my name is karen syracuse i'm the moderator and as mandated by league rules i cannot vote in the selection i live outside of the voting district the league of women voters is a nonpartisan organization and encourages and forms an active participation in government to increase understanding of major public policy issues and to influence policy through education an advocacy the league neither supports nor poses any particular party or candidate princeton community t v is taking this form and i'll be rebroadcast  princeton dot org and princeton t v dot org we've talked about cell phones everyone knows there will be no independent of video taping or cell phone recording of this of this form because we want to have an innocent party by princeton community we also have a representative in some photos for dili and if you want to photograph the candidates just wait till the forms over and talk to them get some photographs tonight tonight's timekeeper will be josh of all he has a fifteen yellow card to warn you  seconds left and the big red stop sign at the end all the rules have been gone over the candidates but i'll let the audience know the opening statements are sixty seconds each for each question everybody has ninety seconds optional expansion rebuttal period for each candidate if they wanted thirty seconds close remark sixty seconds and we'll go alphabetical and then a little bit of rotational cue everybody so now we'll have our opening statements starting with can hi my name is debbie brown fell of my husband jason i moved to dogs only eighteen years ago we have two sons who attended little brook j w in p h s one graduate in two thousand and fifteen and our other son max is a junior my personal experience that i bring to the board is being a parent to two sons who've attended princeton public schools i've been undergrad in accounting and an m b a in operations the first twenty years of my career i worked in corporate america material planning and supply chain positions the last ten years i've worked in the  nonprofit sector currently i work from the street friends food bank i am running for the board of ed to preserve our educational excellence in princeton i plan to do this by executing a multi year capacity plan based on our district's resources i also want to promote connected children statement i got a waiver because i'm from south carolina we talk a bit slower down there i went to public schools down there and in georgia and texas and then close university down there and so they said they'd give me three minutes you know this is the most important election i think this year you know it has a huge i mean this one the board of education has a huge impact on the town and it will have a huge impact on the most important assets we have which is our kids and our houses by two impacts that i'm the most concerned about are the academic integrity and our great high schools our kids feel a lot of pressure to do well to go to these best universities truth is our kids are going to do well because they're in the best towns and you know best schools so we need to feel like we ratchet it down so that i feel the pressure the other thing is we have a whole bunch of new people coming into our schools from avalon bay and where we stand with and somehow we're going to figure out a way to pay for that and that's the other big impact that i want to have just been cut off ok thank you candy candy martin thank you my name is alex martin i came to princeton about ten years ago from lake como we were got george clooney street and our friends were saying you're going to lake como to new jersey interesting how does it feel that how does that feel well it's fantastic when you come to princeton because princeton has a world class university it has an amazing school system i mean health care about whites and health care and education has been a part of our lives since we graduated i went to cornell studied government i am there from harvard where i've basically been fixing companies now for about twenty five years fixing companies and raising money and when i look at assist school system here i have four children who have gone through the system in various different places  at johnson park at the charter school and all four going through the high school one graduated last year my goal is to help improve things i think there's a lot of things that we do very well i think there's some things we could probably do better i also grew up in scarsdale and wayne where i saw other school good evening and thank you to crystal to karen to john and to all the other members of the league of women voters and thank you as well to princeton community t v my name is gregory stang quits and i and my wife moved here and are now the proud parents of a ninth grader at princeton high school we are very grateful to the generations of community leaders who have helped shape this district into was one of the strongest in the nation i am running because i believe that i have a combination of experience and skills that can help the make important contributions to the future of our community very briefly my agate academic background is includes a master's in a ph d from the woodrow wilson school here at princeton university my professional experience has been public a nonprofit sectors includes time spent at the new york city board of education at the state of new jersey and most recently as c e o of new jersey community capital which is a non profit institution that finances affordable housing and facilities throughout the state so thank you for attending and i look forward to your questions i thank you this first round of questions will begin first with a candidate hair hair martin sent to withdraw from film so this really it's a general question and thank you for your background and a sort of more specifically what steps have you taken as you're running for the first time for the school board to prepare yourself for membership on a school board in particular so begin with candy here and this is we have a minute ninety second i think something i've talked to a number of past board members to see you know did they feel like they made an impact because to me the last thing i want to do is devote a lot of time where i don't feel like i make an impact and i feel like they made an impact i've also tried to read the information on the school district web page to see you know what are the