Letter to the Editor: Reaction to Free, Full-Day Pre-K Classes in North Bergen

North Bergen resident Robert Walden submitted the following letter to the editor to Hudson TV following today’s announcement by the Township of North Bergen and its Board of Education that free, full day pre-K classes will be provided to children for the first time beginning in September:

As the community has been saying for years and now North Bergen finally admits, the North Bergen BOE does NOT need to divert Hudson County’s Braddock Park for its preschool.
North Bergen announced that it is moving ALL its preschoolers out of Braddock Park and into NB elementary schools this September.

If North Bergen wants to expand preschool further (there isn’t a demonstrated need to do so), then North Bergen should not discontinue its lease of Polk Street Elementary School (as it is planning to do), and/or North Bergen can build preschool classrooms on its acres of Board of Education owned land on 64th Street, or on lands that North Bergen is currently planning to redevelop.

THERE IS NO NEED FOR NORTH BERGEN TO CONTINUE TO DIVERT LAND IN BRADDOCK PARK.

Preschoolers and teachers will no longer be attending school in unsafe 24 year-old trailers which are situated in a dangerous location.  Hurray!

Robert Walden
North Bergen, NJ