 Please Read This Important Update From Trillium Charter School. Thank you.Thursday, June 10, 2010Friends of Trillium Charter School, I am deeply disappointed to inform you that that Trillium Charter School will not be opening this fall. My goal in this message is to help you understand why this has happened and to provide you with information on what can be done if, like me, you still believe this area has the need for a charter school that can provide the innovative and principled education that Trillium sought to provide. As discussed in my email of last week, Trillium recently met with the New Jersey Department of Education’s Office of Charter Schools. During this meeting the Office of Charter Schools expressed its concern over Trillium’s ability to meet a requirement that 90% of its students come from the “Sending Districts” of Flemingtion-Raritan, East Amwell, and Deleware Township that are documented in our Charter. They also informed us that if we were unable to show signed registrations coming from those districts amounting to at least 90% of our planned capacity of 152 students, we would not be allowed to open in the fall. During this call, the Trillium team strongly protested this decision based on two key points. First is that the Trillium team was informed by the state during training that so long as the school could show financial viability that there would be leniency on this rule. Additionally, we asserted that the Office of Charter schools is incorrectly interpreting the article of the New Jersey Administrative Code upon which they are basing this requirement. As of last night’s Board of Trustees meeting, Trillium had received 150 applications clearly showing financial viability. Unfortunately, we still did not have sufficient registrations from our Sending Districts to meet the disputed requirement that 90% of enrollment come from the three “Sending Districts”. While we believe the application count is clear evidence that this community has a strong desire for the innovative education and choices that Charter Schools like Trillium can provide, the Office of Charter schools informed us during last week’s meeting that there would be no leniency in this area and that our charter would not be granted without us meeting the 90% requirement this week. It is primarily for this reason Trillium will not be opening in the fall. Please know that the failure of Trillium to open on its first attempt does not mean that this area can not or will not support a Charter School in the near future. Charter Schools are a community creation. They are most often founded by teams of parents and educators who have a passion for providing children with what they believe is a better education and environment than is currently provided by typical public schools. It is also important to know that while the state provides these teams of parents and educators a great deal of assistance and training, this is likely the first time they have created a school from scratch. As such, mistakes are made along the way, lessons are learned, and in some cases, schools don’t open on the first attempt. Such is also the case with Trillium. In retrospect, it is easy for us to see many things we could have done differently and that could have led us to a different outcome for this school year. For example: • We didn’t market ourselves early enough in the process nor did we market as aggressively as we needed. Since this is a rural area with good schools, it takes a lot more effort to “get out the word” than it does for the urban charter schools • The difficulty in finding the perfect facility delayed our ability to show parents where their children would go to school and made recruiting more difficult. • We didn’t do as good a job of developing and managing a committed network of supporters, volunteers and board members as we would have liked. • Parents with children in 3rd and 4th grade are more reluctant to move their children to a new school than we anticipated. Perhaps it may have been better to initially open with Kindergarten through 2nd grade or with fewer planned students in those grades. These are just a few of the many lessons we have learned throughout this process. This brings me to what can be done going forward and how this community can leverage the lessons we have learned. Based on the many email messages, phone calls, and Facebook posts, it is clear to me there is demand for a Charter School in this area. I want to urge those of you reading this message to take this dream forward. When Trillium first started, it was just a few folks in a back yard who had a crazy idea. Now it has grown to the point that over 150 of you believe in it enough to have decided it was the right choice for your children’s education. With this new, much larger network of people, plus the insight that has come from the lessons that have been learned, this community has its best opportunity ever to create a new charter school. If the desire is there to go forward, a new Charter School based on similar principles to those of Trillium could be opened in time for the 2011-2012 school year or the year thereafter. I strongly believe that for this dream to be achieved, we will need a new leadership team and new people with fresh ideas and fresh energy to take this forward. This isn’t to say that those of us who have worked so long on Trillium won’t also continue to work with you. We still believe in this dream and we are still willing to work side by side to make it a reality. If you have the energy, passion, and time to take a leadership position in this new effort, please email the info@TrilliumEducation.org email address and we can work together to re-start this effort. For those of you who are willing to contribute, but may not have the time to take a leadership position, please email as well. One of our lessons learned is that we must have a much broader network of people who can contribute early in the process. We need everyone if a new school is to succeed. We will have an initial meeting during the summer to begin our work. I’ll send out an email in a couple of weeks to schedule a date. Between now and then, let’s keep in touch with each other via the Trillium Facebook page and start discussing how to take this forward. Sincerely, Brian Chizever Trillium Charter School President, Board of Trustees http://school.TrilliumEducation.org *Individually Designed Student Education Programs
*Small Class Sizes
*Real Time and Real World Learning Experiences *Focused Attention to the Growth of the Whole Person in Each Child
*Preparation for Technologically-Enriched Interdependent Global Society
and
*Commitment to the Environmental Preservation of the Earth This free public school will open its doors this September with up to 152 students from the sending districts of Flemington-Raritan, Delaware Township, and East Amwell Township and surrounding areas. The school, which will be the first charter school in Hunterdon County, will enroll students for Kindergarten through Grade Four, and grow by one grade each year to ultimately serve Kindergarten through Eighth Grade.
The school’s mission is to educate according to three commitments: to each learner as an individual, each learner as a member of families and communities, and to the Earth. The school will focus on supporting the development of the whole child: intellectually, physically, socially, and emotionally. Small class sizes and project-based learning are two of the ways that Trillium Charter School will achieve this mission. Families interested in learning more about the school can attend the school’s monthly information sessions, held at the Hunterdon County Library Headquarters, at 7:00pm on the second Tuesday of each month. Applications are currently being accepted for September enrollment.
|
Welcome to Trillium! |
