It’s not game over after all for the Princeton International Academy Charter School (PIACS), which has been granted a one-year planning extension by the state to plan for opening in September, 2012.
The state Department of Education announced on July 15 that 21 previously approved schools, including PIACS, will be granted a planning year extension.
This will allow PIACS to focus on its plans to open at its proposed location in South Brunswick, which will require it to obtain approval from the Zoning Board there.
The charter school missed the state’s June 30 deadline to submit a certificate of occupancy for the schools, and the charter school was unable to find a temporary location in the Princeton, West Windsor, or Plainsboro area.
The final option was to request the one-year planning extension. PIACS submitted a letter last month to the DOE to request a one-year planning extension — the second by the school in two years — after the school could not meet the state’s June 30 deadline to complete its documentation. The letter came after PIACS requested that its application before the South Brunswick Zoning Board for a use variance for its proposed location be adjourned until September.
The charter school has faced opposition since it won approval by the state Department of Education in January, 2010, to educate students from the Princeton, South Brunswick, and WW-P school districts. The school would be the first in the area to offer an International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum framework as well as dual language Mandarin-English immersion.
WW-P school officials were disappointed when they heard the news that the extension had been granted. “I’m very disappointed with the Department of Education for granting another planning extension, especially given the incompetence shown by PIACS for two years running,” said Board of Education President Hemant Marathe. “They have wasted a lot of taxpayer dollars and township time in trying to get the school started.”
Marathe said it was “unfortunate” that the school had yet another year to plan when “they have not achieved much, if anything, in two years.”
WW-P allocated $950,000 in the 2011-’12 budget toward the estimated $1.2 million it would have had to pay had the charter school opened in September. But WW-P school officials said at the June 28 school board meeting they were waiting to see whether a temporary location for PIACS could be found by July 15 and whether the state would grant the planning extension.
Reached after the extension was granted, Marathe said the $900,000 that the district allocated to send to PIACS as payment for the district’s students who would have attended the charter school in the upcoming school year will be put into tax relief. However, “next year we will have to allocate about $1 million, so taxpayers won’t see any real benefit,” he said.
Marathe said the district will have to determine its options for moving forward. “We will vigorously oppose it because we don’t think it’s in the interest of the children or in the interest of the taxpayers,” he said.
PIACS spokesman Parker Block said the extension “reflects the fact that we continue to make progress toward fulfilling the plan outlined in the approved application.” It also reflects “DOE’s belief that PIACS will be an innovative, high-quality charter school which will enhance public education.” He also said that the “DOE is aware that the local school districts have been making every effort to create obstacles for PIACS to securing a facility.” As a result, “the protests of these administrators and others about not getting the facility ready in time are understood by all to be blatantly disingenuous.”
