The 10 Boneheaded Decisions by Highland Park Since 1980
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No. 10 - Highland Park School Dilemma
As many people know, we have 3-4 active public schools in Highland Park: Irving Primary School (Pre, Pre-K, Kindergarten and 1st grade), Bartle Elementary School (2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th grades), Highland Park Middle School (6th, 7th and 8th grade) and the Highland Park High School (9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grades). However, I don't think many of the residents of Highland Park realize we once had two more schools. (Remember, Bartle was built for the purpose of dealing with overcrowding among the three active schools at the time).
(Lafayette, 2010, photo by your author)
However, after the construction of Bartle, Hamilton School and Lafayette School began to lose usage. In 1980, we closed Hamilton and sold it to a private group to become a private school. If anyone doesn't know what I am referring to, its now the Center School on Madison and 3rd. Lafayette was kept for another 4 years, but was sold to Kaplan Industries, a DEVELOPER, in 1984. Kaplan turned the school into condominiums, which I think was the lamest decision we could've made. We lack school space as is in Highland Park. Although that was 26 years and no one could have predicted that we'd have a population of 14,332 people in Highland Park. However, we wasted money on an addition to the High School for 7th and 8th graders, and yet I don't think its helped us one bit. If we were that worried about school usage, we should have sold Lafayette to the private school and turned that into the Center School. Hamilton is more than large enough to handle the Middle School's purpose. Plus, it would've saved us money as we never would have needed to upgrade the 1925 building for the Middle School!
Not many people realize how old the original parts of Irving is. The 11th Avenue / Central Avenue wing was built in 1916, just a year after Hamilton was opened. Alexander Merchant designed both schools as Lafayette couldn't handle the growing population on its own. Currently the situation in Highland Park is depressing. The Middle and High School are loaded with drug busts and criminals. My sister who used to go there, thank god she got accepted into the Vo-Tech program in Piscataway, would tell me on days that the police would be there. I mean both places are in really bad shape. If you think High Schoolers are the worst, some of the worst students in Highland Park aren't even in 9th grade yet. Mr. Lassiter and Mr. Williams do a good job running the High School, but its just not enough.
Despite the growing taxes, people are still coming into Highland Park, and as a result, the amount of students are growing. Now that people are demanding a charter school similar to the one East Brunswick got, we need the room! One proposal would be to build on the old Meyer-Rice estate with Kaplan and move out the people in Lafayette or talk the Center School into moving out or subsidizing the school for public usage. Center School is run well from what I know, but we need the room! We screwed our public school system 30 years ago, and we have no room to build another school. We need Hamilton and Lafayette back. Under my proposal:
Highland Park School System:
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Irving School (Preschool - 1st grade)
Bartle School (2nd - 5th grade)
Hamilton School (6th - 8th grade, subsidized Center School)
Highland Park High School (9th - 12th Grades, taking over Middle School portion as well.)
In my opinion, this works. We don't need the new buildings. We need to keep the old.
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