"just for the sake of making sure people have their facts right" - Factchecking Comments on the Hoboken BOE Bond Referendum

Zoom Meeting - Dec 1, 2021 

As Councilperson Jabbour points out, it is important that people have the correct information when trying to reach a decision on the upcoming bond issue. In that spirit, I will try to add further information to her comments that were made at a December 1, 2021 Hoboken City Council Meeting. This post includes both a video of her comments along with a transcript. Parentheses have been added for clarity. 

Comments of Councilperson Jabbour  https://youtu.be/OQR4U8jzBWE?t=7052

117:46 i did want to correct i think there was a reference to some of the school choice students with the current high school population and i just want to make sure there's a correction because unfortunately i think there's been a fair amount of misinformation about this um what's included in the referendum and the need for a new high school but just for the sake of making sure people have their facts right (1) there are close to 500 students at the high school currently and about 80 to 90 of those kids are what's called school choice um those are students who are from outside of the district who are enrolled in hoboken for various reasons and if you actually look at that across the whole system the district does the k-12 levels it's (2) about seven percent of the population um so i really think that people need to be very clear about what we're talking about the (3) freshman class is double the size of the senior class um so there is a wave of kids coming um

1) Based on the 2021-22 ASSA report (see Figure 1), there are @433 total students in Hoboken high school (not "almost 500") including "choice" (non resident) students. Omitting non resident students leaves approximately 310 Hoboken resident students in Hoboken High School. There are 123 Choice students in the High School not "80 or 90" (see Figure 2). 

Figure 1: 2021-22 ASSA Report 
Hoboken School District 
Click to Enlarge

2) Depending on whether you include the PK3 and PK4 or K-12 students, the percentage of Choice students in the district will vary. What is clear is that Choice students make up 28.4% of the Hoboken High School population based on 2021-22 ASSA reports. 42 other Choice students are distributed throughout the rest of the district based largely on the sibling preference policy. 

3) This year's Freshmen class (2021-22) was last year's 8th grade (2020-21). This year's senior class (2021-22) was last year's 11th graders (2020-21). According to the NJDOE (see Figure 3), last year there were 127 8th graders in the district and there were 98 11th graders in Hoboken High School. Even taking into account CHOICE students, there are not twice as many 9th graders as 12th graders based on available information. 

Summary: There seems to have been a general trend to estimate or generalize in the direction of favoring the arguments for the upcoming bond issue. 1) 433 is closer to 400 than it is to 500 (FALSE); 2)  7% may be correct depending on which total enrollment is used for the district but 28% of the High School being made up of out of town "Choice" students is equally or more informative (MOSTLY TRUE), and 3) 127 is not double 98 (FALSE). It is possible that the councilperson may have been privileged to information that the Board of Education did not share with the public so we must give some benefit of a doubt. 

Figure 2: NJDOE Data on Distribution of Choice Students
Hoboken School District 
Click to Enlarge 

Figure 3: NJDOE Data on 2020-21 Enrollment 
Hoboken School District 
Click to Enlarge 

Councilperson Tiffany Fischer has come out against the bond issue. For more information CLICK HERE.