involved with all facets of the school referendum for some time so we want to welcome you to the show thank you thank you for having us thank you for being here so last week we had our district superintendent steve cochran on the show we talked about the referendum that the community will be voting on december eleventh can we take a step back and talk about why we're doing a referendum at this time and also for those that might need some clarity what referendum is essentially and maybe maybe i can answer the second question first a referendum is an opportunity for the community to approve a plan that the board has put into place so the way that school finance works is that a board can approve an annual budget but for major capital improvements like this it goes out to the community in the form of a referendum everyone gets a vote and what the board puts forward can be they voted yes up or down depending on how the community feels we think this is an important referendum because it's such a bunch of  basic maintenance tasks that we've put into place we'll talk more about it later but it's really we think it's time to have a lot of these things taken care of now and we think that most people in town will agree with us ok great and we don't at the board voted ten zero in favor of this can you talk about the significance of that and the outcome of the vote what it represents was sure the outcome of the board photon this referendum was part of almost twenty months process where we had over forty public meetings to get input on the state of our school buildings and the desires of our students or teachers or administrators taxpayers residents of the town on what they wanted the schools to be and so schools who really brought some of the best ideas in the most current ideas around what a school building should look like number one and then we've had a discussion both in board meetings in other settings as i said over forty public meetings to get feedback on those ideas the referendum that's before us now on december eleventh is really the first step in what we hope to be a broader community dialogue and eventually what comes to be more pieces of school improvement this is what i call just the basics it's security see it's some sort of basic upgrades to the buildings many of which haven't been significantly improved in over twenty  what's on the what's on the referendum for december eleventh is i say we call this the basics but we hope that we will go back and have a broader dialogue about what people would like to see in their community  schools we expect that over the first part of twenty nine hundred we will have some structured forums whereby people who would like to learn more or like to have input into what the next question what the next step of the referendum is that those people have a chance to be heard and to hear what other people are thinking hopefully by the middle part of twenty one thousand we would have a broad consensus around what we think step two was going to be and then hopefully perhaps a referendum or maybe even two in twenty nine hundred twenty twenty to get everything into place for both our middle schools or high schoolers and to some extent additional improvements elementary school ok ok great describe me for someone who's new to the district or maybe hasn't been following this closely could you describe the current state of the facilities that we're talking about sure so  is john witherspoon which was built in one hundred sixty three and all of our other five school buildings are older than that with the princeton high school being the oldest one nine hundred twenty nine and so as pat said earlier  the school board can pass a budget every year were subject to two percent cap and subject to some exceptions and so these larger maintenance issues we don't have money in the budget if we want to continue to provide not a best practice the best practices were established in one thousand nine hundred nine following the columbine shootings and the district had a referendum in two thousand and one it was in a draft and the district had a referendum two thousand and twelve it wasn't addressed and so we believe now is the time  they're very inefficient as i said before most of our schools will be were built in the fifty's and before and so there was no central air there recently i spoke with someone about the high school and there  of return for air valves built that were built in the one nine hundred twenty s so we need to upgrade our schools to address the environment that we're living in today which is warmer and wetter and so that's another thing the next thing we're doing is renovating the guidance suite at the high school and that goes to the district's call for wellness part of the strategic plan every year we have between one hundred fifty to one hundred kids who are in crisis and if you go to the guidance suite it's not very welcoming there's not a lot of privacy when you walk in there's a copy room to the left and so we want to make it we want to make it more welcoming we want to provide more privacy and also that's where the child study teams are and so we want to provide some privacy for families as well in addition we're looking to add four classrooms at the high school which is kind of it will be a flexible learning zone which will which w proposed as part of the bigger referendum and so there will be four classrooms and a cheater collaboration zone and so we're hopeful that will be constructed sooner than later and so people can get a feel for what it is and realize that it's not open classrooms that's just flexible classrooms we're also looking to make upgrades to some of our fitness facilities right now with the later startup time at the high school there's a leader and time so we have right now sports teams some of them are practicing triple tiered practicing two until nine thirty at night and so by adding this