Issue 13: July 25
Possible changes to admissions to McNair/Infinity, in defense of Red Rabbit meals, ICYMI, a cat and a dog you should definitely adopt, and a few community calendar listings!
Hello friends! Well, last week’s newsletter with the story about the international potato chips was incredibly popular, so of course I’ve decided to follow up that issue with one highlighting a few really dry and dull (but important!) stories that broke over this week, haha. I hope to have more snack-related adventures soon, but until then, I hope you’re doing well! — Amy
The admissions policies at McNair and Infinity High may be changing/life as we know it may be over
If you live in Jersey City and the words “McNair” or “Infinity” aren’t super familiar to you, you’re probably not a parent of a kid in middle school. We’re extremely fortunate to have these two public high schools, ranked among the best in the country, in our city. They’re magnet schools, so you have to apply — every year, hundreds of JC students vie for a position at one of these super good schools. The application process for these schools has remained largely the same for many years, and now the Board of Ed is looking into whether it should be tweaked. Parents, many of whom have been banking on their kid getting into one of the schools, are freaking out. As it stands now:
The current admissions policy at McNair aims to accept a student population that is 25% Black, 25% Hispanic, 25% White, and 25% Other. Applications are sorted into groups by ethnicity and then ranked. The top 50 students from each of four groups are chosen, and an additional 40 students are selected from the remaining applications, without consideration for ethnicity. (Source)
This seems to have worked well for many years, but I talked to BOE President Mussab Ali, and he points out that as Jersey City has changed, so have the socio-economic demographics of the students applying. In a message exchange with me, he writes:
[T]he main focus has been that there has been a tilt at our most selective schools towards a population that is much wealthier on average than our traditional student body. We want to ensure racial diversity at these schools but also want to ensure that there is socioeconomic diversity. A proposal we are considering is looking towards the Chicago model - which was also implemented in Boston recently - in which you divide the city into census tracts assign a neighborhood score based on socioeconomic factors and then select the top students from each of those neighborhoods. This ensures that there is socioeconomic diversity within the schools.
He presented me with some stats to back this up. In 2017-8, McNair’s population of “economically disadvantaged” (that’s the BOE’s terminology) students was 44%. By 2019-2020, that percentage had slipped down to 34.8%. At Infinity in 2017-8, they had about 66.5% of their students fitting into that category, and by 2019-2020 it was down to 56%.
All this seems pretty legit to me to at least discuss and consider. Generally speaking, it’s good to revisit old ways of doing things to make sure there’s not a better, more fair way of doing them. Certainly, maintaining a diversity of incomes (as well as other factors) seems like a good plan.
Over in Ward E, this is already becoming an issue in the election. City Council candidate Jake Hudnut states in a recent Hudson County View article:
“While the intent here may be noble, the sad truth is that this policy change would take opportunities away from Downtown students and could easily result in a less diverse student body, as has happened in other areas where similar changes have been implemented,” Hudnut said in a statement.
“Low income Black and Hispanic students could be disenfranchised simply because they live in neighborhoods that also include more affluent residents, as is the case for many areas of Downtown. For example, Holland Gardens and SoHo Lofts are in the same Downtown neighborhood. Should those children be competing against each other for a limited number of seats? Absolutely not.”
I mean, I guess? I guess there’s a handful of neighborhoods in JC where extremely poor, minority areas directly abut — like right next door — incredibly wealthy white ones1, and I guess if the system the BOE came up with a plan to decide economic disadvantage that didn’t take that into consideration, that there could be some unintended consequences that would negatively impact a small amount of students? I would hope if that was the case, the BOE would further revisit the application policy and tweak it further to make sure it accounted for that. But it sounds like, given the stats Ali cited, the situation right now isn’t working either.
Look, we’re dealing with a massive bureaucracy here. Setting policy for anything as big as the JC public school system is bound to have hiccups and things that need to be adjusted. And unfortunately, there will be people who fall through the cracks — this is the sad reality of having a huge bureaucracy that doles out services to thousands of people. What the BOE can do is try, with the very best intentions, to be as fair and as equitable to as many people as possible, and I believe that in this instance they are genuinely attempting to do that. We don’t know what the final decision will be. But for now, it seems like they’re proceeding in a way that, to me, seems fair and reasonable. The system as it works now doesn’t seem to be functioning extremely well, so it makes sense to try and fix it.
There was recently a meeting to discuss this possible change, and on Thursday, August 26th, there will be a second meeting to further discuss it. The JC BOE site has info on upcoming meetings.
Cheap eats? In defense of Red Rabbit; or, I ate a Red Rabbit lunch so you don’t have to.