goals of the superintendent i understand that he wants to promote wellness and kind of ratchet i guess ratchet down the the a p wars and you know i have to great i don't remember any pressure where i wasn't close to south carolina i knew where i was going to school my parents told me what they could pay for so it was already decided i could enjoy high school i knew i'd get into university so i didn't feel a lot of pressure there and i would like the students at our schools who are going to do much better than i ever did to know that they shouldn't feel that pressure so i've tried to see if the superintendent's goals match what i want to do thank you candy martin are so with four children in the school system you can imagine our dinner conversations are basically a cauldron of ideas and so that's where i get a lot of the sort of the inspiration to try and continue what's working and try to fix things i think may  be may not do or where we'd like them to be so in thinking about running i started attending some school board meetings i started meeting was steve cochran and talking with other members of the community about what they thought were some of the strong points and some of the things that perhaps could be could be improved upon and that's really what i've been doing at the campus and people taking some ideas and thinking how can i help steve in his mission to improve the school system thank you steve cannane stengel it's funny because as a parent you think you know a lot of what's going on in the community and in your schools and when i first considered running as a candidate for the school board all of a sudden it hit me that what my experience our experience is just a very small slice of what's in an incredible school district so this last period of time as i'm running as a candidate has been a time of real education for myself personally but also sort of a great opportunity to reach out to as many stakeholders as possible and to hear different points of views and different needs and i think for all the four candidates here this process is part of the democratic process and it's a crash course for us because i now understand even better than i did when i first started running what an awesome responsibility it is to try to fill those footsteps of the people who've come before us and to deal with all of our children not just my own but all of our children that make up this community and that's that's what i'm looking forward to continue to do in the last few weeks with my colleagues here thank you can a bro so the big thing i've been doing is i've been on my listening tour and i've been meeting with members of the community and i've had a lot of couple friends do meet and greet so i could meet with people i didn't know and just really listening in hearing you know what they value what they don't value what they love change and this and then it's actually it's extremely eye opening when you really start talking about things and finding out whose background and how they affect things so i feel for me to be ready for it i've been listening a lot to the community i've also been going to board for the past two years and that's given me an idea of you know the subjects that come up the things that come up and what we need to work on i'm very excited to work on things and to continue to keep our schools going and you know it's interesting i have one son who's going to be a junior and somebody said you know why you're running you're almost done you know those school and everything is because for me this is i've always wanted to give back to my community and this is a really good opportunity i really highly value education and it's a really question began with candidate martin and then down that way around here ok this is about teacher contracts when it's time to negotiate the teacher's contract again what would you do on the school board to avoid the problems encountered in the previous negotiation kids obviously we have a bias towards having the children have the best education possible you want some that's fair for the teachers i think the challenge at the end of the day is that the teachers union is going to represent the interests of the teachers and the teachers need that but that might sometimes be a little bit different than what's in the needs of the students what would i do differently well i certainly am going to be a strong advocate for the students my number one priority as a board member would be helping the students get the best education possible and at the end of the day that's just tough negotiations and i'm aware that that will come due on our watch whoever and where there and some of that i've done in my past has been negotiating i think fair fair compromise with people thank you i think that one of the most important roles of a member of the school board is to reach out and listen to all stakeholders and i realize that sometimes you know you have situations that become acrimonious my personal bias stepping back a little bit is a little bit angry at the political and economic situation that all schools here in new jersey face and so i think part of that acrimony is due to external factors i don't know what the factors are going to be like for the next to go she ation with all three unions but i do know that what i'd like to do you know if i were to be elected is is to represent the stakeholders as fairly as possible listen as closely as possible to all sides and as alex said you know it is a negotiation i know that the best compromise is one where where no one's strongly happy but i want to make sure that we value and reward our teachers in arc administrator so i want to make sure that we protect the residents of new princeton because we want to protect the diversity of our community and i want to make sure that as alex said we focus on the students so that would be my goals going forward i don't know what the situation would be at that point different than prior years one thing i want to do is when i get on the board is actually you know next spring start talking to the teachers and have open conversation in the beginning so that you know not i'm not to say we're going be on the same page but we're going to be talking we're going to be talking we're going to be listening and there is a huge thing we need to talk and we need to listen so i want to start it you know almost a year before the contracts and and again yeah