possible.

“I think CBA fits perfectly here in Newburgh with what’s happening and with the focus on the arts and the creative energy that exists in the city, so it makes perfect sense to be here,” said CBA Board President Thomas Dodd. “Newburgh is a very special place, and we just need to make sure that people understand it, because there’s a lot of misunderstanding. I think that we need more people to get involved, to protect this kind of opportunity.”