This magazine’s tagline is and always has been “The Essential Guide to Jersey City.” But it wasn’t until about a year ago that I started thinking seriously about what this meant. A good guide, I decided, would know the lay of the land. It would know the path it has followed and the path it is taking. It would prepare its fellow travelers for the road ahead.
If ever Jersey City needed such a guide, it’s now.
As the city undergoes its biggest expansion in a hundred years, the path forward has never been less clear. The road ahead is – sometimes quite literally – shifting beneath our feet. This is why last spring JCMag inaugurated a new series, “Beyond the Boom.”
In this installment of the series, we take a close look at the city’s school system. Too often, discussions of the schools get bogged down in false choices and trivialities. I hope that our story cuts through the clutter to give a levelheaded analysis of the challenges facing the city’s schools – and the possible consequences of not addressing them.
It was my hope that “Beyond the Boom” would be more than just a rehash of the same old debates that clog the council chambers every few weeks, and that the magazine as a whole would act as a leader of sorts, guiding the public discussion. But if JCMag is to continue this way, it will do so under the care of another editor, as this will be my final issue. I’m leaving for a new position in one of the waterfront buildings that have been the surest signs of Jersey City’s new era.
For the past three years, I have attempted to make JCMag as essential to the people of Jersey City as its tagline promises. And I fully expect that whoever takes the publication’s reigns next will make it just as essential to me.
FEATURES
Beyond the Boom: Fixing the Schools
Making sure Jersey City has a first-class education system is more than a debt to the city’s children – it could determine the entire future of the city
Gridiron Greatness
Sportswriter Jim Hague puts the city’s football history under the floodlights
Building an Ecosystem
Liberty State Park will be the site of one of the largest ecological projects in the country, as workers shore up more than 250 acres of the park’s wetland and woodland habitats
DEPARTMENTS
Letters
News to Use
What you need to know
People Power
The Friends of the Loew’s work to restore a landmark
The Gallery
Kayt Hester Lent discusses her masking-tape masterpieces
At Home
Life at the Waldo Lofts
Small-Biz Spotlight
The stained-glass specialists of Artbuilders
Then & Now
How our city once was – and what it’s become
Niche
Meet the girls of the Bridge & Pummel roller derby team
Bookshelf
Read up on the era of Frank Hague
Let us know what you think: jcmag@hudsonreporter.com.