The Leona Group, LLC is a Lansing, Michigan-based operator of charter schools in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, and Ohio. It started in Michigan in the early 1990s as a think tank called MPNE (Michigan Partnership for New Education), headed by founder Bill Coates and businessman Alfred Taubman, among others. It was part of the partnership that opened Detroit's Cesar Chavez Academy in 1995; not long after, it changed to its present name in honor of Leona Coates, Bill's mother.