By John Burton
TINTON FALLS – It’s a new school year and a new home for Trinity Hall.
The private all-girls, Catholic-based religious and college preparatory high school has started its fourth year of operation in its newly renovated facility.
“Everyone in our community is excited about the location,” said Head of School Mary Sciarrillo.
Trinity Hall late last year acquired the approximately 20,000 square-foot former Child Development Center, a children’s daycare center at 101 Corregidor Road, and its accompanying 7 acres, on the Tinton Falls property that had been part of the now decommissioned Fort Monmouth U.S. Army installation.
According to Sciarrillo, school officials had been working with their contractor, Sweetwater Construction, Cranbury, to prepare the site and adopt it for its uses for the September 2016 start of the school year and were able to complete the work in time.
Given the larger size from its former location in Middletown, the school can accommodate its increased enrollment this year of 159 students and its 35 faculty members. That enrollment number, pointed out Theresa Kiernan, the school’s director of advancement and admissions, represents students in all four grade levels—the first time in the school’s young history. And next spring will also mark the school’s first graduating class of 32 seniors.
The location provides enough class space to eventually accommodate upwards of 200 students, Sciarrillo said. The new facility has four brand new state-of-the-art science labs, open educational space, individual student lockers and is using innovative LED lighting for the educational space. “We paid attention to the smallest details and the largest details,” Sciarrillo offered.
The classrooms, she added, are a “very comfortable, healthy learning environment.”
And ones that don’t have desks in the traditional rows; instead the girls are seated in a semi-circular fashion around the instructor, Kiernan noted.
“Finally, we have a permanent facility that meets the highest level of teaching and learning,” offered Assistant Head of School James Palmieri.
Trinity Hall, Palmieri said, in June 2016 received its accreditation from the New Jersey Association of Independent Schools.
Trinity Hall for its first three years had been using a portion of Croydon Hall, owned by Middletown, a location where the school made improvements for its uses. The agreement had allowed the school to use Croydon Hall for a limited time under state Department of Environmental Protection guidelines for municipal-owned open space properties.
School founders had sought to construct a permanent and multi-structure campus on a large undeveloped and mostly wooded property on Middletown’s Chapel Hill Road. That plan, while eventually winning local planning board approval, faces an ongoing legal battle in state Superior Court as some area residents continue to oppose the plan and school founders continue to fight those efforts to prevent it.
Tinton Falls Mayor Gerald M. Turning Sr., seemingly like school representatives, is delighted Trinity Hall relocated to this location. “It’s a wonderful fit,” for the school’s use, he said, given its proximity to major traffic arteries. “And I think it’s a win for everybody.”
“This is the ideal location,” Palmieri said, “and it really allows us to increase our draw.”
According to Sciarrillo, the school draws students from Middlesex and Ocean counties as well as Monmouth, with students coming from as far away as Toms River to the south and Sayreville and Old Bridge areas to the north. This location makes the commute for both students and staff easily accessible. “It makes a big difference,” for families, Kiernan said.
The current tuition is $16,750 for the 2016-2017 school year, according to the school’s website. In addition to its educational component, the school offers athletics – noted for its soccer program and their 2016 non-public schools championship-winning swim team.
School founders said they saw a need given the lack of an all-girls school in Monmouth and Ocean counties. Sciarrillo said Trinity Hall draws students from both a public and private school background.
“We have a lot of girls who are accomplishing great things,” Sciarrillo said.