the first thing is really the students i mean i saw a lot what happened in the last big contract and the students lost on a lot of things and it was sad it was really sad and it was a big struggle for the teachers for the students for the community for the support staff other taxpayers parents it was a tough thing so i really want to make sure that we are talking and we're listening and we're hearing each other but we're doing it early so that we're not jeopardizing education for any of our students thank you  wrote down three points while i was thinking about this and stuff i've thought about about the whole negotiations i wrote that open issue so from what i understand in the negotiation of the past the school board cannot explain what was going on and what's being fought but yet the union can be can make statements and you know willy nilly i don't know that that's fair i think it needs to be more open so that we know exactly what the fight is over so we can as residents of the town say the school board should cave on this or not so i think it needs to be a bit more open so that the residents can know who they should be upset with they're not upset with or doubt alternative income so you know everybody loves to get a pay raise and you it motivates you i remember working at a company i feel good if i get a good pay raise and i feel bad if i doubt it almost doesn't matter how much it is just you feel valued so you know there's that and then but you also need the money to survive so how can we give the teachers the income they need and want and feel valued and i will admit that this last summer one of my kids took a math class at one of these places to prepare for high school which i swore we would never in my family do i want them to enjoy the summers but we were paying somebody that wasn't a prince and teacher to teach math i think we should have something at our school so the president teachers can make money during the summer if they want my folks taught it comes to university and if they taught summer school they would get extra income but they didn't have to so i thank you and you need to expand on this among you ok the next question will be stan quits and this are all the questions about money are coming up it has been stated in the and maybe in the public press that princeton schools are currently underfunded do you believe that increase funding is required and why i believe that we need to increase funding not just for princeton but for all our schools here in new jersey in the past we had experts national experts come in and together come up with a school funding formula that would be fair across all communities here in new jersey unfortunately that formula has been under funded by the current administration in the state level so all schools to a lesser or greater extent have been underfunded just by definition i think that's wrong i think one of the things that here in princeton we're lucky we have a resource base then most communities in new jersey don't have and because we do have that i think we have an obligation not just to focus on our own students but to continue to use new jersey princeton as a model for the rest of the state so i as a board member would push hard to push for the resources that our students need across the state but also push hard to have us work with other school districts across the sta but i know you know couple years ago we did a referendum so we could do the facilities and then years before we did another once we could do more facilities i think we need to look at our expenses and then we have to look at our income budget and see where we need it i wouldn't just say oh yes go get more funding what i do feel like we need to do future for finding is to partner with the university in the institute and work with them to bring in some funds i think we need to you know look at it really strategically and look at what our expenses are and look at where you know because we have this capacity growth look where we need to grow do we need to grow in the amen to school to me need to grow in the middle school and based on that figure out our funding but i would just say we need to increase funding i think you need to budget a whole lot better to figure out if that's the case or not i do like the idea of if we're going to try and get more funds that were directed at the something specific maybe it's a new building  if we're going to raise if we need more funds and if we're going to try to raise it i think we need to say what it's for and you know maybe go to some of these institutions that are supporting the schools through their taxes as much and see if they'd be willing to contribute hopefully they would recognize they get a benefit out of it but again i don't know for under funded or over funded thank you so my superficial take without looking at the budget is that yes we are underfunded but i think the challenge that princeton faces versus perhaps other communities in new jersey is that obviously we have the university number one number two we have a large group of private schools so you have the parents here who are living the parents or professor living here and just taking advantage of the town and just the university may not be as strong advocates or get the usage of the public school system that you have the parents who are putting their kids to private school they're obviously not going to be as interested in the public school system and then you have the rest of the folks who are who are here probably tonight trying to make sure that we get the best education the best public education we have for the children so that's that's the challenge so yes i do think there's a need but the nominee agree with with candidate that i think there is a lot we can do one of the reasons i'm running is because that's what i do is i raise money and i and i like to help find alternative sources so that it doesn't just lay on the burden of the taxpayers i don't think that's right and and you need to explain ok yeah i'd like to expand on that and i'd like to agree with the other candidates here about here in the locality you know here in princeton itself we need to focus on what we can do but again i want to reiterate that by definition the state of new jersey is underfunding all our schools and i don't want that us to lose fact side of that fact and that's something that needs to be really reiterated and we had