Bret will do a great job with this school I'm sure.
He was the best & only honest mayor the city has had in 30 years and was the one responsible for the growth of the downtown area.

Good luck Bret.

Bret Schundler makes a comeback -- with new charter school in Jersey City

August 21, 2012, 8:19 PM
By Anthony J. Machcinski/The Jersey Journal

The BelovED Community Charter School in Jersey City is opening its doors to students next month and perhaps no one is more excited than a former Jersey City mayor who is also a former state education commissioner.

"I love education," Bret Schundler said today inside a classroom of BelovED, which opens Sept. 5 at 508 Grand St., the former home of the now-defunct Schomburg Charter School. "Nothing expands opportunity (for children) more than a great education."

Schundler, who's acted as an advisor to the school's founding board, opened the Golden Door Charter School in 1998 when he was mayor of Jersey City.
Charters are publicly-funded schools run by nonprofits and other entities that are outside the district's control.

BelovED is the only charter school opening this year in Hudson County, which now has 13 charter schools.

The school, which takes its name from Martin Luther King Jr.'s talk about the "beloved community," will open with 360 students, kindergarten through second-grade, and plans to add a grade each year up to Grade 12.

The school will utilize a teaching method that calls for weekly evaluations of how students are performing.

"We're checking you all the way," Schundler said. "You have instant information now on whether the children followed (the lesson) or not. The teacher doesn't have to hope students followed it because this check is part of the lesson."

Schundler was fired by Gov. Christie in August, 2010 following a dispute over the state's application for federal "Race to the Top" funding.

The school's "lead person," Kelly Convery, said teachers, who were in training the past few days, are raring to go.

"You know that with teachers and administrators coming on board, we all have the same objective and we're all moving toward the same goal," said Convery.

Dean of students Victoria De Leon said working for BelovED has allowed her to return to her roots.

"I grew up in Jersey City and always wanted to give back to the community," De Leon said. "I jumped at the chance to work with (Schundler) and work at this school."

For more information about the school, visit website at www.belovedccs.org

http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/20 ... dler_makes_a_comebac.html

Yes, let Schundler create another charter school. Golden Door Charter School did so well. And he's having Greg Corrado run it. Yikes !!!

My son will be starting at Beloved in September. Bret Schundler has been at every meeting personally and is very enthusiastic about the school. He and his wife personally respond to any emails or questions and that makes me feel good about the school's potential. Keepting my fingers crossed!

This is great! We wish him well here.

I thought Schundler put his place up for sale and moved out of J.C.?

State gives final approval on Jersey City elementary charter school to open in September, axes one proposed school in city

July 16, 2012, 9:52 PM
By Matthew McNab/The Jersey Journal

Beloved Community Charter School, a planned elementary charter school in Jersey City, received final approval from the state's Department of Education today and will open its doors in September to start the new school year.

Today's approval was the final step in a process that began in January 2011, when an exploratory committee was formed for the school, but took off when the 360-student school gained initial approval by the Department of Education in September 2011.

The school takes its name from a Martin Luther King, Jr. quote, Bret Schundler, the former state Commissioner of Education said.

"It was named after his idea of a 'beloved community,' where people care about uplifting the greater community," he said. "The education plan reflects that and parents will be happy with the school. They'll do an excellent job."

Schundler, the Mayor of Jersey City from 1992 to 2001, was named the state's Commissioner of Education on March 13, 2010. His tenure in that position was short-lived though, as he was fired on August 27, 2010, after a botched question during a grant contest hearing cost the state nearly $400 million in federal funding.

Schundler previously helped open Golden Door Charter School in the city in 1998, while he was serving as mayor.

Schundler's association with the school was announced in December, when he said his company Charter Facility Acquisition, LLC, had bought the former Greenville Hospital building on Kennedy Boulevard from LibertyHealth System.

Although Schundler said developing that building is currently on hiatus as they find a developer to convert it, the building is still planned to open to students in September 2013.

Schundler said Beloved's Greenville Hospital location may not be the only school there in the future; Schundler said the complex is large enough for two or more charter schools.

This September, Beloved CCS will open its first location to students from kindergarten through second grade at 508 Grand Street?the former home of Schomburg Charter School, which had been in operation on Grand Street since 2000. The school plans to expand and add more grades with each subsequent school year.

