New $241M Hoboken High School To Be Presented At Meeting Tuesday

HOBOKEN, NJ — The Board of Education will hold its first public presentation about the proposed new $241 million Hoboken High School building before the city's Planning Board meeting this coming Tuesday via Zoom.

The public won't get to comment on this presentation, but they will be able to comment at the meetings after that.

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The following Tuesday, Dec. 14, another presentation will be made at the Board of Education's regular monthly meeting at 7 p.m. It will be held in person at the Demarest school building on Fourth Street. The public can comment at that meeting.

"That presentation will be also available afterwards on board docs, YouTube, etc.," noted Hoboken Board of Education President Sharyn Angley on Thursday.

Angley said that there will be other public meetings scheduled between mid-December and the Jan. 25 referendum on the building.

The proposed building would be erected at the present site of the Hoboken High School athletic field at Tenth and Jefferson streets. READ MORE: New Hoboken High School To Go To Planning Board Next Month

School districts often hold several meetings with the community before such a referendum is held.

The New Jersey School Boards Association, in giving guidelines for such referenda, noted, "The most important guideline for board members to remember is that providing objective information about the potential benefits and disadvantages of a proposed bond referendum is almost always legal. However, board members must be careful not to use their official positions to convince school district residents to vote yes or no."

The Plan

The Hoboken Board of Education said in a message to the school community last month that the new building was proposed due to enrollment increases and due to the aging of the district's school buildings, some over a century old.

The building would contain a new athletic field on its roof. The new building would also contain an ice rink and the long-promised city pool.

The present high school on Clinton Street was built in 1962, and is the newest of the district's buildings.

That building would become the city's new middle school, NJ.com said. The existing middle school, now held in a 110-year-old former high school once attended by Frank Sinatra, would be turned into an elementary school.

Cited Enrollment Trends

The board said that district enrollment has been growing since 2015, reversing a trend in the previous decades.

As of October 2020, the district had 2,667 "regular on roll full-time" students, according to school documents, as well as another 381 full-time special education students, for a total of 3,048 students.

The mile-square town has 53,000 residents, including many young families who have been staying in town longer than in past years. READ MORE: New Hoboken High School To Go To Planning Board Next Month

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