Dear Commissioner Harrington, 

I urge you to DENY the Princeton Charter School’s application to expand its enrollment. This proposed expansion would have devastating consequences for the excellent Princeton Public Schools and the 3,700 students served by the district.

The expansion would also be harmful to current students of Princeton Charter School as it would result in deep cuts to programs and staff levels at the high school attended by almost all of those students.

Denying the expansion is thus in the best interests of all the students in Princeton, both at the charter school and in the public school district.

Please respect the overwhelming opposition to this expansion among the Princeton community and DENY the Princeton Charter School expansion. 

Sincerely,

Your letter can simply identify who you are (e.g., I am a Princeton resident and a parent of two children attending Princeton Public Schools) and state your opposition to the Princeton Charter School expansion.  If you wish to say more, you can add information about your family, why you love Princeton Public Schools, and why you are opposed to the cuts in programs and services that the expansion would cause.

Below are additional reasons to reject the PCS expansion application. You can use some, all, or none of these in your letter.

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​1) PCS EXPANSION WILL HURT THE 3,700 CHILDREN ATTENDING PRINCETON PUBLIC SCHOOLS

• If the PCS expansion application is approved, Princeton Public Schools (PPS) would be required to send approximately $1.16 million plus transportation costs in additional funding to PCS each year, on top of the current annual transfer payment of more than $5 million.

• A loss of $1.16 million plus transportation costs would have a significant impact on the programs and services PPS provides to its approximately 3,700 students. This sum is the approximate cost of fifteen teachers or the entire athletic program of the district.

• Because the additional children attending PCS would be drawn from four district elementary schools, which have fixed costs for space and staff, there would be very little or no cost savings for PPS if the 76 students move to PCS, yet PPS will lose more than $1.16 in critically needed funding.

2) PROPOSED PCS EXPANSION WILL NOT RELIEVE ANY OF THE OVERCROWDING IN PRINCETON PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

• The proposed PCS expansion is entirely in the elementary grades, where Princeton Public Schools have sufficient capacity. It would have no impact on the increasing enrollment at John Witherspoon and Princeton High School, where overcrowding is most acute.

3) THIS DECISION SHOULD BE MADE BY THE PEOPLE OF PRINCETON, NOT THE COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION

• It is our local property taxes that would pay for the Princeton Charter School expansion. Less than $4 million of Princeton Public Schools' 2016-17 operating budget is in the form of state aid. Princeton public schools sent more than $5 million to the Princeton Charter School this year.  

• What right does the Commissioner of Education have to tell us how to spend our property taxes or to approve an expansion that would hurt our children's public schools and our property values?

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4) PRINCETON CAN’T SIMPLY RAISE TAXES TO COVER THE COST OF THE EXPANSION.

Because state law prevents municipalities from raising their taxes more than 2% a year, Princeton couldn’t simply cover the cost of the Charter School expansion by raising its taxes more sharply than usual.

The cost of the expansion, $1.2 million, is roughly equivalent to the amount by which Princeton is allowed to increase its taxes each year. This means that any additional money received from future tax increases would go directly to PCS, leaving nothing to cover the rising costs the public schools will inevitably face, and forcing ongoing harmful cuts.

5) PCS IS INTENSELY AND ILLEGALLY SEGREGATED, IN VIOLATION OF NEW JERSEY'S CHARTER SCHOOL LAW.

SEE DIAGRAM

• New Jersey's charter law requires charter schools to reflect the demographic composition of their sending communities. PCS clearly does not and has not done that, for most of its history.

SEE DIAGRAM

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6) ADDING ANOTHER KINDERGARTEN CLASS PROBABLY WON’T INCREASE THE NUMBER OF LOW INCOME STUDENTS ATTENDING PCS

• ​PCS has attracted only 2 low income students to their kindergarten out of the 276 kindergarten students that have attended PCS over the life of the school. That means low income students have made up less than 1% of all kindergarten students ever educated at PCS. SEE DIAGRAM

• If PCS wants to increase the number of low income students in its population, it should focus its efforts not on expansion, but on developing a detailed plan to improve its outreach to the populations it wishes to reach. PCS’s proposal laudably suggests weighting its lottery to improve the chances that low-income children will win a spot. In the past, however, its problem has not been that low-income students lose out in the lottery; it’s that low-income students don’t apply in the first place. To increase its low-income enrollment,  PCS doesn’t need to expand; it needs to figure out how to make PCS an attractive option for low-income children, and encourage low-income families to apply and to stay at PCS, if they are admitted.

RE: REJECT the Proposed Princeton Charter School expansion application

Dear Acting Commissioner Harrington:

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<<Your Personal Statement Will Be Inserted Here>>

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The expansion would cause substantial harm to the high-performing Princeton Public Schools by taking approximately $1.16 million in additional funding every year, plus the cost of additional transportation expenses, from the district. Losing that amount of money, and likely more in subsequent years, could lead to larger class sizes or the loss of many services and activities. For perspective, that is the cost of approximately fifteen teachers and is more than the cost of our entire district sports program.

