Referendum Aims to Solve Capacity Problem; Town is Growing, and Schools Must Keep Up
To the Editor:
On January 28, Princeton residents will vote on a three-question referendum to enable the Princeton Public Schools to accommodate sharply rising enrollment. I’m writing to urge my fellow Princetonians to vote yes on all three questions. Over the past few months, I’ve paid close attention to the district’s referendum planning process, and I am deeply impressed by the care and wisdom with which the planners have worked to meet the district’s urgent needs while maximizing state aid and minimizing cost.
The primary problem the referendum aims to solve is capacity: Princeton is growing, and the schools must keep up. Over the next five years, over a thousand new housing units will come online, and more are likely. This means that we’ll be welcoming hundreds more students into our schools, most of which are already at or over capacity. If we don’t expand our facilities, class size will go up, elementary school attendance zones will be redrawn (with attendant busing costs), and programming will suffer. Expensive stopgap measures like renting trailers to serve as makeshift classrooms will only go so far, likely making another referendum necessary in another few years.
The district cannot meet its growing needs out of its annual operational budget, which funds salaries and programming and which cannot increase by more than 2 percent each year, per state law. By funding these necessary facilities improvements through a referendum that renovates existing structures, the district is able to capture nearly $20 million of state funding that is unavailable to support operating expenses or new construction.
The referendum questions are tiered, which means that for Question 2 to pass, Question 1 must pass, and for Question 3 to pass, both Questions 1 and 2 must pass. Question 1 expands Community Park elementary school and replaces the high school’s end-of-life HVAC system. Question 2 expands the already overcrowded Princeton Middle School and renovates space at PHS to maximize use. Question 3 expands Littlebrook elementary school, which last year was so crowded that the music teacher had to wheel his materials around on a cart.
The total cost of all three questions is $532 for the average assessed Princeton home. That’s not an insubstantial number, to be sure, and the referendum’s three-question structure reflects the district’s sensitivity to this reality. But it’s an amount that will fund crucial improvements without compromising school quality. Voters should remember, moreover, that our public schools’ excellence is one of the key reasons that Princeton is such a desirable place to live — and that Princeton home values continue to rise.
When my husband and I moved here nearly 14 years ago, we did so because of the schools, and because of what Princeton’s wonderful public goods (schools, library, pool, etc.) say about our town’s values. We are a community that takes seriously our responsibility to provide for each other and to educate the next generation. This is precisely what the PPS referendum sets us up to do. I strongly encourage my fellow Princetonians to vote yes.