In an editorial, Jersey City resident and Public School No. 16 parent Jackie Cox points to a vote last week as to why she feels Board of Education Trustee Natalia Ioffe seems to have forgotten about her parent advocacy days.
Screenshot via Facebook Live.
Et Tu, Natalia?
For years, Natalia Ioffe was synonymous with parent advocacy in Jersey City, especially within the PS16 community. So much so that a PS16 advocacy award was created in her name, with a plaque hanging in the school hallway.
Before she was elected to the board of education, she stood shoulder-to-shoulder with parents fighting underfunding.
She organized enrichment programs, wrote publicly about equitable access and community engagement, and helped build the kind of parent infrastructure that made PS16 strong.
Which is why this moment feels so jarring.
At a recent board of education meeting, as families pleaded for answers about the proposed removal of kindergarten from PS16 and its relocation to Danforth, public comment was reduced, last minute, to one minute per speaker. 60 seconds.
For parents who had waited hours to speak about what the superintendent herself described as a “crisis.”
Natalia Ioffe, along with four other board members, voted for that reduction.
When a crisis is acknowledged at the highest level of district leadership, community voices should be expanded, not compressed.
PS16’s overcrowding is not new, nor is it surprising. While she served on the board of education, including a year as president, parents witnessed the surge in downtown development. The population growth pushed PS16 to become even more crowded.
Yet instead of a concrete, forward-looking plan to build a new neighborhood school, families were presented with another temporary fix: separating kindergarten, the very foundation and entry point of the PS16 community, and relocating it elsewhere.
Kindergarten is not a logistical detail. Removing it fractures the school at its starting line.
After public comment, Board Member Ioffe referenced years of prior efforts to address the facilities issue, attempts made over the last decade to advance new school construction.
But that history raises a harder question: If this has been known for ten years, why are we still here?
Past effort does not substitute for present results. In a crisis of this magnitude, there is no “A for effort.” Outcomes matter. Measurable progress matters. The question is not what was attempted, it’s what will work now.
Where is the urgency?
Where is the roadmap?
Where are the benchmarks and timelines?
Parents are not asking to solve the district’s facilities crisis. That responsibility belongs to the Board and the administration.
When elected officials suggest that families should arrive at meetings with solutions to systemic planning failures, it reverses the roles of governance.
This is where the Shakespearean echo feels unavoidable.
“Et tu, Brute?” was not spoken to an enemy. It was spoken to someone trusted.
Natalia, you built your reputation as a parent advocate. You understood that families are stakeholders, not spectators. You modeled visible, engaged leadership.
As you said in an interview with The Real Garden State YouTube Channel in 2020, “I think the problem with our schools is too much politics, not enough community voices, not enough parent voices.”
Yet now, when the community speaks, that voice seems constrained rather than amplified.
We need your voice. Not procedural votes to limit public comment. Not references to past attempts. We need public, forceful advocacy for a real, funded plan to accommodate downtown’s growing enrollment.
While you voted for the superintendent to draft a plan for a new school, that alone is not enough. What we need is your active leadership to ensure the plan is implemented, followed through, and held to measurable standards.
What remains to be seen is whether accountability will follow.
Parents are paying attention. This community is informed, organized, and persistent. We know who stands with us. We know who asks hard questions. And we know when silence replaces advocacy.
Et tu, Natalia?
We are still here.
And we are waiting.
Jackie Cox
PS16 parent, advocate, and lifelong supporter of our community