Search Results for: red bank charter school
RED BANK CHARTER SCHOOL IS ALL ART
The talents of an array of budding artists, writers, dancers, theatrical performers and musicians were spotlighted on May 12, when Red Bank Charter School hosted its annual Evening with the Arts celebration. Designed as both a showcase for the creative abilities of RBCS students — and a demonstration of how the various art forms are integrated within the school’s curriculum — the event was made possible by the good work of faculty members that included art teacher Mrs. Stefankiewicz, music teacher Miss Keeling, and rock band leader Mr. Strippoli.
RED BANK CHARTER SCHOOL FRIENDS RBR
Press release from Red Bank Charter School
Administrators and teachers at Red Bank Charter School are no strangers to the constantly evolving technology and social media world. Every day they hear students discussing a video they viewed on YouTube, or a funny meme from Instagram. Some even incorporate social media carefully into lesson plans and homework reminders.
They’re also aware, however, that there are two sides to the technology coin, and that social media’s darker side shouldn’t be ignored. For that reason, RBCS hosted a Social Media Smarts Workshop, which brought its 6th-8th grade students together with local high school students from Red Bank Regional High School for interactive discussions. The Social Media Smarts Workshop — led by current RBR students Jessica Hansen and Teicia Gaupp, with Nicole Paventi, certified Teen Outreach Program facilitator and former RBR student — was held at Red Bank Charter School on Wednesday, April 13.
RED BANK: CHARTER SCHOOL WINS EXTENSION
The school’s campus includes buildings on Oakland Street, above, and Monmouth Street. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
See UPDATE below
By JOHN T. WARD
The Red Bank Charter School has won state authorization to operate for another five years, Head of School Kristen Martello announced Wednesday.
The widely expected extension was granted by the New Jersey Department of Education over the objection of borough school district’s board, which was joined by the town council in its request that the school be closed.
RED BANK: COUNCIL ‘NO’ TO CHARTER SCHOOL
The New Jersey Department of Education will decide whether the Red Bank Charter School can operate for five more years. (redbankgreen photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
After nearly three hours of passionate and divided public input, the Red Bank council unanimously supported a resolution calling for a non-renewal of the Red Bank Charter School Tuesday night.
RED BANK: CHARTER SCHOOL TEAM LAUDED
The Red Bank Mayor and Council honored the Red Bank Charter School girls basketball team Wednesday night.
The Red Bank Charter School Girls Basketball team went 4-4 during the conference season, securing the number two seed in the conference. After winning the semi-final game at home, the girls went on the road to face the number one seed. Leading the way on the court was one of our 8th grade captains, scoring a school record 111 points this season.
RED BANK: CHARTER SCHOOL NAMES NEW HEAD
By JOHN T. WARD
The Red Bank Charter School has hired a new head of school, an administrator whose last job was clouded by calls for her resignation.
Kristen Martello, the former superintendent of the Berlin school district in Camden County, is scheduled to succeed Meredith Pennotti, who guided the Oakland Street institution through its first two decades.
RED BANK: CHARTER SCHOOL HEAD TO RETIRE
Charter school Principal and Superintendent Meredith Pennotti in 2016. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Meredith Pennotti, who guided the Red Bank Charter School through two often fraught decades, plans to retire in June, the school announced earlier this week.
RED BANK: CHARTER SCHOOL EYES THE WORLD
Red Bank Charter School S students with Principal Meredith Pennotti on International Day.
Classrooms at Red Bank Charter School were transformed into disaster zones as students immersed themselves in a learning experience that combined performance art with history, culture, science and cuisine as part of the school’s annual International Day.
RED BANK: CHARTER SCHOOL WINS GYM OK
A rendering of the proposed charter school gym, which wouldn’t have room for bleachers, an architect said. (Rendering by Erick Wagner. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
The Red Bank Charter School won approval Thursday night to create a gym in part of a commercial building it plans to buy on Monmouth Street.