experts and we have the court system here in new jersey have told us this and so that's that's i want to maintain we're running out of we're short of money for buses to take kids to sporting events and i think the sporting events are important because it builds a sense of camaraderie among the students and you know how can we be short of money to take buses mercer park in hamilton for the different teams the stuff so in some ways we are short of money but it may not be maybe we need to move money around anyone else who hasn't spoken in this expansion ok next question begins with candy brownfield i'm going to do another budget one although you probably talked about this in a general way would you willing to propose the school board a budget that spends above the two percent tax hike cap but that would require taxpayer approval could you see that happening why or why not  could i see this happening part of what i'm excited about too is our government here in new jersey we're going to get a new governor and so i'm hoping that will help us with a lot of this also and everything again i really feel i personally need to look at where works where we're spending and what we need and i can't you know without really getting into the whole budget and really seen with the expenses are and again i really want to go after you know other sources which would be the university of the institute i don't want to have to put all this on our taxpayers we do pay a lot of taxes and you know i want to make sure that we're doing it right i don't want to just say we're going to just you know go over that and everything and i think for me the biggest thing is really understanding where the money is going and that's a big thing where it's going and what we're spending and you're right sports is great all the afterschool stuff we have in those need to be funded more we need to understand that and i think that's the biggest thing for me i have to see more of our expenses in our income you know as a planner i need to see both sides before i could say we could just do it you know if money  cap unless it was really something that we needed and really wanted to be justified and it would need to be so that no one would disagree just to say we need to raise a three percent vote for  it wouldn't work for me it would be we need we have three hundred new kids coming in from the new developments we're going to need another building at the high school and at another elementary school that's going to cost this much amount of money otherwise our kids are going to be set in mobile homes in the parking lot of the high school that makes it a lot easier to say yes but just say we need it's four percent raise it's a bit hard because that's forever so again as a heavy user of the system i personally would be willing to pay more taxes for it but i don't think that's fair or right to put that on to the rest of prince i think there are too many people who don't get that same either so i think we have to look for if whenever we put a budget together it has to be paid for and so that's the way i would be coming out of from what's the budget how are we going to pay for it but i would be championing other sources of income so i'm not a i'm not above trying to find a budget that we think gets the student's education we want whether that means whatever additional costs are incurred i'd like to try to find ways to fund that other than the current tax base thank you ken it's like my colleagues i would also want to take the time as a board to think through all the options but i wouldn't want to foreclose you know the need to go to the community what gives me what gives me the ability to say that is that we would have to go to the community and convince the residents that there is an absolute need to go above the cap and explain why and it would be up to the residents to then vote on it and that's how democracy is supposed to work that's local control any desire to expand on this topic and you say one last point on it to me the whole challenge is i want to live in princeton to the very end so that's my goal i don't really want to ever move again so i need to be able to afford  it every time the taxes go up somebody can't afford to live here anymore but yet we want to have great schools and we're going to have to balance that so that's that's that would be one of my driving concerns can just add again even a two percent and thirty five years your tax or doubled and he will say ok switching gears there are several questions on charter schools that's a topic that is a great interest i believe  i'm going to read the general question and then at a point from another question it's not really the question what are the benefits and draw i'm sorry candidate here ok what are the benefits and drawbacks of having a charter school as well as our regular public schools in princeton and what should that relationship be that's that's the question and then some questions from the audience is making a statement just read out the price per pupil for education is lower in the charter school the princeton charter school i guess is specifically and the price per pupil for administration is higher on this other question is saying that if princeton is so six as princeton is a very successful public school district why do you think private and public parochial schools are so popular but the real question is what are the benefits and drawbacks of having a charter school as well as district schools and how would you how would you see that relationship going forward i'm going to probably take about fifteen minutes on this with about twelve or bottles you know my my kids  you know three kids they went to the charter school from one kindergartens and seventh grade one from second grade through high school and then one from third grade and i think it was good for them but you know i love talking with friends and i had a friend talk with their mind today about the charter schools and our thoughts on them he's from he's a bit off to the right compared to me you know does princeton need a charter school i want to hand the schools are really great do wait but on the other hand know my kids went there because they offered french we had a french language school before coming here and i like the fact that they could keep up their french c p now has a spanish immersion program is there a connection i don't know i would like to think