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SOUTH BRUNSWICK: PIACS charter application denied

Charles W. Kim, Managing Editor
   The controversial Princeton International Academy Charter School lost a major battle last week when the Zoning Board of Adjustment denied its use variance by one vote.
   ”Everyone (with the school) is quite disappointed,” PIACS spokesman Parker Block said following the almost five-hour meeting March 22. “I think the board did a reasonable job, but its interesting that the majority of the board voted in favor (of the application), but we came up short.”
   Although the board voted 4-3 for granting the use variance to the 170-student Mandarin immersion school to be located in a vacant building at 12 Perrine Road, five votes were needed for the motion to pass, Chairman Martin Hammer said.
   Members Alfonso Andolfi, Al Nardi, Bharat Patel and Mr. Hammer voted for the school. Members Arthur Troccoli Jr., Aarti Gupta and Arthur Bifulco III voted against the application.
   The three members opposing the variance all said traffic issues tipped the scales for the vote.
   ”It will create more of a (traffic) mess,” Ms. Gupta said during the board’s deliberations. “We will make the situation worse.”
   Edward Boccher, attorney for 12 P & Associates, the landlord of the school, made several concessions to the board, including a plan to assign a police officer at the intersection of Perrine and Schalks Crossing Road during the peak morning and afternoon hours.
   Those concessions, however, were not enough to sway the board.
   Mr. Hammer and others on the board chided experts from the school several times during the hearings about traffic reports and the counts of cars used in those studies, calling some of the counts “flawed” because they were taken when public schools were not in session.
   Hundreds of residents attended the several hearings held in front of the board during the last year, including officials from the three public school districts that opposed the school.
   Only one member of the audience spoke in favor of the school during the public comments as compared to around a dozen people speaking out against the application.
   The state Assembly recently passed a bill that now could require the proposed charter school to stand for a referendum in each of the communities it plans on serving.
   That bill now goes to the state Senate for consideration.
   Mr. Block said he did not know if last Thursday’s decision would mean PIACS would have to go through the referendum process once another location is found or what the school would do at this point.
   ”We have to regroup,” Mr. Block said.
   Department of Education spokesman Allison Kobus said that agency could not comment on if the proposed charter would be forced to go on the ballot or be “grandfathered” because the state already granted it a preliminary charter.
   Previously, the school also was denied a use variance for a location in Plainsboro, making South Brunswick the second of the three towns the school would serve to deny its application. Mr. Block said the proposed charter school now may need to look to the Princetons as a possible home unless a site already zoned for a school turns up in one of the other two communities.