Students, school officials break ground on new classrooms

Greater Brunswick Charter School to mark beginning of project in Jan. 28 ceremony

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NEW BRUNSWICK (Jan. 25, 2010) – Students and their teachers will formally break ground later this week on a project to add more than a dozen classrooms to Greater Brunswick Charter School.

The project, which school administrators expect will be completed in time for the new school year in September, will outfit the charter school with a working science lab, an art room with a kiln and a gymnasium with a regulation-size basketball court. Work, which also will give the school a new roof, is budgeted to cost $3.7 million. Financing for the project was arranged by Real Estate Advisory and Development Services Inc., a nonprofit firm based in Metuchen.

“This is something we never could have done without READS,” said Jessica Tomkins, who as a longtime trustee of the school has been heavily involved in the school's expansion project. “From the financing to the architectural designs, READS has been one of our greatest resources.”

The groundbreaking, which will begin at 1:30 p.m., will include a musical performance by elementary students at the school, and will feature remarks from founding members of the school's board of trustees, and others.

It's been a long journey to this point. The charter school had its beginning in 1998, as one of the first charter schools crated under the aegis of the New Jersey Charter School Act. Charter schools are public schools run under a special charter with the state Department of Education rather than under the local board of education.

For the first six years, the charter school rented facility space from a steady succession of landlords. At one point, the school had to rent two separate spaces, one for its middle-schoolers and one for its elementary students.

“That was the year we realized we couldn't go on like that any longer,” said Tomkins, whose children both have attended the school. “We realized that we needed the security of owning our own building, and that we needed space where we could grow to a sustainable size.”

Working with READS, the school found a former bowling alley at 429 Joyce Kilmer Ave. that could be redeveloped as a school facility, and marked out a course for the school's growth. The school's trustees ultimately approved a plan that would involve increasing the enrollment to a total 360 students in order to find the economies of scale that would provide the school with the revenue it would need to support the staffing and program that the school's founders had envisioned.

The school moved into the rear half of the building six years ago, and rented the front half of the building to a pair of tenants who have since moved out. That space for the past year has been empty offices and a vacant warehouse.

To finance the expansion, Greater Brunswick Charter School took out a $6.55 million loan from Sun National Bank. The New Jersey Economic Development Authority, which sold Sun Bank the tax-exempt construction bonds for the project, also has lent the school an additional $1 million.

The remaining portion of the money not tied into the construction project represents the remaining principal on the school's initial mortgage. READS helped the school procure that loan as well, six years ago, from New Jersey Community Capital and The Reinvestment Fund of Minnesota.

Greater Brunswick Charter School is a free, independent public school developed by area parents and educators in 1998, with 293 students this year in kindergarten through eighth grade. Students come from New Brunswick, Highland Park, Edison, and other outlying districts in Middlesex, Somerset and Union counties.

For more information, call Mike DeBlasio, director of operations at Greater Brunswick Charter School, at (732) 448-1052.

On the web:
www.greaterbrunswick.org