Volunteers, friends, and teachers at the soon-to-open Leadership Prep Charter School, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, didn't let the Hot-Time-Summer-In-The-City heat keep them down Saturday. Instead, the dedicated crew painted, cleaned, adjusted the height of student desks, installed signage and coat hooks, moved computers, and did other work to get ready for the start of classes in another month. (They even let The Chalkboard operate a drill gun, something charter school laws in six states specifically frown upon.)

The school partnered with a program called Education Pioneers, which links charter schools with top grad students (in business, education, law, policy, and other disciplines) for summer fellowships at school sites. It was Matt Donahue, for example, a fellow from the Yale School of Management, who gave me my marching orders on Saturday. It all seemed to work rather well, and the teachers seemed particularly pleased to have help getting their classrooms ready for their students.

Max Koltuv, the school's founder, said he got hooked up with the Education Pioneers through the NYC Center for Charter School Excellence.

Leadership Prep, located on the third floor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle Deliverance Church on Lafayette St. will open in September for 112 students in Kindergarten and first grade.