Angela Paige Cook (center left) speaks to the crowd at Paige Academy’s New Year’s Eve Kwanza celebration, Dec. 31. The event also celebrated the renovation of one of the school’s three campus buildings.

Paige Academy newly renovated kitchen.

Angela Paige, Sister Rose and Dee E. Daile take part in their candlelight Kwanza celebration.

Paige Academy main building after major upgrades and renovations.

Sister Angela and Brother Joe share a tender musical moment during their anniversary celebration.

When the Paige Academy community gathered at the campus’s three buildings on Dec. 31 to ring in the new year, Angela Paige Cook, one of the school’s founders, used the opportunity to share her thoughts on the values of Kwanzaa, which ended New Year’s Day.

The seven principles — unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith — were at the heart of Cook’s message, who in 1975 opened the school alongside husband Joe Cook and six others, as well as the school’s educational philosophy in general.

Kwanzaa is “not just something that happens from the 26th to the first of January, but a lifestyle that is followed all year-round, where people are thinking about, “How can I be more united with my community?’” she said in an interview.

“‘How can I use self-determination to get me through the hard times and make sure that I know what I need to do and why I need to do it?”’

The New Year’s celebration of Kwanzaa — or “Kwanza” — as the Cooks and Paige Academy as an organization opt for the less common spelling of the holiday with just one “a” at the end — and its values also came as the Roxbury private school prepares to reopen one of its three buildings this spring.

Renovations at 40 Highland Ave. have been underway since 2020 and include an ADA compliant ramp and bathrooms, as well as efforts to address deferred maintenance of the roof and other parts of the building, which was built in the 1800s. The process also included safety measures, like installing an updated fire alarm system.

Sophia Boyler, a Paige Academy parent and a member of the school’s board of directors, called the renovations a “beautiful mix of the old and the new.”

“The devil’s in the details and it’s the details that [they] have put into this particular building,” Boyer said.

Throughout the renovations, the team had a focus on “surgically” updating the space while keeping the historic aspects of the building — the property falls within the Highland Park Architectural Conservation District — said Mark Williams, owner and general contractor at Andaz Construction Corporation, which did the renovations.

“The fact that it’s a school, and it teaches all the little kids, from young children, probably up to a certain grade, it was very important for us to be involved in this project,” Williams said. “They have a great legacy of which to service the community.”

The updated space is also a step that will allow for growth, making it possible to take additional students and hire nine more teachers.

The school has previously been licensed by the state to serve 115 students from six weeks old through sixth grade. Joe Cook said the school is anticipating being able to serve an additional 50 students, but the exact count will be determined after the school receives a new license from the state when the renovated building is completed and reopened.

“We can be a point of stability for families to live in Boston — particularly families of color, whose children need education — and teachers who need good jobs with good paying salaries to work here [in a role] that’s culturally resonant in the community,” he said.

The renovations were done through a series of grants from organizations including the Community Economic Development Assistance Corporation’s Children’s Investment Fund, the Franklin Square House Foundation and the Liberty Mutual Foundation.

Williams said that with its mix of funding sources, and the many parties involved in getting the work completed, the renovations took “a lot of good team players.”

The school is also marking its reaccreditation through the National Association for the Education of Young Children, which it received in December.

Angela Cook said she was proud of the achievement — the school has held some level of accreditation with NAEYC for 30 years, but the “Accreditation+” designation, the highest NAEYC offers, is new — which came out of a process of having to balance the school’s African educational values with the more Eurocentric ones NAEYC uses.

“We have to really be able to incorporate all of the values that they have as well as the values that we have and make it so that we can pass what they think is important, and that we can also keep what we think is important,” Angela Cook said.

The school had to strike a similar balance, she said, in setting up a partnership with Boston Public Schools seven years ago to join their universal pre-K program, which was renamed “Boston Pre-K” in 2024.

Angela Cook said Paige Academy staff were reluctant at first to join in with the Boston Public Schools Pre-K program, but a balance between the two educational philosophies was struck.

“At first, there was some pushback, but then they listened to our explanation of why we wanted to do what we did, and they accepted us,” she said.

The school is also focused on preserving its legacy as it considers a change in leadership. In 2023, Angela and Joe Cook announced their intention to retire from leading the school.

To keep the school going, even after their departure, the school launched a year-and-a-half-long capital campaign in the summer of 2025, called “Paige in Perpetuity,” to set the school up to continue operations.

“We don’t talk about people leaving, people passing on. It’s just, the institution needs to continue,” Boyer said.

That campaign is intended to bring in the funds for continued maintenance of the buildings as well as for staffing at the school.

“We’re being preemptive and ensuring that we have the finances for sustainability, long-term sustainability,” Boyer said.