For 23 years, pre-school students in North Bergen have been housed in trailers next to the football field in Hudson County Braddock Park. Will the youngsters ever be diverted to a permanent, classroom setting? Does the NBBOE have a plan? Does the NJDEP have a solution?
Those questions continue to remain unanswered to this day, as the township’s Board of Education and the municipality await the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s diversion plan. The trailers replaced open space in the county park, and Green Acres protocol states that land must be replaced somewhere else in the township. Where, 23 years later, remains the question.
Those opposed to the trailers remaining in the park say the site is also not safe. They say the entrance driveway is too narrow, there is no sidewalk and there is no crossing guard. North Bergen officials say the site is safe and police and a crossing guard are at the site during school hours.
With the North Bergen Board of Education currently constructing a new middle school at the former High Tech High School site on Tonnelle Avenue, one would suspect that once seventh, eighth and ninth graders move into the new facility, scheduled for a September 2025 opening, the pre-schoolers would relocate into the vacated space in the elementary school classrooms. NBBOE officials say until the NJDEP clarifies the diversion plan, nothing has been decided. This includes the potential construction of a permanent, two-story school facility in Braddock Park.
So, residents and township officials wait for the NJDEP’s diversion recommendation…even as the initial, pre-school students who populated the trailers, have now graduated from college.
In February, 2024, NJ DEP asked North Bergen to provide plans for the preschool North Bergen intends to build in Braddock Park to replace its 24 year-old trailer classrooms, as well as provide assurances that North Bergen’s planned preschool will meet State educational safety regulations.
Now eight months later (2 months past DEP’s deadline), North Bergen hasn’t provided NJ DEP with any of the requested preschool information and North Bergen doesn’t intend to.
A few days ago, two North Bergen commissioners stated on camera (see the video embedded in this article), that the Township doesn’t have a preschool plan.
The plan North Bergen previously submitted to NJ DEP likely did not meet State educational regulations and instead of submitting a new plan, one of the commissioners stated that NJ DEP should approve the diversion and then let the Township do as it sees fit for the good of North Bergen’s children.
The continued use of decrepit 24 year-old trailers in a location that does not meet State guidelines for roadways and sidewalks, which lacks proper traffic control, etc. is certainly not in the best interests of North Bergen children.
A pedestrian in a crosswalk walking toward a parking lot the preschool uses was run-over and killed and the police accident report noted the high amount of pedestrian and vehicular traffic in the area due to the preschool – the preschool that shouldn’t be there.
North Bergen officials don’t give a damn about State guidelines, regulations and directives and they treat the public callously and with disregard.
If what has gone on here is not official misconduct, what is?
How dare commissioners call 25 year-old trailers “beautiful facilities” and claim that after a decade of declining school enrollments and the expenditure of $65 million to build a new junior high school, the schools are overcrowded?
There will be more-than-enough room in the elementary schools for all the preschoolers (about 250 in 2023-2024), once the approximately 1,050 6th and 7th graders are moved out of the elementary schools and into the new junior high.
No one denies the park is a beautiful location for a school, but the North Bergen school doesn’t belong in Hudson County’s Braddock Park anymore than a Jersey City school belongs in Lincoln Park. Hudson County’s two great parks, Lincoln and Braddock Park should remain intact and not diverted.
No town should divert county parks in NJ – these parks exist for the benefit of ALL county towns and residents.
The rule of law needs to be enforced and officials who think it’s fine to send children to school illegally in decrepit 24 year-old trailers in a dangerous location should not be tolerated.