March 25, 2015

PPS Parent Faults Both Board and Teachers For Brinksmanship When Children Are Losing

To the Editor:

As a parent with children in the Princeton Public Schools I have watched with deepening concern over the past several months as the contract dispute between the School Board and PREA, the teachers union, has festered. Without a new contract, teachers are now refusing, in many cases, to conduct after-school activities they have traditionally supported. Cherished programs at the schools are in jeopardy of being cancelled or delayed for lack of teacher participation — The annual 5th grade trip to Gettysburg, this fall’s 8th grade trip to Washington, the middle school’s participation in the high school’s own Jazz Festival, to name just a few. And yet I have no understanding of specifically what the two sides are fighting about. Nor do any of the other parents I’ve spoken with. To try to learn more I attended last week’s School Board meeting and came away utterly dismayed. My impression was of a School Board hunkering down and convinced of its positions without feeling the need to explain itself to the community. And of teachers who, in their anger, have backed themselves into a corner from which they now cannot or will not back down. With both sides seeming to be more interested in brinksmanship and ‘winning’ it is our children who are losing.

I would have some sympathy for the School Board if it had done a better job articulating what the issues were at the outset. I could understand if, at a time of growing healthcare costs, expanding enrollment, and limited budget resources, they need the teachers to make certain sacrifices. But if the Board members think they have communicated what this means in practical terms, I can assure them the message has not gotten through to the people who elected them — at least none that I’ve spoken to.

I would have more sympathy for the teachers too. An affluent school district like Princeton should be able to treat its teachers well and, if sacrifices are needed, it should have the courtesy to make them transparent enough for the whole community to understand and weigh against the tax increases needed to avert them before they are decided. But if the teachers thought that their refusal to support after-school activities would bring attention to their plight and pressure on the Board to end the impasse, they are also alienating many parents in the process — the very group they need support from most. So, in the end, I don’t have much sympathy for either side in this mess. But I do have growing exasperation at the inability of both sides — over the course of nearly a year of talks — to find the compromises that invariably will be needed from both the Board and PREA to reach resolution. I understand that representatives will be meeting this Thursday for direct discussions for the first time in months. I urge both sides, for the sake of the children in our schools, to COMPROMISE and REACH A LASTING AGREEMENT. If it doesn’t happen soon, the damage to our prized school system will grow exponentially. Enough damage has already been done. It needs to stop now.

Cliff Birge

Crooked Tree Lane