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Pre-K busing in downtown Jersey City's hitting a crisis point, parents say
By
Michael Sol Warren
Published Oct 31, 2026 at 12:00 p.m. ET
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Michael Sol Warren / Gothamist
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Michael Sol Warren
Published Oct 31, 2026 at 12:00 p.m. ET
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A decadelong economic boom has transformed Jersey City’s Paulus Hook neighborhood into one of the most desirable in the city. But the influx of new families has led to chronic and often chaotic overcrowding at P.S. 16, the elementary school that serves the area.
Toddlers in the school’s Pre-K program have to be bused throughout the city because the building has no room for them. District leaders have said for years that busing pre-K students to other city schools was a temporary solution. But next year, all of the kindergartners at the school — which serves students through the fifth grade — will be bused to other locations as well. The issue has become a constant complaint from frustrated parents speaking at school board and City Council meetings, and it’s become a key issue in Jersey City’s pivotal and crowded school board election.
The school is situated amid brownstones, boutiques and brunch spots, but space is scarce in the area, and any building plan would need to be run by state officials who are grappling with even worse overcrowding in other cities.
That leaves Jersey City leaders weighing options no one likes — including the prospect of shuffling kids around further with redistricting. Jersey City often has worse traffic than Manhattan and local parents say during pickup they often wait in the cold without any sense of when their toddlers will be dropped off.
“ If it was a rainy day, we would be out in the rain. We're out in the sun. We've been out in the snow,” said Renee Perna, who has a pre-K student and a first grader at P.S. 16, also known as the Cornelia F. Bradford School. “ If your 18-month-old had an older sibling getting on the bus, you'd be out here with your infant waiting for the bus.”
For now, parents and officials say, students are left competing for space and attention in classrooms never intended to accommodate so many at once.
“My son is going be in a classroom with something like 35 students next year, and he's been in crowded classes since kindergarten,” said Patrick Carr, the father of a P.S. 16 fifth grader. “He started kindergarten with 30, 31 kids. At this point, kindergartens are upwards of 35 to 40.”
Rapid growth
About 68,000 new housing units have been approved in Jersey City since 2015, then-Mayor Steve Fulop said last year.
Much of that growth has been centered downtown and along the city’s waterfront, the areas served by P.S. 16. Enrollment roughly tripled from 430 students in the 2015-2016 school year, to 1,144 in the 2025-2026 school year.
That’s a drastic change for a school that still operates out of a brick building that opened more than a century ago, when Paulus Hook was far less desirable.
“ It was the poorest section of the city at the time it was built,” Norma Fernandez, the superintendent of Jersey City Public Schools, said.. “It was named after Cornelia Bradford, who was an activist in the community who really fought to educate the children of the lowest working classes.”
Today, Fernandez said, P.S. 16 serves the district's wealthiest and most highly educated families. It’s the only school in the district that doesn’t receive federal assistance funding. And it’s one of the most highly rated, highly sought-after schools in Jersey City.
But just 13 new classrooms have been added to the area, all inside an annex for P.S. 16 that opened in 2021 and was designed to accommodate the school's pre-K students. Fernandez said, by the time it opened, enrollment had grown so much that the space was needed for older grades instead.
The busing dilemma
Parents walk their 3- and 4-year-olds to P.S. 16 every morning to load the kids onto buses that line multiple city blocks, while older students play in the school’s courtyard.
Sometimes cars are parked in bus zones from the night before, so the buses have to double park and disrupt traffic, which is typically at a standstill during rush hour downtown. Parents complain that drivers don’t always respect bus stop signs and crosswalks, even after the city added crossing guards to the area.
Perna describes the scene as “mayhem.” She said the evenings can be worse, because of the uncertainty around when the buses bringing kids back to P.S. 16 will show up.
“ In winter when you've got the snow and the ice, and we're out here waiting, and nobody's updating us,” Perna said.
The Danforth Early Childhood Center in the Greenville neighborhood is the main destination for P.S. 16’s pre-K students. The drive can take 30 minutes or more.
Much of Jersey City's explosive growth has been centered downtown and along the city’s waterfront, the areas served by P.S. 16.
Michael Sol Warren / Gothamist
Fernandez said pre-K students are bused instead of older grades because state regulations on class sizes and facilities mean pre-K takes up more space. And she said the resources inside P.S. 16 are better suited for older kids.
“ P.S. 16 has a beautiful auditorium, has a pool,” Fernandez said. “Those are facilities that are put to better use by the older students.”
Carr said he’s sympathetic to the situation district leaders are facing.
“This is a problem that's created by the city ultimately,” Carr said. “ The city is the entity that is permitting all the construction, and the school district just has to cope.”
