School News

More than 200 prospective students and their hopeful parents crowded into the Central Jersey College Prep Charter School’s auditorium March 7 for the school’s annual enrollment lottery. The reality was that most of them would go home disappointed; although the school received more than 1,000 applications, there were fewer than 130 slots open for next year. Most of the openings …

Members of Franklin High School’s Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps took home four trophies March 4 in a league competition. The competition drew more than 400 Junior ROTC cadets from 11 high schools to the school, where they demonstrated thair color guards drill teams and stood for a graded inspection. Franklin’s Warrior Battalion took second place in the “armed platoon” …

Updated with new information throughout. An application to double the maximum number of students at Central Jersey College Prep Charter School was approved March 1 by the state Board of Education. The school will be allowed to enroll up to 1,320 students in grades Kindergarten to 12 between now and 2020. The school currently enrolls 480 students in grades K-2 …

Update: Central Jersey College Prep Charter School would be interested in paying to have its students participate on the school district’s sports teams, the charter school’s principal said. CJCP CEO Namik Sercan made the comment after the Feb. 25 round of open house presentations at the school. Sercan said the school gets about $13,000 per child per year from the …

Thomas Edison EnergySmart Charter School held its 2017-18 school year lottery Feb. 18, albeit under the cloud of civil rights complaints and calls for its closure. The school was looking for students to fill its Kindergarten class, as well as determine the order of the waiting lists for First Grade through Ninth Grade. For the 2017-18 school year, TEECS is …

Students and parents gathered at Central Jersey College Prep Charter School Feb. 17 to celebrate the world’s cultures. Sponsored by the school’s PTSO, the inaugural International Day spotlighted students and some guest performers highlighting different cultures through song, dance and spoken word. Featured cultures were Turkish, Indian, Chinese, Korean, African and Spanish. The evening ended with students singing “We Are …

The township’s two charter schools on Feb. 14 denied charges that their enrollment policies are discriminatory, and charged their critics with trying to harass charter schools out of business. The schools – Thomas Edison EnergySmart Charter School and Central Jersey College Prep Charter School – were the subjects of federal  civil rights complaints filed Feb. 10 by a township parents’ …

Students throughout the district commemorated Valentine’s Day this year by pledging to stand up to bigotry and hate. Students took the “Stand Up For The Other Pledge” – a pledge to stand up against bullying and hate, promoted by the New Jersey and Franklin Township interfaith coalitions – in different ways in each of the schools. At Franklin Park School, …

Two groups – including one based in the township – have asked the state Department of Education to close the township’s charter schools for alleged “segregative” policies. The groups, Franklin Community Advocates Revitalizing our Education System (Franklin C.A.R.E.S.) and the Latino Coalition of New Jersey, have also filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education, …

It’s not often that reading a book as part of an assignment can spur young students to action, but that’s just what happened with a group of Conerly Road School 3rd Graders. The students, taught by Sarah Greenfield and Felicia Osley, were so moved by what they’d read and seen about the systematic destruction of the Amazon rain forest that …