The Cranbury and Princeton boards of education are facing a legal challenge to the send-receive agreement their school districts have, with two Princeton residents this week asking the state’s top education official to end the long-standing arrangement.
Joel Schwartz and his wife Corrine O’Hara have taken another step in their fight against the deal that allows Cranbury students of high school age to attend Princeton High School on a tuition basis. The couple already has sued the Princeton Public Schools Board of Education in state Superior Court to overturn a renewal of the arrangement.
On Sept. 10, they filed a petition with state Commissioner of Education Lamont O. Repollet asking him to throw out the 10-year extension of the agreement made this year and to end the arrangement the two communities have had since 1991. In June, the two sides inked a deal that keeps them together until 2030.
“The sending-receiving relationship between (the two districts) has an overall negative financial impact on the taxpayers of Princeton, including petitioners, has overburdened existing (Princeton Public Schools) facilities, exacerbates racial imbalance, perpetuates existing minority achievement gaps and generally creates an inequitable outcome for Princeton residents, including the petitioners,” the couple alleged.
They contend that when the original deal was made in the early 1990s, Princeton High School had low enrollment and there was a “need to use and monetize the high school’s underutilized capacity,” the petition states.
“That circumstance no longer exists,” the couple claimed. “In fact, Princeton High School is currently over capacity and is unable to provide educationally adequate facilities for both Princeton and Cranbury students.”
They point to how Princeton is proposing a $129.6 million facilities referendum, “a significant objective of which is to improve facilities at Princeton High School in order to accommodate the Cranbury students.” Princeton is looking to spend about $60 million of the referendum total at the high school.
The district has contended it is facing growing enrollment that will increase in the coming years, apart from the enrollment of Cranbury students.
On Sept. 11, Princeton Superintendent of Schools Stephen C. Cochrane released a statement in which he expressed confidence his side would prevail.
“We are currently in the process of reviewing the petition with our attorney, but do not believe the lawsuit has any merit,” he said. “We look forward to a favorable decision from the commissioner of education.”
“This is another frivolous lawsuit taxpayers should be outraged they have to pay to defend,” Princeton school board President Patrick Sullivan said on Sept. 11.
Sullivan said he was “troubled” that Schwartz and O’Hara “are trying to re-litigate an issue that was extensively discussed in public.”
“We have to move on from issues that divide this community toward issues that bring all of us together,” Sullivan said.
For the 2018-19 school year, Cranbury will pay Princeton $4.8 million to educate about 280 children. Princeton administrators have said the Cranbury tuition, after local property taxes, is the second largest source of revenue in the school district’s budget.
Cranbury Chief School Administrator and Principal Susan L. Genco and Cranbury school board President Karen Callahan declined to comment this week.
As part of their petition, Schwartz and O’Hara have asked Repollet to issue an order limiting the items Cranbury’s representative to the Princeton school board can vote on “to those set forth by statute.”
The couple contends that Evelyn Spann, the Cranbury school board member and representative to Princeton, “impermissibly” voted on the new agreement in June “and has repeatedly and regularly, over her entire term, voted on matters as to which she is statutorily barred.”
Spann said on Sept. 11 that Cranbury has a “right to vote on the send-receive agreement.”
“We are very careful about what we do vote on and that has been expanded,” she said.
Spann said she is able to vote on the budget and matters related to the high school, and added that the Cranbury school board got legal advice saying she could vote on the deal.
“I am very aware of what I’m allowed to vote on,” she said.
According to the Department of Education, cases like these are heard by an administrative law judge, who will make an initial decision in the matter. Ultimately, Repollet will have the final say.
In the meantime, a Superior Court judge sitting in Trenton has a hearing scheduled for Sept. 27 in the lawsuit Schwartz and O’Hara have brought.
