Dear Editor:
There seems to be no bottom to the Board of Education’s determination to hurt the city of Hoboken by trying to hurt Hoboken Dual Language Charter School (HoLa).
For the past eight months, the Hoboken school board has spent tens of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money to try to shut down HoLa, a high-performing public school that receives over 200 applications for 22 kindergarten spots every year.
In recent weeks, the Department of Education agreed to look again at the school board’s objections to HoLa. They say that HoLa’s demographics are having an adverse impact on the district’s demographics. But apparently that’s not even good enough for this school board. This week, in court filings, they said they won’t be satisfied with just the Department of Education taking a look at Hoboken demographics again. Instead, their court filings this week specifically target our 21 – 6th graders and are asking for those children to find themselves another school for 7th grade.
How can the school board be so heartless? These are 21 – 6th graders, 70 percent of whom are members of minority groups and 30 percent of whom qualify for free and reduced price lunch, who by the end of this year, will have spent half of their middle school life at HoLa. Why does the school board want to upend the education of these 12-year-olds at such an important educational, emotional and physically developmental time?
Right now dozens of families who relied on the Department of Education’s March 2014 expansion approval are wondering how the Hoboken Board of Ed could be so callous and so wasteful of taxpayer money.
Tell the Board of Education to drop the lawsuit. Instead, as a community, let’s all celebrate the success of this great public school option.
Sincerely,
Zabrina Stoffel