Charles H. Bullock School Gets Star Treatment At Grand Opening

It took two school superintendents, three mayors, 23 school board members, and countless Township Council members to get it built — a cumbersome process that started in 2000. But the Charles H. Bullock Elementary School at 55 Washington Street finally enjoyed its grand opening on Tuesday afternoon, with Dr. Barbara Weller, the principal — as well as dozens of students and parents — looking on with pride.

Hosting the ceremony was Superintendent Dr. Frank Alvarez, who noted that the school was the first new school in Montclair in nearly 80 years.

To rousing applause, he also noted that the building was the first in town to be named after an African-American.

Indeed, Charles H. Bullock, who died in 1950, was the former director of the African-American YMCA. The new school stands on the site of that old YMCA.

"Mr. Bullock was an excellent communicator," Alvarez said. "He dedicated himself to helping others."

One by one, Alvarez pointed out the numerous officials in attendance who had helped make the new school possible.

Among them was Bob Russo, mayor of Montclair from 2000 to 2004.

"I helped make the decision to build it ... I just had to be here," Russo said. "I knew it would happen someday. We needed a new school."

He said it was just a shame that Montclair sold the Grove Street School in the 1980s when student populations were dwindling because "then a new school might not have been necessary."

Mayor Jerry Fried echoed Alvarez' praise of the school. "The opening of this school is truly historic," he said.

Fried remarked that future generations would undoubtedly look back on the opening and wonder how it happened in the midst of a stubborn economic recession.

Meanwhile, Alvarez cited a laundry list of attributes that make the Charles H. Bullock School stand out. Among them: new easels, motion sensors in the bathroom, a massive instrument-filled music room, a regulation-sized basketball court, and a pulping station in the kitchen that separates paper automatically.

"This school has so much to offer," he said.

For her part, Weller has called the geothermal system her favorite part of the school.

"It's not very sexy but the whole building will be air conditioned and the cold is coming from the earth," she said. "And in the winter we don't have to heat any air colder than 54 degrees."

In addition to all the other bells and whistles, perhaps it's the attention to small details that's most impressive. In the spacious nurse's office, for example, there is an examination room as well as stalls surrounded by curtains decorated in a tic-tac-toe pattern.

Even the new blue lockers look clean and shiny.

"It's enough to make the high school students very jealous," Weller said.

The school took two years of construction to complete and many more years of planning to conceive. Weller said the school will house about 400 students but has the capacity for about 600 students.

School officials said that the Charles H. Bullock School actually came in under budget. Originally set to cost $35 million, school board members recently said that now the Township would only need to sell bonds totaling $26 million. Indeed, the construction work itself came in about $4 million under budget. That savings, coupled with $4.8 million in state grants, brought down the overall price of the project.

The new school is a bright spot in a district that's been struggling with budget cuts as it opened for the new year with about 6,615 students. Some 480 students are currently registered for the new kindergarten class.

Last year the district had about 6,500 students and, again, about 480 kindergarten students.

The total number of students has stayed fairly constant in the last few years; in the 2007/2008 school year some 6,562 students were enrolled in the district.