An ongoing series about the challenges Jersey City will face as it moves beyond the construction boom
Last April, Pam Andes thought she had it all planned out. The Hamilton Park resident would secure her 3-year-old son Aris a spot at St. Bridget’s, a parochial school on Montgomery Street with a good reputation, by being first in line on registration day.
Andes worried that the competition for a limited number of spaces in the school’s Abbott program would be tight, but her friends and family didn’t see what the big deal was. “When I spoke about the expected overpopulation of toddlers, everyone looked at me as if I had said the sky is falling,” Andes recalled. Convinced that she was overreacting, Andes reluctantly agreed to not show up for registration too early.
“Not too early” meant 4:30 a.m. So Andes and her husband arrived at St. Bridget’s before sunrise – but not before 40 other families, who were already standing in line. More children were turned away from St. Bridget’s that day than were accepted, and in September Aris was set to attend his first day of school at P.S. 3 – his parents’ third choice.
And then there’s Downtown resident Felicia Palmer, who was told by several school administrators not to bother bringing her 3-year-old son Jordan to tour the schools because their waiting lists were already too long.
Palmer and Andres are hardly alone. Countless young families in Jersey City have stories just like theirs – stories of too many kids and too few seats.
And no one expects the competition to get any easier. Christ Hospital reported “unprecedented growth in the number of newborns” last year, boosting suspicions that classrooms will soon have to accommodate a new wave of children. Thousands of additional students are expected to crowd into Jersey City schools in the next few years, according to projections by the city’s Board of Education. (The state Department of Education’s estimate, which doesn’t count in-migration, is much lower.) Nor is overcrowding limited to the youngest learners; Dickinson High School is already over capacity by 1,000 students – one-third of the entire student body – according to district records.
THE FERVOR WITH WHICH young families compete for the city’s elite schools indicates just how tight classroom space has become. It also suggests that the alternatives – the public schools – are undesirable to many.
Fair or not, the perception of a struggling school district persists, despite years of steady improvement and a recent state decision returning partial control to local officials. (See Sidebar 2, below.) State District Superintendent Charles T. Epps Jr. notes that test scores have shown improvements, achievement gaps between students of different incomes and races have narrowed, and the percentage of high schoolers who stick with it for all four grades is the highest in 25 years. But many remain unconvinced.
“It’s very easy to sit on the outside and never visit the school and just read the paper and just get an impression of what you see,” said William DeRosa, chairman of the city’s Board of Education. “I think that people who think that way don’t know the whole story. They should go and visit.”
Most city and school officials echo DeRosa’s assertion that parents would change their minds if only they saw the good things happening in the schools. But this is an oversimplification. The perception-versus-reality debate is, by and large, a red herring. It’s not hard to find objective appraisals of the city’s schools, and there’s no secret as to which ones are succeeding and which lag behind. When asked to catalog the city’s best schools, officials and parents rattle off the exact same list.
McNair Academic High School and P.S. 16 are often cited as high performers, but the overwhelming majority of the city’s public schools – 27 out of 33 – didn’t meet federal No Child Left Behind benchmarks last year. And the percentage of Jersey City students who hit proficiency goals in 2006 was at least 10 points – and as high as 26 points – behind the state average in every subject area and in every grade for which state statistics were available.
“The numbers…speak for themselves,” said Councilman Steven Fulop, who represents the Historic Downtown area. “We do have some gems academically, and then we have some monstrosities.”
The real bottom line is: Are there are enough quality schools to satisfy the city’s parents? Right now, the ubiquity of tales about lengthy waitlists and heartbreaking lotteries indicates that there aren’t.
AS IMPORTANT AS IT IS to guarantee every child in Jersey City a solid education, there’s even more at stake if the schools fail to earn the public’s confidence.
A generation ago, dissatisfaction with the city’s schools helped speed an unprecedented exodus to the suburbs. “A lot of people moved out of the city because they weren’t happy with the school system,” lifelong resident Barbara Bromirski said. “They weren’t happy with the education that their children were getting. The Catholic schools picked up some of the slack, but they couldn’t do everything. Everyone couldn’t afford the Catholic schools.” The results of this mass departure were devastating: businesses closed up shop, crime rates soared, and the city’s image suffered almost irreparable damage – all in about 30 years.
Most agree that this phenomenon has subsided in recent years, but now that the city’s status is once more on the rise, it’s worth asking: Could it happen again? Could discontent over school quality trigger a new downturn in the city’s fortunes?
Nearly every city and school official who spoke with Jersey City Magazine said yes, it could. Here’s how.
Detailed demographics on the city’s newest residents – those who moved here within the past five or so years – aren’t yet available, but anecdotal evidence suggests that huge numbers of them are young professionals. Not quite old enough to have children of school-going age, and historically easygoing as to where they pitch their tent, they wouldn’t need a lot of convincing to leave Jersey City behind. The prospect of sending their kids to an underperforming school just might tip the scales.
“People will move out of Jersey City and go to the suburbs [to] save private tuition because they’re going to make it up in good public schools. You see that,” said Council President Mariano Vega Jr., a former chairman of the school board. “We can arrest that by improving our schools.”
Here lies a second, more hopeful path that young families could choose to follow: Instead of slipping off to the suburbs, some may stay and fight for better schools.
Many newcomers are taking up the cause of school reform by joining parent groups, attending school board meetings, even seeking to launch their own charter schools. Shelley Skinner, cofounder of the parent-activist organization Jersey City Families for Better Schools, said that many of the 220 parents in the influential group are recent arrivals to the city.
“I have made it my business to be as informed as possible,” Skinner said. “I am trying to reach out. We all need to engage.”