In other kid-related news, Red Rabbit, the company that provides meals for kids attending summer camp as well as food insecure adults in Jersey City has been in the news a lot lately. First there was a story about a delivery of lunches intended for summer camp kids arriving without proper refrigeration. That, while kinda gross, seems to be an outlier; a mistake made that was caught before anyone ate the food, and that steps have been taken to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
The company returned to the news when the contract for providing food to people who are food insecure was up for renewal at the last city council meeting. The Hudson County Reporter wrote about it, or if you prefer to watch your elected officials in action, you can see them here:
The Red Rabbit resolution is Resolution 10.6; skip ahead to 1:34:06 to see them vote for Resolutions 10.1-10.12 (yes, they vote on a slew of resolutions, ranging from Islamophobia to the free lunch program, in a single swipe). Lavarro, Solomon, and Saleh all vote against continuing the contract (there was no reason given for Lavarro or Solomon voting no). Then, at 1:39:05 — after the vote took place — a representative for Health and Human Services and also Red Rabbit show up and there is a discussion about the food. So technically the vote has already happened, the contract has already been extended, and then they start asking some questions.
Council President Watterman starts pressing HHS on the quality of the food for the summer programs, and Saleh chimes in that he has visited the sites and wouldn’t feed the food “to a stray cat.” The CEO of Red Rabbit sounds tired and offers tepid defense for his food, but does point out that the meals cost between $1.75 and $2.92 to produce (the company was the lowest bidder on this contract). Councilman Saleh describes the food as,
“It felt fake. The muffin tasted like styrofoam. I probably would have rather eaten the styrofoam. So what’s your plan?,” Saleh pressed.
If you remember what school cafeteria food was like when you were a kid, it’s easy to just automatically assume the food in question is horrible. I have all sorts of vague memories of beige gravy covering meaty… erm, lumps with cans of sickly sweet fruit cocktail on the side, and they just make me want to gag. And so, it is at this point that I’d like to do my big reveal, which is that I have procured one of these meals; I have photographed it, and I have consumed it, and I have lived to tell the tale. Let’s start with the picture:
This was not what I expected at all from the description from the council meeting. So let’s just dispense with the horrors — the horrors! — of this meal. And I write this having tried to find, with every inch of my being, as many things wrong with it as possible:
There’s a lot of plastic that was used to package it (there was also an outer clamshell package made of plastic), which felt wasteful;
The carrot muffin was a little dry. Just a little.
That’s it. In the “plus” category:
Everything was really delicious. I really had my questions about the salad because I’m not someone who normally gravitates towards sweet things, like raisins, in my salad, but this stuff rocked. It reminded me of something you’d get at Pret a Manger. I didn’t add the dressing to it, because it wasn’t really needed, but it seemed fine as well.
The carrot muffin was really tasty. Sure, it was a little dry, but that just means it’s healthy, right? The spices and the sweetness were just right. (Also, milk came with the meal, so that would help with it being a little dry. I’m not a milk drinker, but just saying.)
The peach and the strawberries were perfectly ripe for eating. Not too much, not too little — just really good. I don’t even really like peaches, but I ate most of this one because it was just at peak flavor.
Thinking that maybe I got a “good one,” I proceeded to sample bits of other meals delivered to the kids on other days as the week went on. Everything was fine. It was institutional-style food, so it’s not like you got beautiful artisanal bread and micro greens or whatever — but it was legit. Everything was fresh and tasty. They were like grab-and-go meals you’d buy and pay $10 for and not even think twice.
I can’t really stress enough the following: I would never order any of these dishes myself. Raisins in salad? Yuck. Carrot muffins? Eh. Peaches? Not my fave. But, having been presented with them and having given them a try, I have to say they were genuinely, impressively delicious.
Ah, but remember: I’m an adult. And I can’t help but wonder if this has something to do with the complaints. The representative for HHS mentioned that the meals going to food insecure adults led to no complaints, which I can see why. However…
This then leads us to the one major problem any vendor is going to encounter providing food to summer camps: kids are picky eaters. As a child, I wanted nothing but pizza 24/7, and would complain viciously/cry/scream whenever my parents dared to offer me anything else. Of course, had they only served me pizza three meals a day, seven days a week, they would have been negligent parents. Kids fight back against what they’re fed all the time — it’s basically part of being a kid. And part of being a responsible adult means feeding them balanced meals, no matter how much they complain.
