Robert Walden is a retired investigative evidence photographer who is a qualified expert photography witness. He has been chronicling misconduct related to North Bergen’s 17-trailer preschool, which has been illegally situated in Braddock Park for 21 years. Comments may be addressed to bobamongus@aol.com

Officials in the North Bergen School District and Trenton know that “TCU” stands for “Temporary Classroom Unit” and they know TCUs shouldn’t be in service for an indefinite period of time. But they don’t care. In fact, fifteen of North Bergen’s (NB) preschool’s TCU trailers are 21+ years old; two are ten years old. These last two were installed after a  2012 fire destroyed their predecessors at a time when all the TCUs lacked emergency exits. 

This violation wasn’t corrected until after I complained in 2018.

The North Bergen district superintendent falsely claimed afterward that a lack of emergency exits wasn’t a violation. 

The New Jersey Department of Education (DOE) is supposed to inspect TCUs annually using its “Temporary Facilities Checklist.” This rubric contains the provision for emergency exits and quotes N.J.A.C. 6A:26-3.14(g):

A temporary facility may be approved by the Division for a term of two years, with three annual renewals if the District, or the Authority acting on behalf of the District demonstrates satisfactory  progress toward the provision of permanent facilities.

I’m not an attorney, but attorneys have advised me that this regulation means five years is the maximum that TCUs can be approved for operation by NJ DOE. 

So why has a NJ DOE-Hudson County inspector signed off on this checklist, approving these old and outdated TCUs?  

The DOE won’t answer the question.   

The plot thickens: The North Bergen preschool, with its 17 classrooms, is located on approximately two acres of Braddock Park land which is supposed to be protected by the NJ Department of Environmental Protection for recreation/open space use ONLY, not for school use. 

In 2005 the NJ DEP produced a fraudulent compliance inspection report that didn’t mention North Bergen had illegally “diverted” a NJ taxpayer-funded ball field into the North Bergen preschool. 

In 2011, DEP finally reported the illegal diversion, issued violations, and told NB it must remove the  preschool TCUs from the park. 

That was eleven years ago.

In the meantime the school district has disregarded multiple deadlines for removing the TCUs, contending there wasn’t a viable site anywhere in North Bergen for the preschool. 

In 2016, a resident informed the NJ DEP that the 10-acre Hi-Tech High School campus in NB would be vacated and the district could use Hi-Tech for the preschool. Alternatively it could be used as a middle school and, after a district-wide  school reorganization, there would be space in the elementary schools for the preschoolers. DEP directed NB to investigate these ideas as the means of solving NB’s non-compliance with DEP regulations; the district chose the school reorganization plan. 

DEP then gave North Bergen a “cushion” of a September 2021 deadline to remove the preschool from the park. NB agreed to meet or beat the deadline and  submitted its realignment/LRFP (Long Range Facilities Plan) to the NJ DOE, specifying it was subject to a  2018 referendum for funding the reorganization. 

The NJ DOE approved the LRFP and North Bergen voters approved the referendum for $65 million to purchase Hi-Tech High and renovate classrooms district-wide. Afterward, Governor Murphy “gifted” an additional $10 million to North Bergen..

Yet North Bergen disregarded the DEP’s 2021 deadline, saying only that it intends to move some, but not all, of the preschoolers out of the park although there is enough classroom space to move all the preschoolers. 

The district’s enrollment has been steadily declining for a decade and Hi-Tech High added about 2,000 more seats to a school system that enrolls only about 7,000 students. 

Residents, the NJ DEP, and the DOE have been misled and $75 million is being misspent!

North Bergen has the money and the land to build a state-of-the-art preschool if it wanted; instead, it is  currently planning to commercially develop about 45 acres, with no plan to use two acres for a preschool. 

This matter needs to be settled now – there are numerous safety concerns, For example, the TCUs were installed without first conducting a traffic safety study and the 2015 NB-Hudson County  engineering study recommended widening the 1-lane preschool entrance road (used for two-way traffic AND  pedestrians) and installing a sidewalk.

Neither recommendation was implemented. 

In 2001, Assistant Superintendent of Schools/Mayor/State Senator Nick Sacco said, concerning the  decision to move the preschool TCUs into the park,

This is very temporary…As soon as the extension to  Lincoln School is built, we will move the students there.

It never happened. 

It’s more than time for Senator Sacco and the State to fix this nonsense.