Mayor Fulop, Jersey City Board of Education bump heads over pre-K centers

By Terrence T. McDonald/The Jersey Journal
March 03, 2014 at 8:35 AM

The Jersey City Board of Education?s refusal to support a city plan for the school district to spend more than a half-million dollars to lease space for pre-K centers in two proposed residential developments may be straining the normally agreeable relations between Mayor Steve Fulop and the school board, whose nine members were elected with the mayor?s backing.

Board members have told Fulop that they don?t have the funds to lease the space, but Fulop says the board only wants to subsidize pre-K programs in the more affluent sections of the Downtown.

Fulop took the argument public Thursday night during his State of the City address when, with Schools Superintendent Marcia V. Lyles sitting in the second row, he chastised the district and said it ?must do a better job of budgeting.?

The mayor?s plan is to have developers build pre-K centers in exchange for tax breaks at the Gloria Robinson Court Apartments on the West Side, also known as the old ?Duncan Projects,? and at a proposed residential development at Ninth and Brunswick streets in the Downtown. The BOE would rent the pre-K centers with the city kicking in some of the rent money for the Gloria Robinson pre-K and obtaining discounted rent for the other, Fulop said.

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