John Alvendia, founder and CEO of NOLA Education, has taken a major step in expanding his fast-growing national educational program with the recent purchase of nearly an entire row of historic buildings along the 600 block of Julia Street in the Warehouse District.
The new space, which stretches from St. Charles Avenue to Church Street, will serve as NOLA Education’s National Training Center, allowing the company to bring teachers from across the country to New Orleans for intensive, hands-on training in its Star Academy program.
“We just kind of focus on doing what we do, and because the program works where other programs don’t work, we’re able to keep expanding,” he said.
Alvendia said NOLA Education has been training hundreds of teachers at dozens of locations around the country and having a New Orleans center makes sense. “Having it be like a destination location for their training I thought would be really cool,” he said.
Alvendia paid $2 million for the 8,000-square-food building, according to records filed with the Orleans Parish Clerk of Court. Its ground floor space at the corner of St. Charles and Julia, for years, was a FedEx location.
NOLA Education has bought another building on Julia Street, expanding its Warehouse District presence as its Star Academy teaching program expands nationally.
Alvendia’s NOLA Education already owns two historic townhouses across Julia Street from the new property, the so-called Thirteen Sisters Federal and Greek Revival-style houses built there in the 1830s. That has been the company’s base as it has grown fivefold in the last seven years, where about 80 program developers, trainers, sales and other staff work daily.
Back in school
Alvendia’s path to building NOLA Education began in a far simpler way. While earning his degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of New Orleans, he tutored high school students part-time—a modest start that planted the seeds for his life’s work.
After graduation, he worked as a project engineer at a chemical plant and later co-founded JRL Enterprises, Inc., where he designed and coded “I CAN Learn,” an algebra software program that grew into a $35 million educational technology company serving K-12 classrooms, adult learners, and correctional programs.
In 2018, Alvendia acquired Star Academy from Kansas-based Pitsco Education, a program he had been representing and marketing across the country since around 2008. “I liked the program and saw more potential in it than they did,” Alvendia said. “I saw that we could do it better, and ended up acquiring Star Academy from that company and starting NOLA Education.”
John Alvendia, right, founder and CEO of NOLA Education has expanded the company’s Star Academy teaching program fivefold nationally since he brought it to New Orleans in 2018.
Star Academy is designed to reach middle school students who are academically behind or disengaged from school, helping them catch up and stay on track toward graduation. The program uses project-based learning, emphasizing hands-on engagement rather than passive instruction.
NOLA Education has bought another building on Julia Street, expanding its Warehouse District presence as its Star Academy teaching program expands nationally.
The training effort at the new center will aim to bring about 80 teachers at a time to learn the new system.
The Star Academy program relies on a combination of proprietary software and teacher support. NOLA Education staff develop programs that guide teachers in running project-based classrooms. These programs provide the structure needed for students to engage with hands-on projects while ensuring the instruction aligns with academic standards. Teachers receive training not only on the content but on managing classrooms where students may be working on different projects simultaneously.
Alvendia emphasizes that the program’s impact is maximized by being physically present in schools. “We believe in full engagement of the students,” he said. “If the kids are working with their hands-on projects, then they fully engage and see the reason why they’re doing it and what kind of careers it can lead to.”
Hands-on approach
Each Star Academy site typically serves about 80 students at a time—though in classes about a quarter that size—allowing for intensive, personalized instruction for those who have struggled in traditional classrooms.
Funding for NOLA Education comes from a mix of federal and state sources, grants, and contributions from the schools adopting the program.
Alvendia said he’s confident that the program’s effectiveness will continue to drive its growth despite educational cutbacks.
“The bottom line is our program is just so impactful that regardless of whether the money’s coming from the feds or from the states…we just kind of focus on doing what we do, and because the program works where other programs don’t work, we’re able to keep expanding,” he said.
Since acquiring Star Academy, Alvendia has grown NOLA Education fivefold, despite challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, which temporarily disrupted in-person instruction. Today, tens of thousands of students have passed through Star Academy programs across the country.
At the Julia Street location, NOLA Education will be able to centralize training operations. The first floor will be divided into multiple classrooms that simulate the Star Academy experience students encounter nationwide, while the upper floors will house research and development. The facility will accommodate roughly 80 teachers at a time for training sessions and provide additional space for staff supporting operations and curriculum development.
At the heart of things
Alvendia appreciates the Warehouse District as a location for the training center. Its proximity to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center makes it convenient for educators visiting New Orleans, and the historic character of the buildings provides a destination-like atmosphere for the training programs. While some of the upper-floor residential units remain leased to tenants, the majority of the space is devoted to business operations and training.
At the heart of NOLA Education’s philosophy is a focus on service as much as product, which makes it different from the software-only direction of much of the offerings in education, Alvendia said.
Every teacher in the Star Academy program receives monthly, in-person support to ensure they can effectively implement the curriculum. “We literally visit every teacher that’s in our program,” Alvendia said. “That is to support those teachers, be out there with them, understand the challenges they have, so we can continue to improve our product and our service.”
NOLA Education’s new block on the corner of St. Charles Avenue and Julia Street, runs up to Church’s Street, and will be the national training center for the company’s Star Academy teaching program.
Despite the company’s national footprint, Alvendia prefers to keep a low profile personally. “It’s a distraction,” he said. The company highlights student success stories and the work of teachers who implement the program, reinforcing its mission to re-engage at-risk students with hands-on learning experiences.
The Julia Street purchase represents a milestone in NOLA Education’s growth, offering a permanent, state-of-the-art space to train educators, develop new software and curriculum, and refine the Star Academy experience.