that the charter school figures out ways to be innovative and the hopefully on the school board if i was there i would figure out what are they doing right that we could learn from it to me would be great if we make if the waiting list at the charter school is zero because everybody wants to be at the public schools you don't need the charter schools it would disappear but it's a real hard question i my kids i believe had have had a great experience there and i think it could be used to help you know figure out ways to do innovation in the in the other schools thank you candy martin sure so i think there are benefits and drawbacks to having them and i too have had children they started the chance of oldest son put his name and wife put his name in a lottery but in the charter school where the charter school and again had some successes there are some things i think we change there are all pleased in the high school and i like canada here think there's a lot you can learn from other schools that do things that are doing things differently and so i think the relationship should always be it has i don't think there should be a bad relation i think there should be a possible a shoebox all schools i get perplexed when i look at the part of the other question i asked which was why are there so many private schools  or why do people send their school kids here to private schools approaches when you have excellent alternatives i don't know that i don't understand that my wife went to a private school as a child and here is very very happy with the system that she put that guitar our kids in but we had that discussion and it comes down to i think there's a part of it is philosophical and you know where you want your kids to go to school and what and do you want to be more part of the broader community although even since are so many private schools here they're part of the community as well but i think there's a lot we can learn from every other school and so i think the relationship should be healthy and strong thank you can you stand i'm going to answer in two parts one focusing here and then the second sort of looking at broader issues in terms of princeton we've had a charter school and our public schools for fifteen years now sixteen years now so i think it's a mute point i mean we have an or disclosure our daughter did go to the charter school for two and a half years she decided to go there and she decided to to come back to community park i on the local level if i were to be elected to the board i would hope that my relationship with the charter school and i thank the teachers there and the principal for being so kind to our daughter even though we had policy differences i would hope that that might allay some of the acrimony on both sides but on a broader level i think there are some issues and issues with charter schools right now the way they have been designed is too they lead to increased segregation and the academic data shows that and the reason they do is that there's a difference in the type the student body from host districts and if you have a difference in student body you're going to have issues like that and so and the second the second issue for me as well is just the disparate impact on  different you know view of everything and i think what's tough is i don't i do know the charter schools are very state run there's a lot of rules that we as a community cannot even change because there are state governed but i think what's tough for people is that the funding sometimes for the charter school doesn't always match the difference of what the public schools get and so i think that's tough for people to always feel like you know sometimes they're not losing as much as some of the public schools are i think private  parochial is just a real personal thing you know i mean obviously parochial is because that's something you believe in for your family and some but some of the private schools i think if your children you know need a smaller classroom or things but i think that's all really personal and i think that's really different than charter versus princeton public schools and everything you know it's hard i think it's great to have competition in the community i think it's good you know keeps everybody on their toes and everything you know i'm fortunate sometimes with the kids  gets like a little hard because you know kids will be in your class in third grade in the all disappear fourth grade because everyone is so afraid of like j w so maybe we really need to really really work on j ws so i think that's what happened in little rock that's what we had little brick so i think for us a little book that was a big deal and you know so i think we need to spend a lot more time understanding little broken work to make sure that it's ok place for kids that they can you know be happy and excel thank you anybody want to expand about you so the second point i wanted to make an upright or level is is the importance of local control and that that for me this was where right now the way charter schools are structured there is no local control so i would push for going forward not right now for institutions that already exist but for going forward the charter school shouldn't be open communities unless the community itself wants that charter school to be open and  that would get to that my second point to any any other expansions ok this round will begin with kennedy martin and this is on park the partnership for sussman of readiness for college and careers what is your position on standardized testing a particularly on park well i think standardized testing so that no one really likes but at the end of the day it's something that in some way shape or form is helpful i think it's helpful to have some standardized testing unfortunately it's out of control so if you talk to teachers they'll say they not only are they teaching to the test but it's cutting into the the learning the joy of learning the things they'd like to be doing so where i stand on it is i don't like it but i think it's a i think a standardized test is something that that's necessary as a way to compare schools and other another way to compare them and i agree that assessments are necessary to the difference between when i was growing up and now is high stakes standardized testing and putting the pressure on our children and the number of tests the children take today