BRIDGETON -- With approval from the state now official, Bridgeton Public Charter School is preparing to open its doors to students this upcoming school year.
The charter school will be located where the Cumberland County administrative officers were on Commerce Street and attempt to replicate the success of Vineland and Millville's charter schools.
"It's a beautiful building and, being a resident of Bridgeton, the last thing I'd like to see is an empty building in Bridgeton," said Charlotte Gould, president of the board of trustees for Bridgeton's new charter school.
The Cumberland County Improvement Authority is handling the $1.2 million sale for Cumberland County (CCIA).
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"We've taken a piece of property that's been previously a non-ratable and we turned it into a ratable," said Jerry Velasquez, CCIA executive director.
The building will be sold to HighMark School Development, which will lease the Commerce Street facility to Bridgeton Public Charter School.
The building won't officially be sold to HighMark until September, according to Velasquez, but a lease agreement has been put into place so that work can begin on the building. The lease agreement was also required so that the school can go to the state for approval -- which occurred Wednesday.
Bridgeton Public Charter School plans on bringing teachers in next month for training and officially beginning the new school year on Aug. 31.
There are 105 students enrolled for kindergarten and first grade classes, Gould explained, and each year another grade will be added to the school.
"We're excited about Bridgeton," said Dr. Anne Garcia, executive director of Vineland Public Charter School. "We're looking forward to working with the community, and were hoping to bring a successful model and be as successful as we are in Vineland and Millville."
According to Garcia, students at Vineland's charter school have increased test scores due to the school's longer days, longer year and curriculum. Vineland's charter school was established in 2009 with students from kindergarten through second grade. Enrollment now goes up to eighth grade. Instead of having a kindergarten through second grade enrollment, Bridgeton will instead have a kindergarten through first grade enrollment.
"In doing this for the third time, we really feel that having the K-to-one population and working with them starts out better than working with the K-to-two population," Garcia said. "It gives another year to make a good foundation."
The new Bridgeton charter school's building was the administrative office for Cumberland County, but those offices are now on Broad Street in Bridgeton -- where Cumberland County Prosecutor's Office was. The prosecutor's office moved to a renovated Vine Street building.
"I travelled every inch of Bridgeton repeatedly looking for buildings back-and-forth across the city and then we learned that this building was going to be vacated," Gould said.
Open houses for the school will be scheduled throughout August and, although enrollment is already full, applications are being accepted for future enrollment, Gould said.
Don E. Woods may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @donewoods1. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook.