Hoboken Council Moves Forward with Selling Ads on Public Assets

 

Hudson County View is reporting that the Hoboken City Council approved a resolution authorizing the selling of advertisements on public assets to generate new revenues as budget woes are expected to continue in the foreseeable future.

Summer Projects Being Conducted by Students of Dr. Petrosino's Research Methodology Course

 

During the summer of 2026, undergraduate researchers working with Dr. Anthony Petrosino will engage in an impressive range of scholarly projects spanning the humanities, social sciences, education, engineering, physics, biomedical sciences, public health, and community-based research. Collectively, these projects demonstrate the breadth of undergraduate research opportunities available at Southern Methodist University and highlight the important contributions students are making to both disciplinary knowledge and societal well-being.

Several students will participate in research focused on understanding and improving the human experience through education, history, psychology, and community engagement. Projects include archival investigations of male same-sex culture and sexuality in nineteenth-century America, qualitative studies examining instructional practices for multilingual learners, and virtual reality-based research exploring resilience, racial stress, and health outcomes among Black young adults. Other students will investigate issues of infrastructure equity in Dallas neighborhoods, examining how transportation systems, public spaces, and community resources shape residents' quality of life and opportunities.

A number of students will pursue research addressing pressing health and healthcare challenges. These projects include developing integrative healthcare frameworks for Native American and Hispanic children experiencing healthcare burdens, investigating molecular mechanisms underlying epilepsy through the study of JAK/STAT signaling pathways, and advancing nanopore technologies for single-molecule detection with potential applications in medical diagnostics and disease detection. Together, these studies seek to improve health outcomes, expand scientific understanding, and inform future interventions and treatments.

Students will also contribute to cutting-edge scientific and technological research. One project focuses on computational modeling in high-energy particle physics, evaluating the feasibility and scientific potential of future muon collider technologies that may help answer some of the most fundamental questions about the nature of the universe. Another project explores advances in nanopore fabrication and sensing technologies, bringing together principles from engineering, physics, chemistry, and biology to address complex scientific challenges.

Across these diverse settings, students will work in laboratories, archives, classrooms, community organizations, research centers, field sites, and high-performance computing environments. They will employ a wide variety of research methodologies, including qualitative interviews, ethnographic observation, archival analysis, computational modeling, geographic information systems (GIS), laboratory experimentation, molecular biology techniques, and advanced data analysis. These experiences provide students with opportunities to develop both technical expertise and a deeper understanding of the research process itself.

A common theme uniting these projects is a commitment to addressing real-world problems through rigorous inquiry. Whether investigating educational equity, healthcare access, community resilience, infrastructure improvement, scientific discovery, or historical understanding, students are engaging in research that has the potential to inform policy, improve professional practice, advance scientific knowledge, and strengthen communities.

Most importantly, these projects reflect the central goals of undergraduate research: fostering curiosity, developing scholarly skills, encouraging interdisciplinary thinking, and preparing students to become future researchers, professionals, and leaders. The summer 2026 cohort represents an outstanding example of how undergraduate research can simultaneously advance knowledge and create meaningful opportunities for student growth and development.

Hoboken's Enrollment Numbers: Everyone Deserves More Transparency

Every year, the Hoboken Board of Education develops a budget based on how many students it expects to enroll in the coming school year.

Those projections matter.

Enrollment estimates influence staffing decisions, facility planning, classroom needs, state aid discussions, and local tax levy decisions. When enrollment projections are inaccurate, the effects can ripple throughout the entire budget.

Recently, I reviewed ten years of enrollment data reported by the Hoboken School District. Specifically, I compared the district's projected enrollment with the actual enrollment that eventually occurred.

The results are interesting.

First, the data do not show a clear pattern of the district always overestimating enrollment. During the last ten years:

• Five years were overestimated.
• Four years were underestimated.
• One year was exactly correct.

On average, the district overestimated enrollment by about 53 students per year.

That finding alone would not be particularly alarming.

However, averages can sometimes hide important details.

The bigger issue is the size of the forecasting errors.

Over the last decade, the district's projections missed actual enrollment by an average of approximately 203 students per year. In four of the ten years reviewed, the estimate was off by more than 200 students.

The most striking example occurred during the 2020-21 school year.

The district projected enrollment of 4,036 students.

Actual enrollment was 3,048 students.

That is a difference of 988 students.

Nearly one thousand students.

To put that in perspective, if educational spending exceeds $20,000 per student, a forecasting error of that magnitude involves planning assumptions worth many millions of dollars.

Yet the district has never publicly explained how such a large error occurred.

That should concern taxpayers.

The district develops its own enrollment projections. These projections are then used to help justify staffing decisions, budget requests, and long-term facility planning. Because these numbers are so important, residents should understand how they are calculated and what safeguards exist to ensure accuracy.

Instead, the public is largely asked to trust the projections without seeing the methodology behind them.

Good government should not work that way.

Let me be clear. The available data do not prove that anyone intentionally inflated enrollment numbers. The evidence simply does not support that conclusion.

But the data do support several reasonable questions:

• How are enrollment projections developed?
• Why have projections missed actual enrollment by hundreds of students in several years?
• What caused the nearly 1,000-student error in 2020-21?
• Has the forecasting process been independently reviewed?
• What changes have been made to improve accuracy?

These are not hostile questions.

They are responsible questions.

When taxpayers are asked to support a school budget that now exceeds $100 million, transparency should be expected, not resisted.

An independent enrollment audit would not be an accusation of wrongdoing. Rather, it would provide an objective review of the forecasting process and help build public confidence in future budget decisions.

The goal should not be to assign blame.

The goal should be to ensure that enrollment projections—which influence millions of dollars in spending and taxation—are accurate, transparent, and supported by evidence.

Hoboken taxpayers, parents, teachers, and students all benefit when public institutions openly explain how important decisions are made.

Based on the last decade of enrollment data, I believe that conversation is overdue.

One statistic I would highlight in any public discussion is not the average overestimate of 53 students, but the average forecasting miss of 203 students per year. That number captures the real issue: not whether the district consistently predicts too high or too low, but whether the forecasting process is sufficiently accurate and transparent for decisions involving more than $100 million in annual public spending.

ON ROLL REGULAR AND SPECIAL EDUCATION 

YEAR	ESTIMATE	ACTUAL
10/15/26	4839
10/15/25	3970	3740
10/13/24	3441	3567
10/13/23	3195	3444
10/15/22	3064	3152
10/15/21	3083	3021
10/15/20	4036	3048
10/15/19	2846	3085
10/15/18	2723	2755
10/15/17	2618	2635
10/15/16	2723	2541
10/15/15	2705	2659
10/15/14	2571	2571

The Resistance of High Performers

 

Shaping- Hoboken, NJ

One of the most challenging lessons I have learned across my professional life is that organizations do not always resist poor performance; sometimes they resist high performance. A recent article reflecting on Luis Velasquez’s Harvard Business Review essay, “Why Effective Leaders Get Branded as Problems,” argues that effective leaders and employees are often misdiagnosed as the source of organizational conflict when, in reality, they are exposing deeper organizational weaknesses. I found the argument both compelling and familiar. I would also like to acknowledge a colleague of mine, Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig of Western Michigan University and a former colleague at The University of Texas at Austin for his original post on his blog known as CLOAKING INEQUALITY. 

Throughout my career, I have worked in schools, universities, and research organizations undergoing periods of growth, stability, and decline. As Assistant Superintendent of Schools in Hoboken, I learned that efforts to increase accountability, use data more effectively, or challenge longstanding assumptions often generated resistance. The resistance was rarely about the specific proposal. More often, it stemmed from the discomfort that accompanies change and the visibility that change creates.

