Current demographic studies show a growing demand for preK and elementary school classrooms across Jersey City with more than half of the need concentrated downtown. The PS37/Cordero Annex in downtown Jersey City currently provides educational space for sixty 3-year-old and 4-year-old students with the potential to serve hundreds more. The city administration is evicting the public school from the building as of September 2014.

If the city evicts the preK students, 3-year-old and 4-year-old children will be bused to other schools in the district. Some will be housed in trailers on the grounds of those schools due to their own capacity constraints. Other schools will fill to capacity leaving fewer classroom seats for the children living in those neighborhoods.

The PS37/Cordero Annex, a well-functioning school building, will sit empty for the 2014-2015 school year unless it is leased to a private or charter school, or it is sold to a developer and demolished for private development.

For the good of Jersey City, this school building should remain a public school for the city’s children.

To read the current Jersey City Board of Education demographic studies, please click here for Volume 1 and here for Volume 2.