See $241M Hoboken High School Presentation Using These Links And Documents

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.

Here is a link to the agenda packet (Dec 7) that contains more details.

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

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.

Next Tuesday, another presentation will be made at the Board of Education's regular monthly meeting, which will be held in person at the Demarest School (where Hoboken Middle School is housed).

There will also be documents related to it posted on the web, said 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, but they have not yet been announced.

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 will 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.

The current Hoboken High School building on Clinton Street would become the city's new middle school. 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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