additional space we hope to alleviate some of the crunch and also right now are wrestling fencing teams don't have any dedicated space and so again as part of one of the districts goal on equity this addresses some equity issues that we're experiencing just going to john where there's been really quickly we're looking to spend some money to upgrade  renovate the a c c which was the former library it's not handicapped accessible and so it can be used for programmable education space so we're looking to potentially add two or three classrooms there and we're also looking but will be the beginning of a broader conversation about the future of the district where our list of the outcome so we're we go from here basically well i think i mentioned it already but this is the first step of the real basic things that you just described from here i think everybody knows that the schools are getting more crowded and that we haven't done a major referendum in twenty years and if you look around even even if you look on the high school which still nine hundred twenty nine the district was founded about thirty years prior to that it says it right on the front of the tower so every thirty years those community members came together and built that beautiful high school you know tower and that wing  at that time it was time it's time again to do something and i think that's not something that can be argued what can be argued and what you know people will have different opinions on is how did you not the not the whe it but the how to do it should it look like this should it look like that should include certain things should include other things i think those are the kinds of questions that will be in the in the forefront in the first half of twenty nine hundred and i'm looking forward to a really robust dialogue around that i think as citizens and taxpayers we have to balance between wanting the absolute best for our children which i think it's a is a core value in princeton and honoring and highlighting the value of education which i believe the other core value of princeton people against fiscal the fiscal challenges that we all face as taxpayers as as homeowners and as as family members that we've got to balance that somehow and i'm sure that through this process which is a democratic process which are the greatest processes ever devised by humanity we will figure out the right way to do this so that most people are satisfied i'm sure that we will never satisfy everyone but will satisfy enough people and i think what we'll end up with something that we can all be really proud of he talked this a little bit but when the superintendent was here on the show he talked a lot about the community and our mission statement and how this plays into the december referendum and you comment on that well sure i mean if you talk about the community in the most talk about the mission statement in a minute but many of us came here for the education for our children i when i moved here about fifteen or so years ago it was the education was in the forefront of our minds as a family it was really important to us that princeton respected education as a community and put their money where their mouth was with a fantastic public education system was important to both me and my wife we were products of public education and public education matters i think it's a core bedrock of a democratic society and it matters that that we invest in th not just something that's nice to have it's essential to a healthy community and so when i came fifteen years ago i had my children my entire family got the benefit of what the taxpayers had done prior to that we came into a built environment with everything constructed in a beautiful way and we got the benefit of that and now i understand and i think many people understand that is a time for all of us to give back even though my children are older now and won't really see the  benefits of most of this referendum work it's time for us to give back to the next generation and i think that's again for a core fundamental value that people should understand you cannot simply just say no you've got to say how not no and we're happy to have a conversation about how but it is not fair to the people who came before us and to the people came after us to simply deny our children the education that they deserve now in terms of how what we're proposing puts with our strategic plan a few years ago the community parents educators others came together and build a pretty good plan for our school district that include some core values that hopefully all of our educational activities build around and and in advance one of those and a core one is the wellbeing of our children the physical and health physical wellbeing and health of our children definite already spoke about some of those things which is really in the first part of this referendum safety pure air for the for the kids those sorts of wellness things are part of the  teacher plan also part of the referendum and then moving forward the idea that every child be known the idea that every child has the ability to develop in their their own best way based on who they are the what were we envision what we see is a next step in building program would be spaces that allow children to work as teams to come together and work collaboratively these are all things that are part of the strategic plan that also will be reflected in the in the buildings so again as part of this dialogue we hope to have over the next six months is to take those values as a community and then build them into something that people can use walk in and use and see in touch every day but it really will reflect the values that this town think so with the complexity of some of the things you are talking about some people may question due diligence what you did touch on a little bit can you discuss this process  a bit more detail sure so so i