I have seen similar patterns in higher education. As a tenured faculty member and later as Associate Dean for Research, I worked with talented colleagues who pushed institutions to improve. They asked difficult questions, challenged inefficient processes, pursued ambitious goals, and sought evidence to guide decision-making. While these behaviors are often celebrated rhetorically, they can become politically complicated when they expose complacency, outdated practices, or low expectations.

The article makes an important distinction: not every critic is correct, and not every high performer is misunderstood. However, organizations should be cautious when they consistently label their most productive and committed people as “difficult,” “impatient,” or “not team players.” Sometimes those labels reflect genuine interpersonal challenges. Other times they serve as a convenient way to avoid confronting larger organizational problems.

As a researcher, I am particularly drawn to the article’s discussion of evidence versus narrative. Organizations frequently rely on stories, reputations, and historical perceptions rather than current evidence. Once individuals acquire a reputation—whether positive or negative—that narrative can become remarkably resistant to change. In educational settings especially, memory often proves more influential than data.

Perhaps the most troubling consequence is the message sent to future leaders and employees. When organizations punish urgency, candor, innovation, and accountability, others quickly learn to remain silent. Over time, the culture begins rewarding comfort rather than improvement. The people most committed to the mission either disengage or leave altogether.

My own experience suggests that successful organizations are not those without conflict. Rather, they are organizations capable of distinguishing between destructive criticism and productive discomfort. Growth requires friction. Improvement requires honest conversations. Effective leaders and employees should not be judged solely by whether they create tension, but by whether that tension helps move the organization toward better outcomes.

The article serves as a valuable reminder that when organizations repeatedly identify their strongest contributors as the problem, it may be worth asking a different question: Are these individuals creating dysfunction, or are they simply making existing dysfunction impossible to ignore?

Why It Pays to Overproject Enrollment in Hoboken....and in New Jersey

For years, Hoboken school officials have justified major tax increases by projecting sharp enrollment growth that never materialized. In 2020, the district projected 2,514 K-12 students and secured a 7.95% tax levy increase worth $3.7 million, citing nearly 300 new students. Actual enrollment was about 2,238 students, missing the projection by roughly 276 students and raising concerns that repeated enrollment overestimates have cost Hoboken taxpayers millions of dollars. This tendency also led to a failed attempt at justifying a new High School as well as inflating the yearly budget. Turns out there may be some specific reasons for doing so as this post clearly addresses. -Dr. Petrosino 

The Statutory Flaw

The fundamental flaw in the New Jersey tax levy framework is that it permits school districts to permanently increase their base property tax levy using an enrollment adjustment waiver based entirely on projected student growth, yet provides no mechanism to reset the baseline or refund local taxpayers if those students never materialize. Because the state calculates each subsequent year's 2% cap against the previous year's artificially inflated tax levy, a district can continuously exploit this "ratchet effect" by perpetually over-projecting future enrollment against lower, actual prior-year counts, systematically stacking permanent tax increases year after year without penalty to the local levy.

The Solution

To eliminate this exploit, the New Jersey legislature must amend the tax levy cap statute to include a mandatory, localized "true-up" mechanism that mirrors how state aid is audited.

• Mandatory Baseline Reset: If a district's actual October 15th ASSA enrollment falls short of the projection used to secure a previous waiver, the exact monetary value of those "phantom" students must be automatically deducted from the subsequent year's baseline tax levy before the new 2% cap is calculated.

• Targeted Surplus Refund: Any excess tax revenue generated specifically from unfulfilled enrollment projections must be legally ring-fenced. Districts must be prohibited from transferring these specific funds into capital reserves, instead, they must be returned as direct, dollar-for-dollar local property tax relief in the following budget cycle.

• Projection Audits: Districts that miss their enrollment projections by a designated margin (e.g., >3%) for two consecutive years should lose the authority to self-certify projections and be required to use an independent, state-appointed demographer for future waiver applications.

