CAMDEN As contractors laid groundwork outside for the state's first "Renaissance" school, Gov. Christie and South Jersey political figures gathered inside - at the neighboring Cooper Medical School of Rowan University - to raise silver shovels to ceremonially launch the work.

KIPP Cooper Norcross Academy is slated to be the first of the hybrid district/charter schools established under the Urban Hope Act.

It will open in a temporary facility in the fall of 2014 with 100 kindergarten students, who will then move to the permanent 110,000-square-foot facility for elementary and middle school students in the fall of 2015, organizers say.

"This stuff isn't easy to do," Christie said of turning around the city's struggling public school district, "but nor should it be easy for us to continue to ignore these children. . . . We can rationalize as much as we like, but we have ignored their futures, and today is a symbol of the beginning of the end of that conduct."

The academy was created in a partnership among KIPP Charter Schools; the Cooper Foundation, which is the charitable arm of Cooper University Health Care; and the Norcross Foundation, created by the Norcross family, including George E. Norcross III, who is chairman of Cooper hospital and a managing partner of The Inquirer's parent company, and his brother, State Sen. Donald Norcross (D., Camden).

The facility will be the first of a projected five KIPP schools in a mini-network serving nearly 3,000 children. "Today is the most important day of anything we have ever done for the City of Camden, for the children, and for this region," said George Norcross. "Hopefully this will be replicated throughout this entire city, and 10 years from now children will have the education they deserve."

Under the Urban Hope Act, sponsored by Donald Norcross and Assemblymen Angel Fuentes and Gilbert "Whip" Wilson, both Camden Democrats, up to four Renaissance school operators each may be approved in Camden, Newark, and Trenton. Camden is the only city set to open one.

Two other school operators - Mastery Charter and Uncommon Schools - have been preliminarily approved to open Renaissance schools in Camden. They await final word from the state.

See the original post here:

Work launched in Camden on state's first 'Renaissance' school