Pleasantville Mayor Judy Ward stood before the crumbling Decatur Avenue School on Wednesday, recalling story times and board meetings that once filled its halls — even as demolition crews prepared to erase the building from the city’s landscape.

The dark-red brick school, opened in the 1920s, will soon give way to a $65.8 million, 91,000-square-foot elementary school designed for 650 pre-K through fifth-grade students.

The project, led by the New Jersey Schools Development Authority, marks a long-awaited investment in one of the state’s neediest districts and reflects a broader push to modernize aging facilities.

Ward said she became familiar with the school in the 1990s as a member of the city’s board of education foundation, which met there regularly.

Later in her career, she visite

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