Dear Editor:
Superintendent Patrick Gagliardi is moving ahead with the plan to house all of Hoboken’s 3-year-olds at Brandt Middle School and to put many of these young children on school buses to get them there everyday.
Not only are there serious issues of safety and security that have not adequately been addressed, but this plan also was formulated and approved without any input from parents. In fact, parents of 3-year-olds were kept in the dark because the superintendent knew this would become a “public relations nightmare,” in the words of one day-care provider.
Come September, 3-year-olds from across the city will be expected to converge on one single school. The high school students are the only other age group expected to get from every corner of Hoboken to one site. Many of the preschoolers will be asked to walk quite a distance considering their age. Others will be expected to ride school busses five days a week, twice a day, all year long. I ask you to imagine the scene of 3-year-olds (some of whom will still be 2 when school starts) getting on and off buses. Will they be picked up at their homes or made to wait on street corners? Will they get the equivalent of car seats? And Brandt, located at Ninth Street between Park and Garden, is certainly not set up for all the parents who may then drive their children, who cannot merely be dropped off with a wave goodbye.
As for security, any parent of a 3-year-old must be concerned, if not downright worried, about his or her youngster in a large building populated mainly by hundreds of pre-teens and teenagers. We will have to dodge the police officers breaking up the fights on the corners in order to get our children into the building.
In addition, the 3-year-olds will be excluded from an elementary-school setting. This won’t help parents to grow in confidence that the elementary schools are doing a good job of educating the older children. And it hurts the district’s goal of keeping children in the public schools rather than losing them to charter or private schools.
A few years ago the superintendent surveyed the parents of fifth graders and found strong opposition to putting those children in the middle schools; he went along with those parents. No one bothered to survey the parents of the 3-year-olds because, I was told, they are not yet in the system and the children don’t have a connection to a building. But many of us already have older children in the schools and could easily have been contacted there. < And what about putting an ad in the paper or writing a letter to the editor soliciting opinion? Perhaps some parents who live in the vicinity wouldn’t mind having their preschoolers go to Brandt. So why not make Brandt an additional site for 3 or 4-year-olds? This would have the added benefit of keeping some siblings together. Or how about putting the fifth graders in the middle school? When I moved to Hoboken a year ago, I was warned by many people to stay out of the public schools. But I enrolled my 4-year-old at Wallace/Mile Square and have not regretted it. What I particularly liked was the concept of a neighborhood school just a short walk from my home. I could enroll my children at age 3 and leave them there for years, developing relationships within one school. Now I remember what it is about public school districts that is unnerving: Decisions are made about our children without our input. Let me be blunt: This plan is being pushed down our throats. I sent a version of this letter to all nice members of the school board and not one responded. I left phone messages with most of the members but not one returned my call. Thanks to the Abbott decision, 3-year-olds are a part of the Hoboken school system, under the direct administration of the board of education and the superintendent. They should not be treated as second-class citizens herded together in a plan that does not serve their best interests. I encourage all concerned parents to attend the school board meeting on March 12 at 7 pm at the offices at 12th and Clinton. Maureen Sullivan