Dyanna Montilla is a third-year Liberal Arts student at Mercer. She is part of the Intervarsity Christian club and is an activist for urban communities and overlooked populations. She is also a 2015 graduate of Trenton High School.
Asked to describe the conditions at her former school Montilla says “[It] was bad. Like when it rained there were leaks and literally, parts of the ceiling would fall in the stairwells…The bathrooms were in bad shape. The stall doors were broken where you couldn’t close them, and the floorboards were lifting from the ground.”
Asked if the physical problems with the school impacted her education, Montilla says, “Absolutely! It affected the education of the students. You want to know why? Because first of all, with no air conditioning during hot weather, we were not focused so much on learning but just staying cool and that can cause irritation.”
Montilla says Trenton High students felt a strong stigma.
“We knew as Trenton High students how surrounding communities felt about us. They felt that we were worthless. They felt that we were stupid, and for that building to be that way, you could presume that New Jersey didn’t care about Trenton High students,” Montilla says.
Despite the disrepair of the school, Montilla says, “I loved Trenton High…Some of my positive experiences were the diversity of the school, some of my teachers were caring and there for me and I really feel like I obtained rich knowledge from certain courses.”
State Senator Shirley K. Turner visited Trenton High in 2012 to observe the conditions and said at the time, “As the condition of the school has been ignored, the problems have gotten worse. We’ve now reached a point where endless patchwork and band-aids will not suffice. It’s time to pull the plug and take the high school off life support. We need to build a new Trenton Central High School.”
Trenton High reconstruction began with the destruction of the old building. A variety of historical artifacts were preserved and will now be seen inside the main entrance and cafeteria courtyard. Trenton Central High school will open this fall of 2019 for grades 10 to 12.
The new facility, which cost $155 million to build, will be state of the art. According to The Trentonian, “The new school will boast a variety of amenities, including a swimming pool, dance studio, weight room, media center and full-stage auditorium with a balcony level, in addition to a plethora of educational labs dedicated to science, culinary arts and other areas complementing a holistic curriculum.”
According to an editorial in the Times of Trenton “If progress to date is any indication, students will be returning to a state-of-the-art facility. Boasting a television studio, a 1000-seat auditorium and outdoor amphitheater.”
In 2013, local community leaders and Trenton high school teachers were fighting along with the Board of Education, for state funding to rebuild Trenton Central. Eventually, the Board of Education filed a lawsuit against the state.
Shirley K. Turner released a statement in response to the lawsuit saying,
“The State of New Jersey and the Schools Development Authority have shown indifference toward Trenton’s children for more than a decade. They have ignored the deplorable conditions of our high school where our students must spend their school days. It is gratifying to know that the Trenton Board of Education is finally taking this long-needed action.”
Monica Morris who teaches culinary arts in the Trenton system says that she has been teaching at the Hanover campus for about five years now and that she will be happy to go back to the new campus.
“The building is going to be an exciting opportunity and everyone is looking forward to it,” Morris says.
