Old school razed in Piscataway

Home News Tribune Online 05/1/07
By GENE RACZ
STAFF WRITER
gracz@thnt.com

PISCATAWAY — The old Holmes Marshall School on River Road was demolished Monday to make way for a new and expanded Nu View Academy....

Built in the early 1900s, the building served the Piscataway school district for years before being bought and then sold by a private day-care vendor. The property is now in the hands of the Middlesex County Regional Educational Services Commission.

"We've used the facility since 2002 and this past year we realized that we had no opportunity to expand," said commission Superintendent Mark J. Finkelstein. "So, what we did was relocate the program temporarily to North Brunswick so that we could tear down the existing facility and build a new one."

The new facility will be 22,500 square feet and will allow the commission to double its enrollment there — up to about 70 pupils ranging in age from 7 through 20.

The expanded Nu View will be a multilevel facility with one level dedicated to classroom instruction and the other used for counseling. The funding source is $9 million in bonds that were issued by the Middlesex County Improvement Authority and guaranteed by the county freeholders earlier this year.

The target date for completion is no later than September 2009.

"I don't believe that there's another program of this type in New Jersey," Finkelstein said. "This is a very unique partnership with the commission and Princeton House — a subsidiary of The Medical Center at Princeton. The students who go to (Nu View) are all students who are classified as behaviorly disabled with a significant need of clinical services. This is the type of population which enrolls students who are clearly not ready for inclusion. These students have not met with success in traditional school settings."

Finkelstein said he expects significant, long-range savings in education spending for school districts using the Nu View Academy, which he said has annual tuitions that are at times $25,000 less than comparable private schools.

He said that transportation costs for some districts also will be 20 percent less at times.

More than anything, Finkelstein said, the expansion was necessary due to demand. The program at Nu View currently accepts students from 16 school districts and has had a waiting list since it opened. At one time or another, nearly every school district in Middlesex County has used the services of Nu View Academy.

"We could have continued to operate the program in the present facility," Finkelstein said. "However, the market demand is so high for the program that we just could no longer allow students to be placed on waiting lists and go unserviced."

The architect for the Nu View Academy is USA Architects. The commission board recently granted approval for the construction project to be put out for bid.

Gene Racz:

(732) 565-7306;

gracz@thnt.com