versus the number of tests they took thirty years ago is astronomical i saw one estimate of one hundred forty six standardized tests over the course of a child's career i think that's too much i think a lot of other students think parents think that's too much but the problem with park goes further than that park was a test that was rolled out too quickly has too many issues and hasn't been validated yet if in effect i believe that we've been using our children as guinea pigs for a test that hasn't been validated yet applaud the current board and the stand it took first of all that voting resolution asking the state to withdraw making park a requirement to graduate high school and then just this past month in september arguing against this was a statement that was not just from the board president and the superintendent but also the teachers union saying that park shouldn't be used  been doing in pointing out the problems with park thank you can a broad tell i do think you need some standardized testing but i think that park which obviously was a state mandate was really expensive just thrown at us and  had to use having had to learn how to use computers i mean a lot of stress when all of the students and it was really really tough on students and family might opt out i gave him the option and i think i was angry about the whole thing and i said if you want to opt out go for it and you know when it got to the high school level as software last year all his friends opted out and they all went up for a month so i mean that's horrible but that is what they you know learn how to do in the high school to get out of the test and everything because they too  it was ridiculous and it's tough to teach your kids just to be tested and again i mean there's definitely communities within the country which you need some testing to monitor your teachers and everything i don't feel we need that here i feel you need you know some testing to see where your kids fall but again those who want to go to college there's plenty of testing that they take so i don't support park and i think we spent a little too much time on it and teachers spent too much time and the students you know stressed about it so again i think it was an expensive adventure by a testing company that made a lot of money think you can hear so i guess i don't have strong opinions about the park testing my guess last year as a sophomore i believe he opted out of out of it had me either email the superintendent of the principal to opt out of it and i did that for me was that he was too stressed out or didn't want to take them take it but if you're going to be stuck taking these tests you know we all remember when we were in school some people are really good at taking tests so i am a patent attorney when i got out of star practice and i had to pass three sanitized tests at this exam the patent bar exam in the state bar you know hours and hours of standardized tests there and those are really critical so if you can view these standardized tests the way to get good at them if you can learn the techniques and it doesn't impact the school district too much it's going to help the kids later in life when they're taking their engineering exams you know professional engineer my wife's back in school doing nursing the nurse practitioner she's cosily have to take these standardized tests to become a registered nurse architects i believe have to do it in finance people have to do these so there are so many careers it's going to take standardized tests when you're in your thirty's and forty's and fifty's that you know if you can get the skilled oh it's going to help you expansion just a quick comment so to clarify i believe that a standardized test is necessary i'm agnostic on park i do so completely support the board's position that they've taken trying to push back i think it's fantastic to try to push back the sort of arms race of status testing and other expansions yet and i just wanted to add to my comments that i've learned over the years to listen to parents to teachers to students themselves and in this case with this specific test you had to push back from all these constituencies and so again i just want to applaud the district not only for what they said but also for making it comfortable enough to allow students and parents to express their views about this or any other ok this round will begin with can it stand with its on the topic of bullying help instigate that change well one thing i do want to applaud the state of new jersey is for its anti bullying laws and i think we are a national leader on that  even one incident of bullying is one too many and i think we have a much better environment where more people now realize that so if there are instances of bullying that is role for the members of the board to work with the district and to focus on that and to keep parents involved in the discussion so i you know i do believe that that would be something that would be very important for whoever is elected among us to focus on the future thank you can a problem so i think the hobbling this sad and you know you just read about students and kids i think the administration needs to take it a lot more seriously i think it needs to be a much bigger you know discussion amongst more of our administration and you know i would even want in the elementary school i created some workshops and some assemblies in and small groups where the kids can talk and they can feel it's a really safe place to be able to speak and you know especially in g w maybe have some more peer groups like they have in the high school for the students so they can express themselves the but again they need to feel it's a really safe place to be able to talk about it and to empower them and you know maybe more in the high school too to have the smaller because i know we have peer group and we have a lot of things but i guess i want to make sure that the kids feel they can really talk about maybe something online for the high school you know with their phones just so that they can say if they feel like they're being bullied because i think it's hard to come out and say it but they need to be able to voice it somehow to someone i know we've gotten worse you know counselors in the school but i think this is just a huge thing the kids get stressed and other kids you know bully i think we need a lot more support i know we have you know