Consider the national rankings: No. 13 among 6,707 public K–8 schools, No. 5 among 1,861 charter K–8 schools, No. 27 among 22,536 public middle schools, and No. 75 among 49,731 public elementary schools. Each places HoLa comfortably within the top 1 percent of schools in its respective category.
Closer to home, HoLa ranks No. 1 among public K–8 schools in Hudson County, No. 1 among charter K–8 and charter elementary schools in New Jersey, No. 3 among the state’s public middle schools, and No. 4 among its public elementary schools. These are distinctions that put a Hoboken school in exceptional company.
Yet the program that became HoLa could have been part of the Hoboken Public School District.
While serving in district administration, I supported bringing the dual-language program into our public schools. In 2009, the Board rejected that opportunity. Theresa Minutillo and Rose Marie “Roe” Markle were among the Board members who voted against it. That history matters because today’s success grew from an educational vision the district had the opportunity to embrace.
I subsequently became a founding Board member of HoLa and served for a decade. I am proud of that involvement. But the greater credit belongs to the educators, school leaders, families, and students who turned an ambitious idea into a thriving school.
The opposition did not end with the original rejection. The Hoboken Board of Education later pursued litigation challenging the state’s approval of HoLa’s charter renewal and expansion. The dispute centered on its extension into seventh and eighth grades, with the district raising concerns about segregation and funding. In June 2017, the Appellate Division upheld the Commissioner of Education’s approval of the expansion.
Since opening in 2010, HoLa has accomplished something remarkable within a relatively short institutional history. It has established itself as a leading school in Hoboken, a top school in New Jersey, and one of the highest-ranked public K–8 schools in America.
Rankings cannot capture everything that matters in education. They do, however, give this community a compelling reason to recognize what HoLa has achieved and reconsider the judgments made about its potential.
Hoboken should celebrate this success. Its educational leaders should also learn from it: promising ideas deserve serious consideration, and successful schools deserve support.
Congratulations to the entire HoLa community. You have given Hoboken something extraordinary to be proud of.
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