A small portion of P.S. 16’s kindergartners are already being bused as well, to P.S. 3, about 10 minutes away. Fernandez said she wanted to have all of P.S. 16’s kindergartners bused this school year, but that idea was delayed to the coming year after pushback from parents.
New school unlikely
Most school officials, city leaders and parents who’ve spoken publicly about the overcrowding agree the best solution would be building a new school downtown.
The New Jersey Schools Development Authority typically leads school construction in Jersey City and 30 other districts. But the SDA is chronically underfunded and dedicates its resources based on the needs of the most overcrowded districts, like Elizabeth, Plainfield and Hoboken. Even in the decade where Jersey City P.S. 16 saw explosive growth, enrollment in the district as a whole had shrunk by roughly 2,000 students.
The authority opened new elementary schools for the district in 2016 and 2017, and plans to expand another by 2030, but none have been in the downtown area.
The SDA has long-term plans to replace one of Jersey City’s elementary schools with a new building. It’s unclear which school will get the upgrade — the SDA has identified 20 Jersey City school buildings built before 1950 that need to be replaced. P.S. 16 is one of them.
We're just not at the top of [the state's] list, and so that leaves us having to look for creative ways to get a school.
Eleana Little, member of the Jersey City Council
Mike Yaple, a spokesperson for the New Jersey Department of Education, said state officials are aware of the overcrowding at P.S. 16, but the current long-range facilities plan for Jersey City Public Schools — a document maintained by the district and approved by the state — does not call for a new school downtown. He said district leaders could ask the state to update the plan, but any project would still depend on funding and available sites.
P.S. 16 parents have urged school leaders to update the long-range facilities plan. Fernandez said a new demographics study the district launched this year is the first step toward doing so and said she’s hopeful it will be complete by December.
Leaning on developers
Eleana Little, who represents the ward that includes Paulus Hook on the Jersey City Council, said municipal leaders aren’t waiting for a change at the state level.
“ We're just not at the top of their list, and so that leaves us having to look for creative ways to get a school,” Little said.
The P.S. 16 Annex was built without state money, after the city negotiated with a developer to have the space set aside for a school as part of a community benefits agreement. Fernandez said as part of the deal, the developer sold the space to the school district for $1.
“ Fitting the building to our needs, it's a reasonable cost that we can absorb,” Fernandez said. “Building is not a reasonable cost we can absorb.”
Little said that model is the most realistic path to another school downtown.
“ Every developer that comes and wants to build a high-rise, I ask, ‘Could you do a school at this site? What would it look like with a school?’” Little said.
A proposed residential high-rise the city approved in 2020 included plans to build an elementary school to serve 300 students. But the developer scrapped the project in 2022, according to Jersey Digs.
Little said the 111 First Street project, which is still in its early planning stages, has potential to include a new school. She said Keshav Poddar, the city’s former deputy mayor for housing, had been leading negotiations with the developer. Poddar resigned earlier this month, and Little said she is concerned his departure could hurt the chance for new classroom space.
A spokesperson said Mayor James Solomon, who previously represented downtown on the Council, is committed to addressing P.S. 16’s overcrowding.
“The administration has worked closely and collaboratively with Jersey City Public Schools to explore a range of potential solutions, including options that would require additional investment and others that could be implemented at little or no additional cost,” spokesperson Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione said in a statement.
Pricey leases and looming redistricting
With dim prospects for a new school in the near-term, city leaders have said they are working with the school district to find vacant commercial space downtown that could be leased and converted to classrooms.
Fernandez said city leaders have brought potential lease options to the district to consider, but “it's not doable at this time because we do not have the funds to refit these facilities to make a school out of it or enter into a multi-year contract for the rental of space.”
If no space opens up downtown, busing at P.S. 16 is all but certain to continue. But an even more dramatic and permanent option looms for school officials — redistricting the designated zones that feed into each of the city’s schools.
Fernandez said the most likely outcome of redistricting would be a shrinking of the area that sends students to P.S. 16. That would leave some current P.S. 16 families permanently reassigned to schools further away.
“ I'm not sure if parents who bought in that area thinking that their child would attend this school would be as happy attending another school with a more diverse population,” Fernandez said.
Little said the district would have tough decisions to make if it decides to redistrict, because of Jersey City’s tricky geography.
“ You can't just draw a line as the crow flies to the nearest school necessarily because, for example, there's a cliff in the way,” Little said.
Fernandez said no decisions on redistricting will be made until after the ongoing demographic study is done.
Tagged
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new jersey
Michael Sol Warren
Michael Sol Warren covers New Jersey for WNYC and Gothamist, and previously reported on issues around the Garden State for NJ Spotlight News and NJ Advance Media. He can be reached at [email protected].
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