we have corner house we have high tops we have all these places but i would want the kids to know they really can go to these places and that the administration can do a lot more thank you can take care so when i think of bullying i think of someone who's you know alone against the world and people are picking on that person so how do you counter that and one idea having them be part of something personal experience here is that you know my kids with the charter school they came to the high school too and they really didn't know as many people there my oldest one joined the cross country stink team started running in the summertime belief it's probably hard to feel too bullied when you're part of something like that not everybody can go out and run across country some people may want to do the art so maybe instead of starting cross country in june or july before your freshman year you start in the arts you know maybe that they do a school a school musical or a school play and the kids start meeting before school starts and so their first day of school there are already a part of it and they already have a close group of friends that they're part of i think a kid like that is going to have trouble being bully because they have such a close group of friends that if something's happening they can go to some senior and say hey this person give me a hard time and they probably get advice on how to deal with it so you know i'm not sure how much of bullying is going on the school but this is a way to make kids i believe feel part of something so they can't be bullied as easily thank you can it might i take a little slight contrarian view to some of the issues here that i think we've come an incredible long way from when certainly when i grew up if you look at the behaviors that happened then that would never be tolerated today not even close to being tolerated day i still think there's a long way to go and probably around the social media front and i think candy that hair's correct when people get involved and they do things their moral dilemma like to feel on i think social media is i mean that the board should take very seriously how we tackle how we figure out ways to get them not just off their phones but offs also how we can address things that are going online because all kids are say most kids are doing things that their parents don't know about and that's not inherently wrong but i think there are things that are happening that are going undiscovered and if 'm so impressed with the tolerance that i've seen at the high school i grew up in close to south carolina they integrated the university in my lifetime i think there was the black school in town that became the first grade so it's a whole other world down there and what i see what you know how people get along up here stuff that you would never admit to in your life down there when i was growing up in that it's just completely open here the clubs they have i'm shocked at how far we've come  daughter i'm impressed with the sense of community and camaraderie that the teachers and administrators and the board and the district has instilled and i want that for all our children so i want to continue the efforts that the district has been doing the superintendent has been doing on wellness and other initiatives you know ok this question will begin with county and there's two questions and they're really pretty much exactly the same and they're both on dual language immersion and i'm going with a longer question because it is interesting details community park elementary school is in the second year of the or the first year i'm not sure the second year of a two year dual language immersion pilot program one half of the school day is in spanish given the success and popularity of this pilot program what is your position on extension of the program at c p and on possible extent growing into other schools their first language because they feel definitely more inclusive in everything but before but i also know it's only you know a pilot's in the second year so there is probably still a lot more that needs to be done for it i think we need to make sure that we have spanish speaking teachers in every subject because you can't just keep throwing you know teachers and who aren't teaching all the different subjects and make sure the kids understand it but i also think it's wonderful  for kids who again english is not their first language and then for those students that want to learn spanish and everything i think it's exciting to do different things like this because especially you know we live in a world now where you know being bilingual is you know what you need so i just want to make sure that we don't expand it to other schools before it's really really completely followed through it is only their second year and i'm unsure of when it keeps growing are other students than is the whole school going to have to be because i wasn't sure if you know if they're going to have the room to keep it growing and everything or if this is going to fall those two  students up until they finish but again i think it's an amazing program but just to make sure you have all the you know eyes dotted t's crossed before you make it big thank you can you here so we moved here from washington d c we lived in bethesda maryland and the road in front of our house would see the school bus going to the international school and my wife and i said our kids are going to go to the international school they're going to know and learn a foreign language what we end up moving up here instead so we enrolled them in the french american school and i just it was great having my four year old son you know with him and bond appetit and him talking with a french accent to the guy there ordering stuff and the guy looking at us like are you all related what's the story here i love the language immersion that was really important to us and that's why we went to the charter school from the french school because we want our kids to learn the language and about like candidate braun thought it's you know how do you implement it and make sure that they do a good job but i would love the kids to have an opportunity to you know go to riverside or little brook or community park johnson park and learn a foreign language become immersed in it from early on i remember my my son when we were in lawrenceville one point back when he was a different