Turned down last year, organizers hope second time is a charm.
By: Courtney Gross
WEST WINDSOR Soon, Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity could be morphed into a two-act rendition of quantum physics on the stage, equipped with song, dance and laughter.
If the Mercer Arts Charter High School is brought to West Windsor, that is how academia and the arts could merge one dramatic interpretation at a time.
Anyone who believes the arts can be just as integral to education as academics could soon attend the Mercer Arts Charter High School as it tries for a second time to be approved by the New Jersey Department of Education, the project’s leader Barbara Taylor said. The Department of Education will have until January to review the charter school’s application, she added.
"We’re feeling very optimistic that there is a need and interested parties out there," Ms. Taylor said of the school’s prospects for approval.
Since first submitting the school’s 300-page application in 2005, Ms. Taylor said she has received a federal grant to improve her chances of approval and surveyed the area’s parents to garner feedback. The process of approval is an arduous one, Ms. Taylor said, and the group behind the charter school’s founding has made significant revisions to its application.
The application was not approved last year, because the group had not picked a specific location for the arts school, Ms. Taylor said. Now, the group has several existing buildings in mind, she noted, on Alexander Road.
When Ms. Taylor began advertising the school’s concept in area newspapers, over 275 parents called her for more information, she said. The hits on the group’s Web site are also continuously growing, she added.
The school, if approved, will be open to students from ninth to 12th grade and its hours of operation will be from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., allowing more time for arts and academic study, she said. Academic subjects will be taught in the morning and the arts will be practiced in the afternoon. Specific areas of interest for the charter school are drama, dance, visual arts and music.
All charter schools in New Jersey are public and are managed by a board of trustees. They must also be approved by the state commissioner of education and are fully funded by taxpayers.
The arts school will be open to all districts in the county, which includes over 20,000 high school students, Ms. Taylor said. Hoping to open in the fall of 2007, the school expects to have 300 students in its first year, Ms. Taylor said. The school is set to double its student body within four years, according to its application.
To assess the needs of students in the county, the group surveyed 400 families on their interest in arts education last month. The results, Ms. Taylor said, were encouraging. More than 70 percent of the families were strongly interested in the arts curricula.
Beyond the survey, other parents within the West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District have expressed interest in sending their children to the arts school if it is approved. Leslie Cohen, a mother of two whose students have attended the Hun School of Princeton, said parents who might not be able to afford individual arts classes for their children could take advantage of the specialized school. The arts, she said, can give some adolescents more confidence.
"For any parent whose child has an interest in the arts, it is a great opportunity to get an education and be exposed to all the arts," Ms. Cohen said.
There is no full-time, non-tuition arts school currently in the county, Ms. Taylor said. The only programs that resemble the proposal for the Mercer Arts Charter High School are part-time art training courses available through Mercer County vocational education.