The state revoked Schomburg Charter School's charter on May 19 and shut down the school June 29. At the time of its closure, Schomburg underperformed almost every school in the district.

Beloved has ambitious plans to expand outside of those two locations. In its mission statement on its website, the school lists its goal to eventually expand to cover every grade, from elementary school to high school, with facilities across the city.

In addition to approving Beloved CCS, the state's Board of Education decided the fates of two other Jersey City charter schools. Jersey City Global Charter School was granted an additional planning year, while DREAM Preparatory Academy was denied final approval.

Jersey City Global Charter School, a planned 486-student elementary school in the city, received another planning year before final approval. Global Charter School applied in October 2011, along with four other elementary schools in Hudson County, but was the only one to be approved, with its application passed in January 2012.

According to the state's list of applicants from last October, Global Charter had previously submitted a proposal to the state that was rejected.

However, two of the other schools, Mosaic Charter School in Jersey City and Military Charter School in West New York, appeared on a shortlist in May for pre-qualified charter applications to be reviewed under the state's new guidelines, which were created earlier in the month.

Global Charter is currently accepting applications, but does not appear to have a school in place yet; the contact information for the school lists a multi-family home on Summit Avenue as its home address.

DREAM Prep, a planned 500-student arts-centric charter high school, was founded by Chris Tisdale, a Jersey City native and teacher at Schomburg. The school filed its application in March 2010 and had its charter approved by the state in October 2010.

It was scheduled to open its doors to freshmen this September, with the upper classes being phased in during subsequent school years; the school's webpage announced last September it would start taking applications for the school despite the lack of an actual school to open.

http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/20 ... es_final_approval_on.html

Ex-NJ schools chief Schundler, Jersey City administration official head up charter school scheduled for 2012 opening

Thursday, December 15, 2011, 2:06 PM
By Charles Hack/The Jersey Journal

Former New Jersey schools chief Bret Schundler is one of the movers and shakers behind one of the four charter schools approved to open in September 2012.

The former Jersey City mayor is also the founder and former managing member of the company that will purchase and convert the vacant Greenville Hospital in Jersey City into a school.

The Beloved Community Charter School that will occupy the former hospital building at 1825 Kennedy Blvd. is one of four applicants that got the green light from the state Department of Education in September this year.

Beloved CCS, which lists Jersey City Assistant Business Administrator Greg Corrado as its "lead founder," was one of 58 potential charter schools that had applied to open in 2012.

In an telephone interview Wednesday, Schundler said his company, Charter Facility Acquisition, LLC, has bought the property from LibertyHealth, and will convert it and lease it to the school. Schundler said that developer Kiumarz Geula is the new managing member of the acquisition company and is in charge of the project.

Officials from LibertyHealth, the parent company that owns the Jersey City Medical Center, confirmed that the sale is pending, but did not provide a sale price. The sale is expected to be completed by February.

In a resume he sent to Florida officials when he applied for the job as commissioner of education there, Schundler said Charter Facility Acquisition was created in April.

The Harvard-educated Schundler -- who was fired by Gov. Chris Christie on Aug. 27, 2010 over a botched application for millions of dollars in federal aid -- said he did not use his influence as a former education commissioner to get the application through the approval process.

"I was not involved in the application to the state and did not have any role in it being approved," Schundler said. "The governor and I had a disagreement about a number of things. I was absolutely invisible in the application to the state. I made sure of that."

It was not immediately known when Corrado filed the application for the charter school.

Schundler said he was one of a group of people, including Corrado, "who had been talking about education for a long time." Corrado is listed on the school's website as the president of its board of trustees. Schundler says that he is not one of the school's founders.

Corrado did not return calls for comment.

Schundler, who founded the Golden Door Charter School in 1998 while serving as mayor of Jersey City, said he has helped numerous charter schools find locations. He said he is currently working with the M.E.T.S. Charter School, located at 180 Ninth St., the former site of Golden Door, to find a new location.

Schundler, who has set up a foundation to raise money for the school, said that he supports Beloved CCS because it will provide weekly testing to identify students that are falling behind others students. Each student will then get additional help from a school tutor.

"I have helped a lot of schools. It is something important me. (Beloved Community Charter School's) success will not just help children enrolled there," Schundler said. "The model that we are pursuing should be most common model used by public school districts."