At the end of the Princeton Regional Schools Board of Education meeting last Tuesday night, October 24, a divided board failed to adopt the state-mandated memorandum of agreement between the district and local police departments.
With four votes for and four against, and one abstention, the memo did not pass, but only after some heated debate.
First came routine board business: reports from board president Michael Mostoller, Superintendent of Schools Judith A. Wilson, and committee chairs. The board voted on routine items before coming to the last item on the agenda, the annual update to the "Uniform State Memorandum of Agreement Between Education and Law Enforcement Officials."
The memo describes the laws and agreed protocols and procedures between the school district and local Borough and Township police departments. It covers items such as drug and alcohol violations, harassment, and weapons offenses and has been in place since 1993 with revisions made in 1999.
The district is required by the Attorney General to have such an agreement in place and to submit it to the County Prosecutor and the Department of Education.
Reviewed annually, the agreement is sometimes merely rubber-stamped without much contention. This year is different, however, because of the recent incident at Princeton High School (PHS) in which Borough police officers took out four 14- and 15-year-olds boys for questioning.
The four black students were questioned with respect to a violent crime and were subsequently charged with complicity to robbery.
It was 10 p.m. by the time the board of education came to vote on the agreement for another year
Although it should have been voted on by October 2, the board tabled the resolution at last month's meeting, which took place during the busy period of preparations for the opening of new facilities and the grand gala celebration on October 14, and after the PHS incident.
According to Ms. Wilson, the board has struggled with the existing memo and even consulted an attorney to find out what is required by law. She reported that the attorney found the existing document conforms to the minimum baseline requirement.
She also said that other school districts have differently worded agreements.
Before voting on the agenda item, board member Jeffrey Spear read a prepared statement about what he believes is the issue at hand. He made the distinction between what is legal and what is proper, in the sense of appropriate. What the police did may have been legal, he said, but it was not appropriate in a school environment.
Principle at Stake
"There is a principle at stake important for our school system as an institution," said Mr. Spear.
While recognizing that the police are attempting to solve a particularly hateful crime and citing the district's excellent relationship with Princeton's public safety services, and the fact that the manner in which the police detained the students at PHS was done according to the guidelines of the Memorandum of Agreement, Mr. Spear raised the question as to whether the action undertaken that day was legal and proper.
Pointing out that legality and propriety are two quite different things, he went on to suggest that the disruptive police action was inappropriate because it was not to preempt a greater threat such as would be posed by, drugs, weapons, intimidation or the prospect of bias crimes.
He further agued that propriety matters because of relationships between students and teachers that "depend on the school being a kind of a sanctuary not in the legal sense no one can break the law and claim refuge in a school but as a place of order in which they may feel safe enough build a relationship with an authority figure who will encourage them to take a chance on themselves and a legitimate future."
"What is at issue here is not the legality of a police action, but respect for the schools as a distinct social institution," he said.
In the discussion following Mr. Spear's reading, Ms. Wilson pointed out the legal requirement for the agreement.
Walter Bliss, chair of the board's Minority Education Committee, spoke of his "serious concern about the relationship between the police and certain of our students." He expressed the view that the board had only two options, either to table the agreement or to vote no on it.
Board member JoAnn Cunningham agreed. She said that she would find it impossible to vote for the agreement, suggesting that for her to vote otherwise was tantamount to endorsing the status quo just because it's the law, an attitude that didn't allow for change she said, alluding to the days when segregation was accepted by some as being the law.
Mia Cahill pointed out that while larger issues stand in need of discussion, the memorandum of agreement must be distinguished from recent events at the high school. Ms. Cahill urged adoption of the agreement.
Responding to Mr. Spear's speech, board member Charlotte Bialek, said that what was really being talked about was an issue with a long history in Princeton. "The elephant in the room is racism," she said.
Members of the board agreed that problems with the agreement were symptomatic of a larger problem. "The broader discussion is one of social justice issues within the community, and it goes far beyond the document or a mandate to have an agreement with the prosecutor's office," said Ms. Wilson.
But, she pointed out, the board cannot make unilateral changes in the wording of the agreement without the other two parties involved. Together with Mr. Mostoller, she urged the board to adopt the agreement.
The board first voted on a call for question, in other words a vote on whether to vote on the resolution or not. This vote was carried.
Then the vote on the resolution was taken. The result was four in favor, four against and one abstention. Ms. Cahill, Mr. Mostoller, Charlotte Bialek and Rebecca Cox voted to approve the agreement. Mr. Bliss, Ms. Cunningham, Alan Hegedus and Joshua Leinsdorf voted against it. Mr. Spear abstained.
As a result, the resolution did not pass and the board, clearly exhausted by the late hour and the long discussion, must continue to address the issue further. Mr. Mostoller will select a subcommittee to meet with Ms. Wilson and other district administrators.