school he was talking to some kids when he was about six years old or so what's your what's your other language and assume that everybody was fluent two languages i you know i think that would be great for everybody thank you can i'm not sure i want to tie this back a little bit to the charter school question that came up earlier in that i think experimentation is healthy experimentation is excellent and the preliminary that i've heard from the dual language immersion is that it's very positive and so if we even looking at comparisons of charter school doesn't didn't have at least with a great spanish program and i think it's fantastic now that community park six months a year or two but i think ultimately experiments like this and are positive for the community thank you can extend i i'm going to agree with my colleagues i'm also extremely excited by what's going on a community park i think it's an incredible opportunity and it's an opportunity not just for the children there to help those with some disadvantages close the opportunity gap but it's also an opportunity for their their friends to learn a second not just language but culture and in today's interrelated world what better way can we help them start that by offering them opportunities just like this so i agree just like alex said this is an incredible innovation and i'd like to really look at and if possible expand in the future because it just gives our children that much more advantages and that much more opportunity to face the future thank you and i know you'll be sad to know but that was the last question because we are doing in our format so we'll begin with our sixty second closing statements and the order will be candidate martin so kennedy martin so again thank you all for coming out tonight and i want to thank the candidates it's a good process to go through to get involved with the community to learn about what makes the school system which is such an important part of what we do i think one of the big challenges that we've identified or that is not unique to princeton is the fact that how do you fund a top notch school system and i'm running because i'd like to help come up with creative ways to bring additional funding in i'd like to also be a candidate who would push and drive change i think change is difficult it's not easy it's something i've done with the companies that i worked with and that's what i like to try and do and bring here to prince the school system to improve what i see is already very good system  get want to express my gratitude to the league for sponsoring this forum and to all of you for attending tonight i pledge to listen to your concerns thoroughly my role would be as a liaison with the other members of the board the district our incredible teachers stephan administrators and our amazing students public education is our community jim and i want to protect it for the future and working together with you i want to polish it so that it shines even more brilliantly most importantly i believe passionately in the importance of public education and if elected i pledge to conduct myself in as transparent a manner as possible to you the voters residents and families of princeton if you agree with me please consider using one of your three school board votes on nov eighth to support my candidacy thank you  project i too want to thank my fellow candidates this is this has been fun and to the league of women voters for having this farm for us big thing for me is to partner with all the stakeholders in our community you know that includes because of this capacity growth includes the planning board includes avalon bay it includes the university the institute so that together we can you know keep a fabulous education in princeton and because there's some infrastructure we're going to have to talk about and do but i want to do it with all the stakeholders in this also includes the parents community like that another big thing for me obviously is the opportunity gap and i want to make sure that we pay attention to this everyone you know should have a high school graduation  degree for your schools or for everybody but everyone deserves a do you know a four year high school graduation sorry so again thank you so much and it's been a pleasure and if anybody has any other questions you can find me and i'd love to hear what you have to say thank you kenneth hare so do i get to make my three minutes though try so we can get this is that a lot of fodder this is been one of the fastest hours just flew by i don't know if you guys enjoyed it i had a lot of fun with it  know i'm going to have trouble figuring out who all to vote for because there's you know i'm sitting around three really qualified people and hopefully you guys also will find that a lot more difficult to figure out who to vote for here than you will for the presidential election  so what i was going to you know for me what i really want to focus on on the board if i get there is the two things i mentioned earlier is the whole academic and integrity are our kids are going to have great futures no matter what it's it's there it's there in the right place in the right schools they just don't need to feel sussed so stressed out that if they don't get into this school their life is as a mess so somehow it needs to be toned down so they can do the right thing in school not feel need to take shortcuts they're going to do well and then the second thing is this whole school you know the challenge that we're faced with so many new people or schools or how we're going to handle that so that all of us can live here for as many years as we want and afford thank you our thanks to the candidates for their cooperation and to those of us questions are great questions and i wish we could have done it all please urge your friends to see the video this forum on comcast channel thirty or for five the video also be posted on vote for one one dot or a great site l w v princeton dot org another great site and princeton t v dot org another great site remember to vote in the general election on tuesday november eighth where an addition to our national to we recommend you visit for vote for one one dot org and you can vote for mitt you can vote by mail you must get your about a request for that to the county clerk seven days before the election you can visit the league website for more information and alice thank the