In the process, the zoning board hearing on the plan re-exposed some long-simmering resentments harbored by parents who contend the charter school’s existence is a drain on the local school district.
RED BANK: CHARTER SCHOOL TO BUY BUILDING
The building, in which the charter school now rents space, has several commercial tenants, and another slated to take the retail space formerly leased by Prown’s Home Improvements. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
The Red Bank Charter School plans to buy a commercial building that adjoins its Oakland Street home under a plan approved by the school’s board of trustees Tuesday night.
RED BANK: P.R. BATTLE OVER CHARTER SCHOOL
The charter school’s five-year renewal request is pending with the state Department of Education. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
The two sides in the recently renewed tussle over the future of the Red Bank Charter School crossed swords in the form of press releases Monday.
First, the Latino Coalition of New Jersey issued a release decrying the school’s use of nearly $40,000 to pay an outside firm for public relations.
That was followed by a press release, issued by that firm on the school’s behalf, questioning the coalition’s standing.
RED BANK: GROUPS SEEK FEDS PROBE OF CHARTER SCHOOL FOR STUDENT ‘SEGREGATION’
Charter school Superintendent Meredith Pennotti speaking at the school’s eighth-grade graduation ceremony in Riverside Gardens Park in June. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
[NOTE: This post was updated to include a prepared statement from charter school Superintendent Pennotti.]
By JOHN T. WARD
A group of parents and Latino rights advocates have asked the federal Justice Department to “investigate and ultimately remedy” enrollment and funding practices at the Red Bank Charter School that they claim make the borough’s public schools the “most segregated” in New Jersey.
In documents released Tuesday, the Latino Coalition of New Jersey and the newly formed Fair Schools Red Bank claim the school and the administration of Governor Chris Christie have violated the civil rights of borough students by failing to address ethnic, socio-econonic and fiscal disparities between the charter school and the public school district from which it was carved out 18 years ago.
RED BANK: CHARTER SCHOOL GRADUATES 20
Gustavo Azcatl-Rosas, one of 20 members of the Red Bank Charter School class of 2016, accepts an academic excellence award at the school’s commencement Wednesday.
The event was held in Riverside Gardens Park overlooking our beautiful Navesink River. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
RED BANK: CHARTER SCHOOL SLATES FORUM
The Red Bank Charter School plans to hold an open forum and press conference on its controversial expansion plan Tuesday at 7 p.m., the school announced Sunday.
“The press conference will provide clarity on a recent application amendment, after which the forum will be opened for community comment,” according to a press release.
The event will be held at 135 Monmouth Street, above, a building in which the school recently leased space for a STEM lab and to accommodate the expansion, if approved by the New Jersey Department of Education. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
RED BANK: CHARTER SCHOOL PLANS OFFENSIVE
Charter school parents at Wednesday night’s meeting in the school’s new STEM lab on Monmouth Street. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
At their first gathering since a controversial doubling of enrollment was proposed last month, Red Bank Charter School officials sought to enlist the school’s parents in a campaign to push back against opponents of the plan Wednesday night.
About 75 parents crowded into newly rented classroom space for a meeting billed as a “family facts” session that members of the general public were not permitted to attend. But many of those present complained they’d been blindsided by the expansion proposal and poorly informed about how to defend it against sometimes hostile criticism by other borough residents.
RED BANK: CHARTER SCHOOL SEEKS TO DOUBLE
Principal Meredith Pennotti with a Red Bank Charter School student in 2013. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
In an audacious bid to educate more borough children, the Red Bank Charter School has asked the New Jersey Department of Education for permission to double its enrollment over the next three years.
The move is likely to provoke “public discord” and impose “financial hardship” on the district from which the charter school sprang in 1998, charter school Principal Meredith Pennotti acknowledged in a letter to the DOE dated December 1. But it’s needed to address disparities in achievement between students in the two systems, she wrote.
