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Developer builds private school in exclusive community

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Posted by Hudson County on July 05, 2003 at 18:16:32:

JERSEY CITY, N.J. (AP) — Roman Prilutzky and Lilia Block liked living at Newport so much that three years ago they left their rented apartment and bought a condominium in the private waterfront community. But when it was time for their son, David, to start school, the couple contemplated leaving Newport, and Jersey City, altogether.

"That's basically what drives people away from this place," said Prilutzky, 43, a technology chief for a Manhattan software company, who ended up sending his son to private school.

Newport's developer agrees. So in a highly unusual arrangement, the Queens-based Lefrak Organization is hoping to reduce its high turnover among families with children by building a 15,000-square-foot private school on the second floor of its newest building.

The new home of Jersey City's 16-year-old independent Cornerstone School will have a dozen classrooms, a library, science lab, and large community room, with a capacity of 180 students in grades K-8. As an incentive, Newport residents will receive a 20 percent discount on tuition, which will be $7,000 for the 2003-04 school year.

Myra McGovern, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Independent Schools in Washington, said the arrangement is "really not very common at all."

"In terms of having private schools being built for the development, and having this type of arrangement, it's not something I've heard of," McGovern said.

Jersey City's 30,000-student public school system remains under state control 14 years after it was seized from local hands by the New Jersey Department of Education because of poor student performance. And while McNair Academic High School is consistently among the state's top-performers on standardized tests, perceptions of the district as a whole are still largely negative.

So, many Newport parents send their children to private schools.

Or they simply move out.

That is exactly what construction of the new school is meant to keep from happening, said Jamie LeFrak, a Lefrak managing director.

"This is like a self-sufficient, totally functioning medium-sized city," LeFrak said. "Without a school, we were missing a piece of the puzzle."

Newport had been looking for a school to affiliate with or relocate to its 600-acre premises, just as the Cornerstone School was looking for a new home after the rent was raised on its old Journal Square location across town.

Twenty Newport children were among Cornerstone's 130 students last spring, with their parents' paying $1,500 above tuition for transportation. So Newport knew the school was good enough for the development's affluent, well-educated parents.

The match already seems to be working. Most of the 30 new enrollees this fall are coming from Newport, said Terrence Burrowes, Cornerstone's headmaster. A large banner tells residents the school is coming.

"I keep getting families with 3- and 4-year-olds who call and say that they are happy to know that we are here in this space and can they put in applications," Burrowes said during a tour of the unfinished space.

Newport is a sort of Emerald City of green-tinted office and apartment towers, occupied largely by young professionals, many of them Asian or south Asian immigrants.

Many commute to Manhattan using Newport's own PATH station, and Newport residents are not known to venture far into the rest of Jersey City. LeFrak said the per capita income of Newport's 10,000 residents is above $100,000, triple the rest of the city's.

Frank Belluscio, a spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association, which represents public school districts, cautioned developers against having a kind of bunker mentality toward education.

"You can build your own private school," Belluscio said. "But the quality of the public school system is always going to have an impact on the desirability of the community."

Newport does have some moderate-income residents in apartments set aside in its first buildings, which were constructed in the 1980s with the help of federal infrastructure grant money and local property tax abatements.

William G. Dressel, executive director of the New Jersey League of Municipalities, said that even with a discount, a private school might be too expensive for some Newport residents.

"I can see, yes, it might be an important component of a revitalization effort," Dressel said of the private school. But, he added, "We also have to be concerned with the public education system that we have to date, and it does not really address the education needs of all residents."

For its part, LeFrak said Newport contributes roughly one-third of the entire city's tax levy, which includes local school funding. Yet Newport accounts for only about 4 percent of the city's population, and has little impact on the public schools.

Prilutzky, the technology chief, said he and other Newport residents have talked about breaking away from Jersey City's ills and bills, and forming their own municipality.

"I would be very much in favor of this proposal," Prilutzky said.

Mayor Glenn Cunningham would not be.

"I haven't heard any serious talk about that," said Cunningham, who joked about the prospect. "But that would be a boon to the city, because we would charge them $100 per ounce of water. And access to there would only be through ferry boats."

But Cunningham did have a serious concern about Newport's unofficial disassociation from the city, which the new school has the potential to reinforce.

"I think that's a problem, you can see that in the number of people who vote," said Cunningham, referring to the area's traditional low turnout. "One of the mayoral candidates said this a couple of years ago, 'if you ask some of the people at Newport who the mayor was, they would say it was Giuliani.'"

Cunningham said he had known Cornerstone's late founder, Suzanne Chopp, and called the school "a wonderful institution," and a welcome educational alternative for all city residents.

But, he added, "I would also urge Newport to build a public school."


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