Dear Editor, I would like to bring to your attention an issue that has brought much concern to the Hoboken Charter School community and that I feel needs to be shared with the larger community of Hoboken. As some readers may be aware, the Hoboken Charter School (HCS), on its second year of operation, has become a truly viable public school choice for many families in Hoboken. We currently have 190 children enrolled in grades Pre-K through 5 and 9 through 11, renting the third floor of the Demarest school building from the Hoboken Board of Education. As is the case with most charter schools, finding adequate space is an enormous challenge, since NJ State law does not allow charter schools to receive public money for school construction. I have felt for some time that the one positive angle of Hoboken's declining school enrollment is that Hoboken's 2 charter schools could help stop the recent trend of conversions of public school buildings into private housing. I attended the Hoboken Board of Education's meeting on February 8, where Jill Singleton, an HCS founder and school Co-Coordinator, made an impassioned plea to the Hoboken Board to give us the opportunity to fulfill our mission, to support us in our goal to remain small in size, but big in our positive impact on the entire Hoboken community. She invited every Hoboken Board member to visit our school to see for themselves our accomplishments and our challenges. This was followed by individual invitations to all Hoboken Board members made in person or by phone by HCS parents and members of the HCS Board of Trustees. The fact that only those Hoboken Board members up for re-election this year accepted our invitation and visited our school may not come as a surprise to some people. No surprise to many of us was the positive feedback we received from the Hoboken Board members who did visit HCS. The HCS site committee has held several meetings in the past weeks with the Hoboken Superintendent of Schools to discuss our needs for space for the 2000-2001 school year. He has expressed that additional space in the Demarest building is unavailable to us and that our only option for additional space in the district is to rent several classrooms available in the Brandt School. When HCS parents received the news, we were devastated. The school staff has worked for over 2 years to build a multi-age community of learners; interaction between younger and older students is the foundation of several successful curriculum programs, as well as the school culture as a whole. While the HCS administration worked on a plan to make this arrangement work, several parents attended the Hoboken Board meeting on March 14. We expressed our concerns to the Hoboken Board and they appeared unaware that any discussions were taking place. The Superintendent repeated what we already knew: no space in Demarest. Sadly, there was no press coverage of our efforts to preserve an important part of our charter's mission. While we recognize this to be far from an ideal situation, the HCS Board of Trustees has authorized the school administrators to pursue the negotiations on the Brandt space with the Hoboken district. No formal agreement has been made, however, and a Hoboken Board member stated to me recently that "no one wants to talk about it until after the election". I would like to again extend an invitation to the Hoboken Board of Education members who have yet to visit the Hoboken Charter School. Please come and see a part of the trust that the community has bestowed upon you. This is the reason we went to the Board first, back in February. I hope we do not have to wait until each one of you is up for re-election. In