In just the first six months of its existence, JC Families has racked up an impressive list of achievements. In April, they organized a public forum for Board of Education candidates – the first of its kind in Jersey City. And this past summer, they scored a well-publicized meeting with Mayor Jerramiah Healy to air their grievances.
“These people do not want to leave the city…but they’re concerned. They want to make sure their children can be educated,” Healy said. “You didn’t have that 20 years ago.”
IN THIS SENSE, the newcomers represent both the city’s promise and its peril. On the one hand, their presence could galvanize the school reform movement. On the other, their departure could provoke a new recession for the entire city.
So what’s it going to be – fight or flight? Everyone who spoke with us about the issue expressed hope that the newcomers will prove to be the fighting kind. But when asked what could be done to persuade young families that Jersey City schools are worth fighting for, few had an answer.
Until they do, Jersey City runs the risk of falling second to the suburbs in the eyes of many of its young families. One family already on the fence is the McGraths. Kat McGrath said her York Street block is “full” of children on school waiting lists. Her 1-year-old daughter will be heading off to school before she knows it.
“It seems as though the demand outweighs the supply of good schools,” she said. “We may move out if the school system doesn’t get better.”
The assignment for school officials is clear: Convince the McGraths, and families like them, that they have the power to obtain for their children a spot in a good school in Jersey City.
Let us know what you think: jcmag@hudsonreporter.com.
SIDEBAR 1:
HISTORY LESSON
Why the State Took Control
In the 1980s, a statewide education reform movement turned its attention to Jersey City. Driven by dramatic descriptions of decaying schools with graffiti-covered walls, chaotic hallways and, in one memorable account, “copious numbers of dead pigeons” in a school courtyard, the debate made its way to the state legislature. There lawmakers introduced a bill that would grant the state the power to wrest control of failing school districts from local officials.
Other cities had troubled schools, but Jersey City became the rallying cry that sped the bill’s passage. What really set Jersey City apart, according to judges arbitrating legal challenges to the district, was the level of political intrusion by several mayoral administrations, including Gerald McCann and Anthony R. Cucci – both of whom now sit on the city’s Board of Education.
Throughout the long judicial process, judge after judge lamented the “shocking,” “pervasive,” and “bold-faced injection of political considerations” into the schools’ operations. The hiring and firing of employees, they found, were tools to maintain control. Patronage and nepotism were the order of the day. Dissent was squelched through transfers to undesirable positions.
In his decision in the summer of 1989 that effectively handed control of the city’s schools to the state, Judge Ken Springer cited “a disturbing tendency to elevate personal loyalties and friendships over the needs of the children.” The “floundering district,” Springer wrote, was incapable of fixing its own problems. “Jersey City’s children have already waited long enough for the thorough and efficient education to which they are legally entitled.”
On Oct. 4, 1989, as schoolchildren sat at their desks, the school board and high-level administrators were forced from their offices, and control of the district was transferred to the N.J. Department of Education. It was the first time in the nation’s history that a state usurped control of a local school district.
Despite the horror stories that preceded their arrival, state officials who came to Jersey City that autumn still managed to underestimate the situation they were entering. “No amount of previous documentation and planning was enough to prepare us,” one state administrator said shortly after the takeover. Poor record-keeping practices and “managerial ineptitude” made the job of untangling years of fiscal mismanagement a chore.
The state had a five-year mission to clean up the city’s schools, but quite a few locals figured that state officials, certain to be overwhelmed by the immense task, would simply declare victory after year five and pack up shop. “I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the district figured out some way to declare Jersey City cured and got out,” one school principal said not long after the takeover.
Such predictions, of course, turned out to be wrong. Five years eased into 10, then 15. This season marks the 18th year since the takeover. – CZ
SIDEBAR 2:
IN THE WORKS
The Return of Local Control
When the N.J. Department of Education decided this summer that the Jersey City Public School District had earned the right to regain control of certain aspects of its governance, many local officials were nothing short of elated.
Mayor Jerramiah Healy praised “everyone in the Jersey City schools who work so hard to do the best job possible.” School board chairman William DeRosa said he was “pleased.” Not to be outdone, Superintendent Charles Epps declared himself “ecstatic.”
It’s easy to see the state’s decision to return key areas of control to local officials as a bit of unconditional good news. After all, an extensive state-run review had given the district high marks in two out of five subjects, Fiscal Management and Governance – a better result than those achieved by all the other cities that were examined. After nearly 18 years of powerlessness, elected representatives would finally be making the decisions that directly affect the city’s children.
But not everyone was so easily impressed. Two out of five ain’t bad, but it ain’t spectacular either. “What is Governance? That just means the school board knows what they are doing,” said board member Gerald McCann, who was mayor at the time of the state takeover. “And the Finance Department knows how to take care of their business. But what about the other areas?” The lowest of the district’s five scores – 57 out of 100, a failing grade – was in the area of Instruction and Program, that is, in actually teaching the students.
But McCann did say he saw a positive in the news.
“It’s a step in the right direction, because ultimately, Jersey City knows what’s best for their schools,” McCann said. “I was in favor of the takeover, but I realize that the state has no idea what they are doing.”
Expressing skepticism of a different sort was Lorenzo Richardson, an accountant with the Urban League of Hudson County and a frequent presence at Board of Education meetings.
“There were audits done that found all kinds of wasteful spending,” Richardson said, referring to a state inspection last year that questioned the necessity of millions of dollars’ worth of overtime pay for school maintenance workers. “If that goes back to local control, I would like to see the books.”
And as for that part about elected representatives calling the shots, well, that’s still up in the air. By the end of next year, the Board of Education will request a special election to decide whether the new, locally controlled board will be elected directly by the public or appointed by the mayor. – CZ & RK