Legal Opinion: Bad Faith and Statutory Violation

While the structural lack of a local clawback is undeniably a legislative failure, a persistent and systematic inflation of these numbers by the Board of Education crosses the line from aggressive budgeting into an active violation of the statute. New Jersey law implicitly and explicitly requires that municipal budgeting and state aid applications be conducted in good faith, utilizing empirically sound methodology for demographic forecasting.

A multi-year pattern of aggressively over-projecting enrollment—followed by immediate, predictable shortfalls the following year—demonstrates that the district is not making genuine, margin-of-error demographic mistakes. Rather, it suggests they are knowingly submitting fabricated projections with the specific, deliberate intent to artificially trigger the N.J.A.C. 6A:23A-11.2 waiver and subvert the 2% cap. When a board purposely falsifies data to manipulate a statutory formula, it is no longer operating within the legal bounds of a "loophole." They are violating the fundamental fiduciary and administrative requirements of the statute, effectively committing administrative fraud to illegally exact taxes from the public.

Summary and a Sacrificial Plan to Move Board of Education Elections to April and Vote on the School Budget

Concerned citizens in Hoboken who want to move Board of Education elections from November back to April — while also restoring public votes on the annual school budget — would need to organize a serious public campaign.

The first step would be forming a citizen committee focused on taxpayer oversight, public accountability, and school governance transparency. The group would likely need legal guidance from an attorney familiar with New Jersey election law because petition rules and deadlines are very strict.

Under New Jersey law, citizens may be able to place a public question on the ballot through a petition process. Based on recent voter turnout in Hoboken, organizers would likely need between 4,000 and 5,000 valid signatures from registered voters, though campaigns usually try to collect far more in case signatures are challenged or rejected.

The campaign would also need to educate residents on why the issue matters. Supporters would likely focus on the sharp rise in school taxes over recent years and argue that residents deserve a direct voice in school budget decisions. Public meetings, social media outreach, neighborhood canvassing, and community forums would all play important roles.

At the same time, supporters may also try to persuade the Hoboken City Council to act directly. New Jersey law appears to allow municipal governing bodies to move school elections back to April by resolution without requiring a separate referendum.

One important challenge is that recent changes in state law may limit whether April elections automatically restore full annual budget votes. Because of this, the campaign may also require advocacy at the state level to fully restore yearly public budget approval.

Proposed Timeline for a Hoboken 2026 Referendum Campaign

May–June 2026
Form a citizen committee focused on restoring annual voter oversight of the Hoboken Board of Education budget. Recruit volunteers, identify community leaders, create social media pages, and consult with an attorney familiar with New Jersey election law. Research exact legal requirements, filing deadlines, and signature thresholds with the Hudson County Clerk and Board of Elections.

June–July 2026
Draft official referendum language and petition forms. Begin outreach to civic groups, neighborhood associations, taxpayers, parents, and residents. Hold informational meetings explaining why supporters believe residents should vote yearly on the school budget. Launch a public education campaign focused on transparency, accountability, and rising school taxes.

July–August 2026
Begin the signature collection phase. Based on voter turnout estimates, the campaign will likely need approximately 4,000–5,000 valid signatures, though organizers should aim for 5,500–6,000 to account for rejected signatures. Volunteers should canvass heavily at parks, public events, PATH stations, community gatherings, and door-to-door.

Mid–Late August 2026
Submit petitions before the legal filing deadline, likely at least 60 days before the November election. Election officials will review signatures for validity. Opponents may challenge signatures or petition wording, so legal preparation is critical.

September 2026
If the petition is certified, the referendum question will officially appear on the November ballot. The campaign should shift into voter outreach mode through mailers, debates, public forums, endorsements, social media, and local press coverage.

October–Election Day November 2026
Conduct a full get-out-the-vote effort. Focus messaging on restoring taxpayer oversight, improving transparency, and giving Hoboken residents a direct voice in major school budget decisions.

November 3, 2026
Election Day. Hoboken voters decide whether to move Board of Education elections to April and restore stronger public oversight mechanisms related to school budgeting.