The Plainsboro Zoning Board meeting on July 7 was a prime example of the type of political manipulation that WW-P School Board president Hemant Marathe, WW-P superintendent Vicky Kniewel, Princeton Regional School Board president Rebecca Cox, and Princeton Regional Schools superintendent Judy Wilson have been pulling for the past six months. The parents of the 170 students who have registered for the Princeton International Academy Charter School (out of a total of nearly 300 applicants) were hoping that the zoning board would not succumb to the pressure of school district officials who are willing to threaten the waste of taxpayer dollars on frivolous lawsuits.
The nature of the school districts’ objection was, in the words of one zoning board member, a blatant case of “form over substance” in an effort by politicians to derail the legal process. Sadly, the zoning board was indeed intimidated by the prospect of the lawsuit, and the meeting was forced to be postponed. We now know, however, that the school district politicians have nothing substantive with which to challenge the school’s use variance request. They will simply spend taxpayer money on baseless legal challenges to endlessly delay the process in the hope the clock simply runs out.
“Zoning questions are frequently decided on grounds other than the strength of the master plan. Politics drives most of these decisions,” according to Gordon McInnes, former assistant commissioner of the Department of Education. And the most powerful political forces in our community, those that control the largest budgets, are the politicians who oversee our school districts.
Professional politicians know that if you repeat a falsehood often enough, the masses will accept it as the truth. The politicos running the WW-P and Princeton Regional school districts are applying this rule to incite enough public outrage to stop PIACS from opening. But since, as Mohandas Gandhi observed, “an error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it,” it is necessary to address each of these errors:
Error No. 1: “PIACS Founders have misused state charter school law by obtaining approval for their application in the waning days of the Corzine administration.”
Truth: The New Jersey DOE oversees the administration of charter school law and the process by which charter school applications are submitted and approved. The PIACS application was submitted in October after several months of preparation. And the decision from the DOE was always scheduled for mid-January, 2010. PIACS founders have followed the process faithfully and fulfilled every requirement in the process to date.
Error No. 2: “PIACS Founders has tried to take advantage of the zoning laws.”
Truth: The property that PIACS intends to use as the school facility was used to house a school for decades. Despite being subsequently zoned for commercial use, St. Vincent’s Hall has been used almost exclusively as a school facility and, as such, has never generated tax revenue for Plainsboro. So there is no negative financial impact on the township by using this facility for a school.
Error No. 3: “PIACS is a boutique private school masquerading as a charter school.”
Truth: The school to which the critics refer is the Ying Hua International School (YHIS). In fact, only 11 students of the 170 registered with PIACS are currently attending (YHIS). Moreover, YHIS will continue to coexist with PIACS just like the other 30 schools in the region that have students registered with PIACS.
Error No. 4: “PIACS is just a language program. Mandarin is already taught in the public schools.”
Truth: PIACS offers a program through which students become proficient in two strategic languages. The other public schools teach in a way that helps students get a 5 on an AP but does not achieve fluency (at least not by international standards). Many national leaders, including Representative Rush Holt, support the objectives of the National Strategic Language Initiative (NSLI) and are pushing for more immersion programs because they understand that the traditional methods used in our public schools leave our students “linquistically malnourished.” But local school officials resist innovation because change is uncomfortable.
Error No. 5: “PIACS is a school created by Chinese for Chinese and does not reflect the diversity of our community.”
Truth: The mission and curriculum of PIACS are international. The majority of the founders of PIACS are NOT Chinese. Nor are the students who have been registered. More than 50 percent of the registered students come from families where Mandarin is not spoken at home. The parents of students registered at PIACS come from England, Japan, Nigeria, India, Germany, Korea, Mexico, Russia, and France.
Error No. 6: “Taxpayers have not had a choice in deciding whether to fund PIACS.”
Truth: State law is explicit on this matter. A charter school only receives funding based on the number of students enrolled. The taxpayers who determine whether a charter school merits funding are the parents of the students. This is the spirit and letter of the state law. One may disagree with the law, but it is wrong to imply PIACS has abused it.
Error No. 7: “The funding of the charter school is forcing the school district to cut jobs and programs.”
Truth: The PIACS budget is 0.6 percent of the combined school districts’ budget. This is not the order of magnitude that would require any programs to be cut. The actual reasons for the program cuts are budget cuts that are being made at the state and local level. These cuts have nothing to do with PIACS.
Moreover, the Princeton Charter School has proven for over a decade that a charter school can achieve better results at lower cost in large part because it does not bear the burden of a bloated district administration. One should not lose sight of the fact that in both WW-P and Princeton, the superintendents, after years of double-digit salary increases, were congratulated for accepting a one-year freeze while they laid off people in the district who actually provided a real service.
Error No. 8: “Parents residing in the WW-P school district are only interested in PIACS because it has a full-day kindergarten.”
Truth: With 159 registered students and the remaining 11 to be registered this week, the first grade, second grade, and kindergarten will be full. Students from West Windsor-Plainsboro represent the majority in all three grades. So, unless Mr. Marathe plans turn the first and second grades in WW-P schools into to half-day programs, it is clear that the full-day kindergarten may be one valuable point of differentiation that makes PIACS attractive, but it is certainly not the only one.
Moreover, the South Brunswick school district manages to provide a full-day kindergarten despite a budget that is 20 percent lower than WW-P’s on a per-student basis. The fact is that WW-P underfunds the kindergarten to subsidize other programs. This is a choice that school district officials in WW-P have made that negatively impacts the lives of certain taxpaying parents.
Error No. 9: “Charter schools are only for poor performing districts.”
Truth: This is neither the intent nor the letter of the New Jersey State Charter School Program Act. The act explicitly states that charter schools are intended to raise the quality of public education in all school districts by adding innovation, choice, and accountability. PIACS will clearly do this. But it will not be the first charter school in our region to do so. Princeton Charter School has, for years, produced quantifiable results that outperform the other public schools in the Princeton School District.
The repetition of these errors and the provocative statements made in public forums by school district officials are dangerous and irresponsible. Some parents and school district employees are taking the attacks by Marathe, Wilson, Kniewel, Cox, and others as their cue to menace parents who are considering PIACS for their children. Several parents who were otherwise interested in registering their children in PIACS decided to withdraw simply out of fear that if the school does not open in September, their children would be at risk of being mistreated at their public school. The tactics being employed by the school district officials in WW-P and Princeton are, either by design or accident, inciting dangerous mob-like behavior within the community.
School district officials compliment the promulgation of misinformation with statements of hubris. Mr. Marathe in particular is fond of arguing that innovative programs such as PIACS are a “luxury, not a necessity” because “we do an excellent job of educating our children.”
Meanwhile, top school districts around the country, from Amherst to Portland, are implementing dual language immersion programs and inquiry-based curriculum programs in their public school systems, either in a charter or school-in-school format, to continue to raise standards.
But school officials in our districts are perfectly comfortable with the status quo. Parents and founders of PIACS are not. We have felt the power that school district officials will use to protect their deep-seeded interests. The parents and founders of PIACS are, however, determined to improve the standards of education in our districts. PIACS will open. The only question is when.
Parker Block
PIACS Co-Founder
