In an editorial, Jersey City resident and Public School No. 16 parent Jeremy Ng questions if local children have the right to go to school near where they live.
Downtown Jersey City is one of the most walkable neighborhoods in the United States.
But for the past decade, some of the city’s youngest learners—3 and 4 year olds—have been spending an hour each day on the bus, commuting to the Danforth Avenue Early Childhood Center almost 5 miles away.
And starting next year, they will be joined by kindergarten.
The policy is the result of a spectacular lack of planning by the Jersey City Board of Education (BOE), which in 2025 unveiled an annual budget of more than $1 billion or $37,700 per student, 75% higher than the NJ state average.
Instead of sparkling new facilities, children at PS16 in the Paulus Hook neighborhood are being bused to a 120-year-old building previously deemed unfit for students at PS20, and marked for decommission.
Parents report frequent heat outages in winter months, and the building has a history of mice infestations and gas leaks.
Now, planned construction on the 3rd floor to prepare the building for kindergarten threatens to disturb asbestos-related materials, and the district has yet to release a pre-renovation asbestos survey or abatement plan.
Jersey City Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Norma Fernandez wrote in a letter to parents that the move was prompted by “a critical capacity crisis driven by significant enrollment growth”, citing a 278% rise in student numbers since 2010.
But the BOE’s own data shows most of the increase taking place prior to 2022, leaving parents confused as to why the move is happening now.
Efforts to expand PS16’s footprint resulted in a new annex being built in 2021, supposedly to house the kindergarten children who are now being moved to Danforth, but no further progress has been made despite the proliferation of new high-rises, restaurants, and gyms.
In 2024, midway through her three-year term, Dr. Fernandez received a 25% pay increase from the BOE, making her the highest-paid school administrator in the state.
For parents, many important questions remain unanswered.
The district has yet to share information on whether existing kindergarten teachers will move to Danforth, how the new location will handle clubs and activities, or—crucially for many parents—how construction will be carried out while protecting the health and safety of their children.
Over the weekend, parents were tipped off to contractors from Lesco Services, a company specializing in asbestos removal services, carrying out work in the Danforth building, despite Dr. Fernandez’s promise that “there is no construction currently taking place.”
In 2024, the BOE was involved in a School Ethics Commission complaint that claimed unauthorized construction in PS39 had exposed students and staff to hazardous chemicals, although the case was ultimately dismissed for an untimely filing.
An attempt to address these concerns at a recent BOE meeting resulted in time for public comments being slashed to a single minute, following a motion from Vice President Dejon Morris, a former police officer who resigned from the department after being suspended for misconduct.
More than 100 parents and students attended the meeting, and waited three hours for their turn to speak.
At the same meeting, President Noemi Velazquez, who like Morris is part of the Education Matters slate that has dominated the BOE, was forced to apologize for racist comments made towards fellow Trustee Lorenzo Richardson following a performance celebrating Black History Month.
Despite its billion-dollar budget, the BOE claims that it has no money for a new school building, and has asked parents to contact the New Jersey Schools Development Authority on its behalf.
But even if funding is secured, the densely-packed downtown area lacks an obvious site for the school, and the city has given property developers few incentives to change that. As concerned parents of PS16 children, we demand that our elected officials do better.
But until the deadlock can be broken, our youngest learners will continue spending their mornings and evenings on the bus—time that directly takes away from their learning and play—while the city continues to build new buildings, with new homes, for new families.
Elephant in the room.
1/4 to 1/3 of them are illegal aliens, so they don’t have a right to freeloading to begin with. Be it version with school bus or not. John Heinis conveniently omits the burden upon the rest of us. That should be a priority. Not calculating inconveniences endured by illegal aliens. 1/4 of $1B budget takes a lot of taxpayers to maintain.
Unfortunately for parents of students zoned to PS16, elections have consequences. Parents “downtown” have voted overwhelmingly for education matters slated school board candidates since I have been tracking this. The teachers union and their candidates do not care about your kids or your inconveniences.
Ps: there are plenty of schools that are walkable in Jersey City, you choose live in the zone for the most sought after school in the city, you are asking for this.
This is what happens when the previous Mayor Fulop during his terms as mayor and councilman bowed down to the developers and allowed them to keep making buildings with abatements where tax dollars do not come to the public schools and other city needs like parks, parking, and other needs of the people. While the City expects people to pay high taxes because the developers do not need to pay their taxes. You can’t blame the BOE when for years many people in Jersey City complained to Fulop that the developers are doing too much building and turning Jersey City into another Manhattan. Plus you have many NYC residents living in Jersey City who do not pay their taxes to NJ while Jersey City residents pick up the tax tab. People act like the BOE is in charge of real estate when the Jersey City Mayor in the past gave nods to developers to build as many buildings as they want without any consideration of schools, parks, parking for those who rely on street parking, and among other concerns by people. Right now, you got more buildings in plan for that area of downtown and other areas of JC. BOE and public complained but Fulop needed campaign funding for governor race from the developers. It’s time to change city laws and stop all these developments. People also complain about high cost of living in downtown too. Blame the source which is Fulop allowing this to happen to downtown because he wanted another NYC to Jersey City.