It’s your money: Atlantic City school district signs exorbitant 5-year lease (Opinion)

Atlantic City Board of Education Member John Devlin has confirmed that the BOE has signed a five-year lease to rent office space for the Atlantic City Public Schools central administration offices.

According to Devlin, the five-year deal will cost the taxpayers of Atlantic City more than $700,000 per-year. This appears to be an increase of more than $200,000 per year versus the previous lease deal.

We have been advised that the Atlantic City Board of Education has available space at the high school and elsewhere that they already own and is not being used.

There is also the underutilized Carnegie Library the AC BOE completely missed out on a golden opportunity to use that pristine space for educational purposes.

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"To stay in this building for another 5 years at this kind of expense is inconceivable,” said Devlin.

”What makes it worse is the plan moving forward to knock down New Jersey Ave School and build a new administration building at the tune of $10,000,000.00 is just ludicrous,” he said.

If the Atlantic City Board of Education is going to build a new administration building, why wouldn’t they have chosen to save money and use available space versus locking in for this expensive lease option for years to come?

The building that the AC BOE rents office space is called The CitiCenter building.

The Atlantic City taxpayers have paid millions of dollars over the past 20-plus years to lease this space. That’s just for rent and doesn’t include leasehold improvements.