Michael Lenz does not have children yet, but when he does, he said, he wants to send them to public school. In Hoboken, this is novel; the school system has long been considered one of the worst in the state. Parents who can avoid it usually do.
And Mr. Lenz, who works in the financial department of a Woodbridge real-estate firm, could afford to send his children to private school. Instead, he ran for the Board of Education. After getting elected last year to a fill an open seat for one year, he won a three-year term on Tuesday. Moreover, his slate, "Choice for Change," unseated an incumbent with 37 years on the board and won two out of the three seats up for grabs this year.
Mr. Lenz and his allies, who had been on the short end of a 5-to-4 split on the nine-member board, now hold the majority.
School board elections may seem like small-potato politics, but in Hoboken, Tuesday's vote was a sea change. For the first time since young, upwardly mobile professionals discovered the charms of this port city in the 1970's, they control the direction of -- and the money and jobs dispensed by -- one of Hoboken's most powerful bodies. And the election came only a week after a referendum in which voters defeated a waterfront redevelopment plan that had divided the city, with some exceptions, into bitter camps of newcomers and natives.
