A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Ridge and Valley Charter School is located in Blairstown. The school is actually situated in Frelinghuysen Township. However, because Frelinghuysen doesn’t have its own post office, the school’s mailing address is Blairstown. The article has been updated to reflect the correct location of the school.
What would education for a sustainable, hopeful future look like?
That’s the question that led to the founding of Ridge and Valley Charter School, or RVCS, in Frelinghuysen. The only charter school in Warren County, the K–8 school first opened its doors for the 2004–2005 school year. In the nearly 22 years since, it has framed its curriculum, organizational principles, and themes around an ethos of ecological sustainability and interconnection.
Today’s holiday, Earth Day, seems like a celebration specifically tailored for Ridge and Valley. That’s especially true given the honor bestowed upon RVCS last year. In May 2025, RVCS earned Earth Charter International’s School Seal. The recognition honors schools that embody the Earth Charter’s four pillars: respect and care for the community of life; ecological integrity; social and economic justice; and democracy, nonviolence, and peace.
The award recognizes three levels of attainment. Ridge and Valley earned the highest level of achievement for the School Seal, the Tree, or Champion, Badge. Fewer than 10 schools around the world have earned the award; RVCS is the first in the United States.
The school community was excited to receive the honor, said Curriculum Coordinator and Leadership Team Member Traci Pannullo. At the same time, they didn’t have to go far out of their way in order to earn it. “As we were going through the indicators,” she said, “it became really clear that we were doing all the indicators above and beyond what the requirements were.”
In the same way, the highly nature-minded school hasn’t planned anything out of the ordinary for Earth Day, she wrote in an email. “We don’t typically have extra, special events on that day because we are celebrating the Earth through our curriculum, family activities and program all year long.”
School as Part of the Council of Beings
Pannullo parallels the origins of the Earth Charter with the founding of the school. Though the two aren’t directly related, they arose around the same time, with roughly the same principles: an increasing concern about worldwide sustainability and the aim to do something about it.
In the late 80s and early 90s, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations Maurice Strong and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev worked to create a document that would serve as the backbone of a worldwide movement toward sustainability. The first attempt came out of the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, in the form of the Rio Declaration. After two more years of advocacy, the Earth Charter emerged in 1994 with sixteen principles organized into four pillars.
In the same years but closer to home, Genesis Farms in Blairstown hosted an ecological learning center that taught classes on “new ways to be in relationship with the natural world.” The thinkers at the learning center envisioned a school for young children that would teach the principles of systems-thinking and interconnection at an early age. The passage of the Charter School Program Act of 1995 allowed charter schools to form in NJ. After much effort, organizing, and fundraising, the school was ready to teach its first students in 2004.
RVCS fulfills many expectations of traditional schooling. There are teachers running classrooms inhabited by students who aim to grow their knowledge and skills across various subject areas. They finish semesters by completing major assessments. Like a district school, charters run on public funding and students must take the New Jersey Student Learning Assessment, or NJSLA, the standardized statewide assessment that’s administered to third graders and above. And for a treat, the school organizes occasional field trips, too.
However, RVCS’s implementation looks quite different. The teachers are called guides, who are more partners in learning than directors with complete control over the learning journey. Classes spend at least 25% of their time outside as part of the curriculum, which often uses natural environments as context.
For example, a class that’s learning multiplication might use the class garden plot as a learning lab. Students would have to figure out how many garlic cloves they could plant in a garden bed using even, adequate spacing. The result: a concrete example of how multiplication actually works, a preview of the concept of area in geometry, and (months later) some actual garlic cloves as a tasty bonus.
The school leans toward this experiential, interdisciplinary, and project-based approach. The hands-on context eliminates some of the artificial boundaries between subject areas while boosting student motivation, Pannullo says. “Children rarely ever ask here, ‘Why do I need to know this?’”
Students also have some agency in what they learn. Starting in first grade, students pursue independent study once a week, choosing their topic based on personal interest.
As for academic performance, parents do get reports on their children’s academics, but not in the form of a traditional report card. Instead, at the end of the winter and spring trimester (the school uses seasonal trimesters), students work with guides to provide an assessment of their work and reflect on their own development.
The Case for an Outreach-Oriented Approach
The learning journey doesn’t happen in isolation, either. The school includes a mandatory school service project, a kindergarten welcoming ceremony in which older students greet the newest and youngest students, and community service projects such as the soup project, in which students glean ingredients from local farms and serve a soup of their own making at local soup kitchens. On an everyday basis, classes meet in a circle to make decisions and resolve conflicts together. The curriculum also positions humanity itself as in community with other beings, including animals and plants, as fellow inhabitants of the planet.
As for the field trips, the school starts overnight expeditions in the early grades, when children camp with their parents on the school’s nearly 18 acres of forest, meadows, orchards, and open fields. The expeditions lengthen and incorporate more planning and student responsibility, reaching their apex in eighth grade when students work together to plan a three-night, four-day trip on the Applachian Trail. That includes planning campsites, packing their own food, making plans for potable water, and figuring out how much each student’s pack should weigh according to their body weight.
Most of RVCS’ graduates don’t go into environmental careers, Pannullo says, but that’s not necessarily the point. In the school’s view, cultivating independent minds has to be part of building a sustainable future.
“The hope is that in the foundational fabric of their childhood, they had experiences that helped them know that there are other creative ways of being in the world, or thinking of solutions, or coming out of a situation and not just accepting the way things are but being curious,” Pannullo said. “Like: well, what else could be? Or how else might we do this? Or how can we include everyone?”
At the end of the day though, sustainability all comes down to performance. Do the numbers add up for Ridge and Valley Charter School? Read more about RVCS’ test scores and funding in the next segment of this exclusive, two-part feature.
Chip O'Chang is an educator, fiction writer, and lifelong resident of New Jersey. He has also written for My Life Publications and NJ Indy. He lives in the NJ Skylands with his partner, two cats, and and a bearded dragon.
- Chip O'Chang, Contributing Writerhttps://ridgeviewecho.com/author/chip-ochang-contributing-writer/
- Chip O'Chang, Contributing Writerhttps://ridgeviewecho.com/author/chip-ochang-contributing-writer/
- Chip O'Chang, Contributing Writerhttps://ridgeviewecho.com/author/chip-ochang-contributing-writer/
- Chip O'Chang, Contributing Writerhttps://ridgeviewecho.com/author/chip-ochang-contributing-writer/
