{"id":832211,"date":"2026-05-30T11:18:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T11:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/832211\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T11:18:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T11:18:18","slug":"liberty-science-center-high-school-unlikely-to-proceed-jersey-city-mayor-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/832211\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberty Science Center High School unlikely to proceed, Jersey City mayor says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jersey City Mayor James Solomon said that Liberty Science Center High School is unlikely to proceed at a Riverview Neighborhood Association meeting Wednesday evening, citing cost concerns in the midst of their budget crisis. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Rendering courtesy of the City of Jersey City.<\/p>\n

By Daniel Ulloa\/Hudson County View<\/p>\n

He explained that former Mayor Steven Fulop spearheaded the effort to sell the land to the Liberty Science Center for one dollar, who then gave it to a private developer who has built luxury-only housing.<\/p>\n

The City Council approved a deal with the county at a six-hour meeting in March 2021<\/a> by a vote of 6-2(1), where Solomon and Councilman at-Large Rolando Lavarro voted no. The school broke ground in May 2023<\/a>, both as HCV first reported.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re using city land \u2026 You have to build housing that is affordable,\u201d Solomon argued, indicating that\u00a0they wanted to build Edge Works as a business incubator that would have been a hub for new companies to create jobs<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I had started this project 10 years ago, I wouldn\u2019t have used that for city land,\u201d Solomon said.<\/p>\n

He also compared LSC High School to another Fulop administration era project he cancelled, the Centre Pompidou x Jersey City, claiming there was never a serious plan to fund the projects.<\/p>\n

Solomon announced in March<\/a> that affordable housing would be built at the former Pompidou site in Journal Square, though details of the plan still haven\u2019t emerged.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere never was a plan to fund the high school. High schools are expensive! They cost millions of dollars to run every year. And we are in a mass budget deficit. I don\u2019t see a way the Liberty Science High School can move forward,\u201d the mayor declared.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re supposed to pay $2 million a year toward it. And it wasn\u2019t even a Jersey City public school! It was going to be a Hudson County School of Technology where probably half the kids weren\u2019t going to be Jersey City residents.<\/p>\n

Solomon said it was not fiscally responsible to have city taxpayers pay $2 million a year to fund the school.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo now we\u2019re going to have conversations with the folks over at Liberty Science and the County. Maybe we can do a school, but the city isn\u2019t going to fund it with your tax dollars,\u201d he added, acknowledging this would not be welcome news to many parents.<\/p>\n

He noted that a great Science Technology Engineering Math (STEM) curriculum was promised.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have some great high schools already. We\u2019re going to push to make the other ones better. I have to get our fiscal house in order. We can\u2019t push glitzy projects that sound nice but have no financial backing,\u201d Solomon asserted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe high school cannot continue in its current form, and we have to go back to the drawing board.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hudson County spokesman Mark Cygan declined to comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jersey City Mayor James Solomon said that Liberty Science Center High School is unlikely to proceed at a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":832212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,341344,172023,220748,341345,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,341346,145234,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-832211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-hudson-county-craig-guy","tag-james-solomon","tag-jersey-city-council","tag-liberty-science-center-high-school","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-scitech-scity","tag-steven-fulop","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/832212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}