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Aside from the negative financial impact that the expansion would have on our local public schools, the Princeton Charter School should not be permitted to expand because it is intensely and illegally segregated. Princeton Public Schools is educating almost eight times the percentage of low income students, all of the English Language Learners, and five times the percentage of special education students (excluding speech-only) as the Princeton Charter School. The special education students who attend Princeton Public Schools also require more resources to address their needs than the special education students at Princeton Charter School. This segregation has worsened substantially over the 20 years of the Princeton Charter School's existence. The expansion proposal does not address the factors responsible for the segregation and includes no plans for increasing the number of special education students or of English Language Learners at the Charter School.

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It is unfair that the siphoning of funds from the public schools could occur without any public accountability whatsoever—no voter referendum, no public say in how our tax dollars will be used. The decision to file the application was made by an unelected board, in secret with no input from the charter community or the community at large.  Such gross misuse of taxpayer dollars to benefit a quasi-public institution without any public accountability should not be validated by the Department of Education, especially in the face of widespread opposition.

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I do not want more of my tax dollars going to a charter school that does not fairly serve all segments of our diverse community, and whose expansion would hurt our high-performing local public schools.

Add a personal statement to letter below by clicking on the link above

RE: DENY the Proposed Princeton Charter School expansion application

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Dear Acting Commissioner Harrington:

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<<Your Personal Statement Will Be Inserted Here>>

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The Princeton Public Schools district is an excellent, nationally renowned open public school district. People move here from all over the world so that their children can attend our public schools. The schools are the foundation of the town’s strong property values and represent generations of investment by Princeton taxpayers. Princeton Public Schools are funded almost entirely from the levy of LOCAL property taxes.

The district is well-managed and transparent in its budgeting, reporting and governance. The parents are extremely involved in the life of the district, and the programs and services for students are second to none. The schools welcome all children, from all walks of life, and serve them well. As the diversity of our town increases, so does the diversity of the student body, which in turn benefits all our children.

The Princeton Charter School educates a very different, much less diverse student population. The PCS Board of Trustees, who are not elected by the community, gave no notice to the public that they were planning to submit such a request, and now they dismiss the reality of the harm that their proposed expansion will have on the 3700 children educated in the Princeton Public Schools.  The potentially devastating impact of the PCS expansion on the public schools, coupled with the sneaky and heavy-handed actions of the PCS Trustees, have stirred unprecedented anger in the entire Princeton community, including among PCS families.  

Such ill will is obviously bad for Princeton. It is also, I believe, bad for the charter school movement as a whole. When expensive and controversial charter school expansions are foisted onto communities in a secretive manner calculated to deny the public a voice, it doesn’t just hurt that district’s schools; it also hurts the image of charter schools as a whole. Well-liked, well-managed charter schools suffer by association.  

In light of these facts, granting the PCS expansion would be a terrible slap in the face to the Princeton community, causing its public schools. irreparable harm. It would also give the entire charter school movement in New Jersey a black eye. As the educational leader charged with acting in the best interests of every child in the state, you must weigh the relative harms and benefits to all the public schools in the community, taking into account the importance of good, transparent governance and the equitable, efficient allocation of taxpayer dollars. Balancing all of these considerations, it is clear that the Princeton Charter School expansion proposal must be DENIED.

Add a personal statement to letter below by clicking on the link above

RE: DENY the Proposed Princeton Charter School expansion application

Dear Acting Commissioner Harrington:

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<<Your Personal Statement Will Be Inserted Here>>

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I am writing today to urge you to reject the Princeton Charter School’s (PCS) expansion request. There are multiple budgetary reasons to do so, as I’m sure you’re aware. The expansion would take approximately $1.2 million away from the Princeton Public Schools’ (PPS) annual budget, which is just about the amount by which Princeton is allowed to raise its taxes each year. In other words, if the expansion request goes through, any money raised through future local tax increases would go directly to the charter school, leaving nothing to cover the rising costs that the public schools will inevitably face. Teachers will be fired, programs will be cut, class sizes will increase, and my children’s education will suffer. The choices forced by a reduced pot of funding won’t result in efficiency; they’ll result in fights over critical resources that divide our population and weaken the sense of togetherness that is so crucial to our schools’ success.

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In addition to the significant substantive harms that the PCS expansion would bring about, the process by which such requests are handled raises concerns of fundamental unfairness. In this case, PCS’s Board -- a decision-making body that is completely unaccountable to the taxpaying public – devised its expansion request without the knowledge or involvement of either the Princeton community at large, or even its own parent population. In likely violation of the state’s sunshine laws, it made its expansion request public only at the point of submitting it for approval, denying the public an opportunity to discuss and debate a matter of such obvious communal significance. Now, as you well know, the decision rests in your hands. At no point in the process, in other words, were Princeton’s voters, whose tax dollars pay for Princeton’s schools, able to weigh in on a matter of such vital importance to the local public. Nor do Princeton’s elected representatives get a say. That New Jersey’s charter school funding system takes away such a critical democratic right from its citizens is profoundly troubling.

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The Princeton Charter School’s expansion request will severely limit the Princeton Public Schools’ ability to provide my children with an excellent education. Moreover, the undemocratic funding process denies Princeton voters any role in determining how their local tax dollars get spent. For these reasons and more, I emphatically urge you to reject the Princeton Charter School’s expansion request.