There’s another issue in play here. As a city, we are only allotting $2.30/per meal on average for this program. Look, if you want really, really good food — nutritious food, tasty food — you’re going to have to pay for it. Right now, we’re really not. When Red Rabbit says this is the best they can do with the budget we’ve given them, I tend to believe them. It concerns me that we have a city government that goes with a company that is the absolute lowest bidder on a contract (as Red Rabbit was, underbidding the other contractors $100k+) and then turns around and blames them for not being of high enough quality. Having separate menus tailored specifically to food insecure adult populations and then also to summer camp kids, is going to cost you more. If you want good things, you have to pay for them. We are barely doing that now, and then demanding greatness. That feels unfair.
I wanted to highlight this story because how and what we budget for has real, tangible results. If something is important to you, you have to pay for it — believe me, as someone on a limited budget, I wish this wasn’t the case. But if we decide as a city that we want specially-tailored-to-kids-but-also-healthy-and-fresh-meals delivered every day, we’re going to have to make the funds available for that. Or, we can decided that low cost and healthiness is more important that kid-friendliness, in which case your kid is gonna have to eat the weird salad with the raisins in it. Either way, it’s a choice.
As an aside, I got interested in this story because I volunteer at a food pantry, and dozens of these leftover meals are being delivered to the pantry daily (this is how I was able to get my hands on numerous lunches). I’ve heard various theories as to why the pantry is suddenly getting this donation, none of them terribly satisfying. I have no idea what the answer is or why these lunches are being delivered and not eaten (I tend to think “the kids won’t eat them” theory doesn’t hold water because the meals we’re getting are totally intact and untouched — wouldn’t the kids at least open and half-eat them? Like, pick out the parts they liked and leave the rest? I don’t know). But I sure as hell wouldn’t serve food to someone in need that I wouldn’t eat myself, so I really went out of way to sample this food and make sure it was ok. It definitely is.
Liberty Humane adoptions
There are two animals up for adoption at Liberty Humane that I must bring your attention to. The first is an elderly Pekinese dog named Mike the Microphone. Now, as a non-child-haver, I was oblivious that this was the name of a Disney character and was just tickled by what I thought was a great mix of words. I’m slightly disappointed to learn that it’s an actual thing, but the dog still seems really great. Learn more about him by going here.
Then, there’s this sassy fellow, whose name is Nemotode Narwhal:
I would do anything for this cat. Anything, that is, other than adopt him, because my elderly Spaniel mix really needs to be an only child, sadly. Otherwise I would have run to the shelter myself immediately after having seen this picture, plunked down the fee, and happily carried this little guy home. It has been scientifically proven that black and white cats are superior to all other cats, and this one looks like quite a character. Please consider adopting him, and then having me over so I can hang out with him.
Sinkholes!
There seem to be a lot of sinkholes? We had the huge one on West Side Ave on July 3rd and then several smaller ones on nearby streets. There’s a bunch of little ones throughout Lincoln Park right now. I get that it’s been raining a lot but rain in NJ in the summer isn’t really unusual? Ahhhh.
ICYMI
A lot of interesting stories dropped this week, so here’s just a small roundup:
“After a public outcry, Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop is calling on the municipal utilities authority and Suez Water to halt all solid waste disposal fees after residents were overcharged.” Don’t pay the solid waste fee on your monthly bill and if your landlord added a fee to your rent to cover this, don’t pay that either! Includes this great quote by Councilman Rolando Lavarro:
“Mayor Fulop and his Council allies only acknowledged the backdoor tax when media attention finally brought it to light and when the public was practically standing outside City Hall with virtual pitchforks and torches.“
“Jersey City School Board President Mussab Ali will not run for re-election in November due to health concerns.” (I like Mussab and will be sorry to see him go, but this is certainly an understandable decision to make. I hope he gets better soon and returns to public life as soon as he is well enough to.)
The candidates for public office had a deadline to declare their fundraising and expenses in the campaign so far, and Hudson County View and the Jersey Journal both had articles about it. The Journal article is largely about who is behind Fulop’s massive fundraising (the answer given is, labor unions, fellow politicians, the most successful boxing promoter from Poland for some reason, and the owner of the Ashford).
There is a city-sponsored program to help folks with rent if you’ve been affected by COVID. Go here to learn more.
Lastly, the Lower Hackensack River was declared a Superfund site.
Community calendar
July 21 6pm: Live in Canco Park, the Sensational Country Blues Wonders! Free concert at 47 Dey street
July 31, 1-3pm: McGinley Square Live Music Series with Matt Panayides and DJ DPRIZZY, Intersection of Bergen and Montgomery. Sponsored by the McGinley Square SID.
I mean… my understanding is that technically you’d have (for instance) low income white kids in Holland Gardens competing against higher income white kids in Soho Lofts, not low income Black kids competing against higher income white kids. So he’s potentially a little off in terms of logic, but I’m trying to extend him the benefit of the doubt here.