Dear Editor:
This week twenty-one 6th graders in our community learned that their plan to attend HoLa Charter School for the 7th grade – less than five months away – is being actively thwarted by the Hoboken Board of Education. I can only imagine what it would be like to be 11 or 12-years old and to learn that adults in your community, who have been elected to advocate for the educational and developmental needs of children, are comfortable with placing children and families in a situation of such great uncertainty with so little notice.
My question is this: are the finances of our city and public school district so dire that as a community we need to upturn the lives of twenty-one children in this manner- less than five months before entering the 7th grade?
Given the million-dollar surplus in the Board of Education’s budget this appears unlikely. I am shocked and disheartened that any individual advocating for children in our community, given the wealth of resources that clearly exist to fund multiple lawsuits, would support this choice, and as a parent, as a child psychologist, and as a taxpayer I am truly dismayed.
Dr. Daphne Anshel