By Novepreet Kaur
Funding Issues?
All high schools need a National Honor Society, it's just a given. So that begs the question, why didn't William L. Dickinson High School have one to start the year? Every other school in Jersey City has a national honor society.
Colleges always look for students who are in the National Honor Society, so it's mandatory every high school has one. As expected, many students were frustrated when news broke out that they ended the program for “funding reasons”. The program has stopped running for the past two years which is very embarrassing for the high school. However, this year there is good news going around since funding for education in Jersey City has increased. “Jersey City's Board of Education finalized its massive $814 million budget for the 2021-2022 school year, which raised taxes on the average homeowner by almost $1,000. The BOE adopted the final budget, which is being increased by $78 million from last year…” according to Joshua Rosario, writer for the Jersey Journal.
If funding for education has increased by so much, why haven’t they brought programs back? A student at Dickinson High School reached out to the president of The Board of Education, Mussab Ali, on Sep 20, 2021, asking why the program was canceled. His response was that the principal should have already taken care of that. His advice was to talk to Principal Casillas first and if he says no, Mussab himself would handle. However, if the funds were there and it's a traditional program, why wasn't it up and running in September? This just goes to show there seems to be a lack of interest in what students need in our high school. Why are basic needs like this only taken into consideration when students have to beg for it? Hopefully, the National Honor Society is brought back to Dickinson High School and stays for the long run.