For the past 30-plus years, Jalen Rose has been making moves – on and off the basketball court – that has helped change lives. On May 19, 2025, he made another move that promises to reshape the educational landscape for Black youth in Southeastern Michigan.
The Jalen Rose Leadership Academy (JRLA) has announced a transformative expansion thanks to a major donation from Henry Ford Health, declaring that the academy will soon relocate its high school operations to the former Kingswood Hospital facility in Royal Oak Township. The announcement was made during the 15th Annual JRLA Celebrity Golf Classic, a cornerstone fundraising event that draws attention to the academy’s mission and achievements.
This isn’t just a change of address for JRLA. It represents the next era of growth for one of the city’s most innovative and impactful educational institutions. Since its founding in 2011 by Rose, a Detroit native and retired NBA star, JRLA has become a beacon for academic achievement, particularly among Black students. Operating as an open-enrollment, tuition-free public charter high school, JRLA has consistently defied expectations, boasting a graduation rate that far exceeds city averages and a strong record of placing its scholars in colleges and universities across the country.
With more than 400 students currently enrolled in grades 9 through 12, JRLA has outgrown its current location near 8 Mile and Greenfield. The new campus, a 70,000-square-foot facility once used to provide inpatient behavioral health care, is just two miles away and offers five levels of space that will be renovated to accommodate high school classrooms, labs, and learning spaces designed for 21st-century education. The move is expected to take place in 2027, with construction and retrofitting slated to begin later this year.
For Rose, the move is deeply personal and symbolic of what’s possible when community vision is matched with institutional support.
“Since I founded the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy in 2011, my singular focus has been to prepare our community’s young people to become leaders in whatever their future holds,” Rose said. “As our vision and goals expand, so too does the space we need. We are so very grateful to our friends at Henry Ford Health for giving us the perfect place to grow our family and impact. The sky’s the limit for our scholars, who will have the space to learn what they need in high school to succeed in college and careers.”
The Kingswood facility, built in 1966 and acquired by Henry Ford Health two decades later, ceased operations earlier this year in January when a new behavioral health hospital opened in West Bloomfield Township. The healthcare provider had been actively seeking a meaningful and community-centered reuse for the property, and the partnership with JRLA emerged as a natural fit. The health system then had to decide what to do with the empty 100-bed hospital building, which Henry Ford Health no longer needed because of the opening of its new and bigger 192-bed behavioral health hospital.
“We’ve long said that it was crucial to us to find a use for the former Kingswood Hospital that contributed to the betterment of our community, and we couldn’t have found a better partner to make those goals a reality than the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy,” said Bob Riney, President and CEO of Henry Ford Health. “It’s a wonderful feeling knowing that generations of future leaders—even future Henry Ford Health nurses or physicians—will walk those halls.”
The impact of this partnership extends beyond the gift of real estate. It reflects a broader, long-term collaboration aimed at supporting the health and wellness of JRLA students in a holistic way. Riney emphasized that this is just the beginning, pointing to future opportunities for mentorship, career development, and integrated health services.
“To us, this is so much more than the donation of a building—this is the start of a meaningful partnership,” Riney said. “We are excited to look for additional ways we can work with Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, from mentorship programs to healthcare. We recognize a person’s wellbeing doesn’t just mean their health—and we aim to support JRLA students as holistically as possible.”
Once high school operations move to the new site at 10300 West Eight Mile Road, the current JRLA facility will be converted into a middle school, serving students in grades 6 through 8 for the first time in the school’s history. This expansion will allow JRLA to build a stronger academic pipeline, beginning earlier in students’ lives and reinforcing the leadership values that are the foundation of the school’s approach.
With a proven model of success, JRLA’s next chapter will be supported by a $20 million capital campaign to fund renovations at the Kingswood site. Although specific design plans have yet to be released, school leaders have indicated that the updated facility will reflect JRLA’s commitment to academic rigor, mentorship, and community engagement.
What distinguishes JRLA from other schools is not just its founder’s high profile, but its results. The academy consistently produces graduates who are prepared for college and career, many of whom are the first in their families to pursue higher education. The school offers wraparound support, emphasizing leadership development, character building, and accountability—key pillars in its mission to empower students not just academically, but socially and emotionally.
As Detroit continues to grapple with disparities in education, JRLA stands as a model for what’s possible when vision, commitment, and investment intersect. In a city where access to quality education has long been uneven, particularly in predominantly Black neighborhoods, JRLA is showing what it looks like to break that cycle—not by outsourcing solutions, but by building them from within the community.
The upcoming expansion represents more than a new building—it’s a statement of belief in the power of Detroit’s youth. And with the support of partners like Henry Ford Health, JRLA is positioned to continue changing lives, one scholar at a time.
As Jalen Rose puts it, “We’ve got the blueprint, we’ve got the passion, and now we’ve got the space. Let’s go.”
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