Perth Amboy Succeeds Where the Hoboken Board of Education Failed- Bringing a State of the Art High School to Town at Minimal Economic Cost to Residents

Visitors got a sneak peek recently at a massive new high school in Middlesex County, one week before students will return to classes. The sprawling new Perth Amboy High School is the largest high school construction project ever funded by the New Jersey Schools Development Authority, state officials said.

The school will enroll approximately 3,300 students, making it one of the largest high schools in New Jersey and larger than some of the state’s colleges.

It cost $283.8 million to build the three-story, 590,000-square-foot high school, state officials said. The state’s Schools Development Authority picked up 98.8% of the cost or $280.5 million with the district picking up the remaining 1.2% or $3.3 million of the construction.

Regular readers of this blog will remember the secretive and ultimately failed proposal for a new high school in Hoboken, NJ where the Board of Education wanted to build a high school completely at the city's own expense by floating a bond that ultimately would have cost the citizens somewhere in the neighborhood of $350,000,000. The public vote on the issue in Hoboken failed overwhelmingly. 

Photos: Ed Murray| For NJ Advance Media