Letter: All I Want for Christmas Is Clarity

Letter to the Editor:

The Board of Education has to decide whether its responsibility is solely to school parents or also to the community at large. Until the overwhelming majority of voters understand the aims of the Dec. 11 ballot’s $27 million bond, it is unjust to ask for their support. Fine print and buried paragraphs do not quite tell the story.

The details go well beyond what has been understood as "critical." These extras inevitably represent the first step in combined bonds larger than any in Princeton, ever, at a time when even the rich don’t want to buy homes taxed at or above $40,000 per year.

The bond-financed extras include:

• Dugouts — critical?
• Outdoor toilets that need winter heat, locks to prevent vandalism, and routine cleaning maintenance. Traveling at home and abroad this year I saw that properly maintained portajohns don’t smell, and neighbors say it’s visitors, not Princeton High School students, who urinate in their back yards. Portajohns can be maintained under contract, and thus not strain already overworked crews. What does such a contract cost? Can teachers remind students to use indoor toilets before going out to the fields?
• Outdoor water fountains — people of all ages now carry water bottles everywhere. Again, environmental education surely includes restricting use of plastic bottles. Don’t PHS fountains have bottle-fill spouts?
• A second floor in the gym for fencers and wrestlers— what does this actually cost? Could it wait for community input?
• A concession stand (People can’t bring sandwiches?).

$11 million for add-ons is no small amount, $900,000 for athletics is not negligible, and another $100 million request is expected in 2019. One student survey reported more interest in teacher-time than in a bigger building, but does the operating budget include more teachers? Another says that less than 10 percent of students want to eat in the cafeteria. What is there about the hallways that’s more appealing than the cafeteria, and could some of that space be converted to classrooms, or even guidance?

If parents today want more for their kids, let’s not expect help from those whose household budgets simply do not stretch that far. The Johnson Park PTO will fully finance a $20 to 30,000 stone amphitheater at JP, an extra that will increase child safety by shoring up a mud-prone bank. The PHS Class of 2000 paid for the PHS scoreboard. Three cheers for volunteers and for the wise use of community resources!

Since the first concern of voters has been the size of the BOE’s initial $130 million, let’s hold the extras for that long-awaited community discussion. Let’s start it now.

Our representatives on the BOE have a basic problem: they neither give nor receive enough community input. But isn’t that what Christmas is all about?

Let’s set a precedent for serious community input before any referendum. Vote “NO” on Dec. 11.

— Mary Clurman

Harris Road, Princeton