Ground broken for $2 million Lower School building.
By: Gwen Runkle
Construction has begun on the Princeton Charter School’s new kindergarten-through-fourth-grade Lower School building near the intersection of Ewing Street, Harrison Street and Bunn Drive in Princeton Township.
A groundbreaking ceremony attended by school officials and municipal leaders was held Friday to kick off construction of the $2 million project.
"We are very excited to get this going," said Madelyn Miller, a board of trustees member. "In addition to giving us wonderful classroom space, the new K-4 building will give us another music and art room as well as another cafeteria.
"Upstairs on the second floor there will be a lot of teacher work space and special conference rooms for teachers and students to work one on one," she continued. "The building will also have its own playground space, which is sorely needed."
Currently, the charter school, a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade system founded in 1997, operates out of one three-story building. The 240 students who use the facility each day share a single playing field, a small blacktop outdoor basketball court and one set of playground equipment.
Originally, the charter school planned to expand by renovating an existing office building on the site, but an electrical fire in June 2002 quashed those plans.
Instead, a new 7,000-square-foot building is being built and is expected to open there in January 2004.
The building marks a key first step in a multi-phase long-range campus master plan for the charter school, Ms. Miller said.
While the Lower School is being built, the charter school intends to shift the entrance of its original building from Ewing Street to Bunn Drive, where a U-shaped drive will provide safer student drop-off and pick-up, she said.
The next phase of the master plan will include construction of a gymnasium, adjacent to the original charter school building. The final phase will include a new structure to house a cafeteria, conference center, audio-visual center, library resource room and administrative space.
Once the Lower School is complete, the original charter school building will be used for fifth through eighth grades and administrative offices.
According to Ms. Miller, the charter school has most of the funding it needs to carry out the Lower School construction project.
Unlike other New Jersey public schools, the charter school does not have separate budgets for capital expenditures and associated debt service costs. Charter schools cannot issue bonds to meet capital funding needs either, Ms. Miller said.
"Instead we have to be more creative," she said. "This project is being funded through a combination of loans, private donations and grant money.
"We are not building a building we can’t afford," she continued. "We basically have the $2 million needed for it. But we always love donations, since we still need to furnish the building and whatnot. We can always put money to good use."
For additional information, contact Princeton Charter School at (609) 924-0575 or visit the school’s Web site at http://www.pcs.k12.nj.us.