joined the board in twenty sixteen and as soon as i joined the board members were talking about the need for a referendum and it's later that year in december  thousand november december two thousand and sixteen we began to look at hiring architect who could help us with our plans and so we hired a spiesel architectural firm and they've been in new jersey for many years they've done very many successful referendums and they have a lot of experience with schools then in the early part of twenty seventeen we did a capacity study of all six schools and also need to now sis and so that's when we started to think about how we were going to address you know the issues and also at that when the superintendent came here and took twenty fourteen he did he commissioned a demographic study since that time that has been updated four times and every time it's updated the number continues to rise and in addition to that the township has is in the middle of settling a lawsuit with regard to affordable housing so in addition to the population growth that we're seeing now we also expect within the next five years additional growth so we're trying to plan for that we so we considered all kind of options and then in october of last year that many of the board members took a ride to pennsylvania to look at one of the schools that the architect had built and i think we agree  went to the building and it was a very nice building but it was very sterile and they had the secure vestibule and it looked like he was going to a doctor's waiting office and so that at that time we decided that we needed to focus more on design because school should be inspiring for children so right around the end of last year we appointed fielding air as our second architect and they're also internationally known for school design and construction so this year in the beginning of this year we started we had design teams so we had one very elementary school for five six school in the high school and so every board member was on one of those committees and we interacted with community groups historical historical society conservationists environmentalist and we really took all this impact into account and in addition we looked at our needs analysis so when we first started it was everything that really needed to be done in the district we're probably looking at one hundred sixty million dollars and so then we started to whittle it back again we consider community input we had we continue to have meetings  and i think it's important for people to know that this isn't my plan or pat's plan it's really it's really the plan that we could all agree to and so it might not look it might not be look what it would have been if it was solely my plan or paths planned but it's what you know the board decided it should look like both now and then with the bigger change so but when we put out one hundred twenty nine million dollars dollar figure people were were shell shocked and so we realized the tax impact was a big concern and so you know i believe that schools should unite communities not divide them and so i i pushed for maybe we could what could we roll back a little bit the demographic projection showed that for the next four years the population the high school was going to remain level so our our urgent need really is the elementary schools and g w will bring our g w has a seven hundred sixty children the educational capacity six hundred thirty six and all the schools are added over capacity and so we first rolled the referendum back to eight eighty two million well the first thing we did was we were going to split into two questions and then we heard community feedback that wasn't it wasn't going over well especially with the limitation on the state local tax deduction this year it just could not have happened either worse time for the district so then we were going to go back to an eighty two million dollar question and then we continued to hear from people who felt they didn't have enough input and again this was from my point of view this was never something that i want to shove down anyone's about the diligence also so this is a plan the way the school referendums happen is that architects and these community has a definite refer to come up with a plan and the plan has a budget around in the budget fairly conservative meaning it's large meaning that you need to be able to accomplish what you say you're going to accomplish within the number that you're suggesting because there's no going back so the numbers tend to be larger i think  n hopefully then the final numbers come in at but there's a lot of room for continual big contingencies overruns potentially time time taking longer other things like that i think some of the  questions we've had about diligence is just a misunderstanding of in a referendum where you are in a construction process so one question we had a public meeting was well do you have a detailed construction plan showing materials time cost and who's going to do the job for each thing that you're doing the answer is no we're not at that point in it we haven't even had it approved by the by the town yet by the voters once the voters do that then we'll go back and drill down and come up with a very detailed construction plan and in terms of the demographic study i think people have some people have questions about are you sure that the demographic study is is correct and you know i think being someone in the insurance industry i used to these sorts of things when you look at future projections of numbers there's always an inherent uncertainty the further out in the future you go but you have to look at that and look at the assumptions that went into it and see if they're reasonable and look closer and see if those outer projections are validated by things that are a lot more visible and closer so anyone can see with their own eyes that each one of our buildings is crowded it