Trillium School Withdraws Charter Application

The Trillium School withdrew its charter application from the Office of Charter Schools, meaning it will not open in the 2012 school year—and will not be drawing potential students from Hillsborough Schools.

An Aug. 14 message sent to the school’s mailing list by Ilana Kriegsman, the Trillium School’s lead founder, cited staffing shortages and fundraising shortages as reasons for withdrawing the charter.

“Although the hope and vision continue, the founders have made the very difficult decision that Trillium cannot go on,” Kriegsman’s message read. “We have fallen well short of our fundraising goals and we are quite short-staffed as well. These two concerns made it clear to us that going forward was not a realistic option. We have officially withdrawn our charter application with the Office of Charter Schools and Trillium will not open in 2012.”

Had the Flemington-based school opened, it would have accepted up to 63 students from the Hillsborough district, at a tuition of $628,857 to the Hillsborough district. According to its website, the Trillium School hoped to provide kindergarten through fourth grade education during its first year and add one grade level per year until the school reached the eighth grade.

Board of Education member Judy Haas mentioned the letter and the application withdrawal during the Board’s Monday meeting.

“That is huge news,” Haas said. “That is like a three-quarter of a million bullet that we won’t be taking, which is not to say that somebody else couldn’t come out there.”

The charter application withdrawal drops the district’s tuition from $1.3 million to about $400,000, according to District Superintendent Jorden Schiff. The $400,000 is the expected tuition for the New Jersey Sino American Charter School, located in Somerset, which would accept 43 students from Hillsborough.

The district has not received any information about the charter application status for the New Jersey Sino American School, however.

“We anticipate that in the September-October timeframe we will know from the Department of Education about whether or not their application for charter will or will not be awarded,” Schiff said.

Though the district will not longer have the worry of tuition payments, Haas also noted that the charter withdrawal was a mixed blessing.

“Quite honestly, the joy isn’t there,” Haas said. “This was not one of those charter schools that were anti-profiteers and privateers. The fact that it’s not there, it creates a large opportunity for us to not have to spend money there.”