Red Bank schools Superintendent Jared Rumage blasted the proposal as reflecting nearly 20-year-old attitudes about the district, and said its implementation would be “devastating.”
“That perception of who we were 20 years ago is irrelevant,” he told redbankgreen Tuesday morning.
RED BANK: CHARTER SCHOOL CELEBRATES KING
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream Speech, on August 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
By ISABEL HALLORAN
In his I Have a Dream speech, Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.”
Martin Luther King Jr. modeled his life around these words. He lived with the faith that African Americans’ suffering would not go unnoticed, and that someday people would realize that racism, segregation and unequal rights were not fair, and should have never been accepted in the first place.
Martin Luther King Jr. asks people to have faith, because he believes that it will get them through the hard times. Faith is like hope. It can be challenging to believe in, but possessing faith and living by it is an important part of life.
RED BANK: A ‘HEALTHY U’ AT CHARTER SCHOOL
Students at Red Bank Charter School joined The Community YMCA to kick off a new Healthy U program to tackle the childhood obesity epidemic.
Press release from The Community YMCA
On Monday, November 11, the students of Red Bank Charter School became part of a state-wide project called Healthy U — an effort designed to teach children ages 3 -13 how to be healthy for a lifetime.
A collaborative partnership between the New Jersey YMCA State Alliance and the Horizon Foundation for New Jersey with the goal of combating childhood obesity through nutrition education, physical education and family involvement, Healthy U uses the CATCH (Coordinated Approach to Child Health) curriculum to promote physical activity and good nutrition, while showing kids that eating healthy and being physically active every day can be fun.
RED BANK: CHARTER SCHOOL BEGINS NEW YEAR
Sira Williams waved to her daughters Julia, left, and Maya, who entered the fifth and eighth grades, respectively. At right: Look out, RBCS! Here comes kindergartener Matthew Gaupp, his arrival documented by his mother Teicia. (Photos by Sarah Klepner. Click to enlarge)
While most other kids who attend schools on the Green have another week of summer ahead, students at the Red Bank Charter School got back to work first thing Tuesday morning.
redbankgreen‘s Sarah Klepner was there to capture the start of the new school year.
RED BANK: PORTMAN MOCKS BALLARD CLAIMS
Billy Portman at home on John Street Sunday. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Why did Red Bank mayoral candidate Michael Ballard sign a petition for a candidate who would oppose him if he won last week’s Democratic primary?
To counter “secret deal-making” engineered by opponent Billy Portman, Ballard told redbankgreen Friday night.
In response, Portman mocked the allegation as “business as usual” from a “dying machine.”
RED BANK: PORTMAN CLAIMS LANDSLIDE WIN
Billy Portman at Red Rock Tap + Grill Tuesday night. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Political neophyte Billy Portman claimed a landslide victory in Red Bank Democrats’ mayoral primary Tuesday night.
At the same time, enough members of an 18-candidate reform slate for the party’s county committee appeared to win races to ensure a change at the top of an organization Portman had criticized for “machine politics.”
RED BANK: RESOURCE OFFICERS PLANNED
Red Bank police Chief Darren McConnell during Monday’s online forum. (Screengrab from Zoom. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Bank schools plan to implement a school resource officer program in the borough’s public schools, police Chief Darren McConnell said Monday.
RED BANK: EXPERT TESTIFIES ON TRAFFIC IMPACT
A proposed development calling for 45 apartments Monmouth Street in Red Bank would have an “unnoticeable effect” on traffic, a consultant told the zoning board Thursday night.
RED BANK: APARTMENT PLAN INCHES AHEAD
The house at the northwest corner of Oakland and Pearl Streets would be refurbished for rental as an affordable unit, if approved. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
The developer of a proposed 45-apartment project in Red Bank would satisfy part of his affordable housing obligation by restoring a house previously targeted for demolition, representatives told the zoning board Thursday night.
It’s the latest change to a plan that’s been inching its way through the review process for nearly three years.