doesn't take a mathematician to figure that out and so we know we have an issue that we've got to address but again all of this will be continually refined over time both and some of the construction due diligence demographic due diligence all of these things what we need to do now as a community is come together and agree on a direction forward and then we'll we will figure out the details as we move forward one other thing in terms of diligence we expect as this construction process moves forward that we have a construction manager in addition to the architect to make sure that things are being delivered on time and under budget and so we're mindful of what happened in two thousand and one i wasn't here at this time but at that time but i heard that there were some real problems with that construction one of the problems i believe that many people have said about that one was that the numbers came in so low that they continually had to cut corners cut corners cut corners just to hit their numbers and we have to be aware that  on what the price of doing nothing at this time would be so just so we're not allowed as board members to advocate for a particular outcome but as a parent i have a daughter at g w and a son at princeton high sc think would be devastating i think we have to take steps to make our schools more secure i mean there were twenty years after columbine and there's been no changes to the hard scape to the entrances so i don't think that can wait i think they tracy issue is one of just basic a basic need know we can't we need to charge teachers that we respect them and no one else goes to work in some and some of the environments that our teachers go to work and i cannot go into the high school without someone showing me a picture of a thermometer that's at ninety five degrees and again the building was originally built in the one nine hundred twenty s and so it's been read you know retrofitted over the years but it's not an efficient a c unit and so the changes that we're proposing i think are just basic and we don't want our teachers to be in that environment we don't want to kids to be in that environment so i think the price of doing nothing would be devastating for our kids i think too as i said before our public buildings do and should reflect our values and i believe that we have a strong value in this town number one  community and supporting everyone in the community which public schools do number two of valuing democracy and public schools are as i said a bedrock of democracy and number three this is a town that was founded from the seventeenth century on an education and people come here for the education and i just don't think that if we have schools that are crowded and where we can't offer all the classes that we want to offer because we don't have the space  and where there are more all the issues and where things look shabby and awful that reflects on our values that as a town and people who reflect who respect education are going to be as interested in coming here as they are now i'm not a big advocate of property values as the link between property values and education i really think education is a public good in and of itself but let's be honest people come here for the education and they pay the prices for these homes for the education and if we don't invest in the education people stop coming and that's pretty that's a pretty cold economic argument but behind it there's also i think a real civic minded argument to like we have to do the right thing for the children of this community all of them and our our buildings should reflect those values well if i could just add others to the board of education our job is to be stewards of the district and so by not proposing again it's this is democracy it's up to a majority the voters to prove it by but i think by not proposing these improvements we would be shirking our future sponsibility s and so i think that's important to get to know y thank you and i know that if you were is why to learn more you do have an upcoming meet the board event on december fourth tuesday december fourth from eight thirty to ten o'clock at twenty five valley road and also one of the best ways is to see firsthand th some coming towards the princeton high school where the first two saturdays of december soaring at nine fifteen and then again at ten thirty right and i guess if the people who go on the tours will see will be brought into princeton high school and they'll see right away that once you're in the building if if we're not getting people before you have access to the hallway and less spring we did have a man get into the building forty five minutes he was there and he left and undetected and thank god he didn't have malintent after that you'll go to the people will be tore through the gun into area and they'll see the labyrinth that it is and why changes are being proposed there and then they'll be taken through the fitness center will be taken through the proposed area for distributed dining so that the kids who all have lunch at the same time for scheduling reasons will have more options and be able to get food quicker and then the one of the things we are doing in response to community feedback is we're adding restrooms on the field right now there are no restrooms so on the weekends when the school is closed people are doing other things and also there's no water source so right now if a child is injured someone has to run to the trainer's room which is in the basement of the high school to get ice because that's where the ice maker is located and then running back out so by doing these changes we are really it really is focusing on the wellness of our students but we urge people to take advantage of those tours which are run by parents so thank you so much joining us today we really appreciate your insight and that's it for this week and education we'll see you next week