To the Editor:

A recent letter from Jian Chen regarding the costs of serving the Cranbury students in the Princeton Schools is worth further comment.

As a former member of the Princeton School Board, I learned that sending district (Cranbury) costs are covered by state law and are intended to reimburse the receiving district (Princeton) for all per-cost student expenses. In fact, we receive more per-student from Cranbury than we expend within the district on a routine basis.

However, what is not covered in these agreements, are the capital expense budgetary needs for school districts such as ours, which come under stress when projected higher enrollment might require issuance of a bond or other forms of budget increase to cover the costs of new facilities. This is apparently the current situation.

Despite limitations in current state law, a real budget requires consideration of both running expenses and capital expenditure needs.

While I am not certain, I would bet that current state law forbids sending/receiving districts to even negotiate a capital budget agreement.

So what can we do? I would like to see the Princeton schools actively engage the Cranbury community to see if some sort of goodwill gesture is possible that would encourage them to contribute to our capital budgetary needs. A precedent can be found in the efforts of the Princeton government to obtain similar goodwill agreements with tax-free, non-profit institutions (e.g., Princeton University, Institute for Advanced Studies, and the Princeton Theological Seminary) to contribute to the municipal government budget. 

Ultimately, any negotiation of this sort requires awareness of what real leverage we bring to the table. At this point we have the power of persuasion, but also an implied threat of terminating the sending/receiving relationship entirely.

When I sat on the Princeton School Board, we learned of the positive contributions of the Cranbury students to our school system, and I hope that persuasion on the merits of the issue will carry the day. Failing that, we have to be ready to act on our own behalf and consider options for the budget that seriously consider termination of the relationship.

I hope the School Board will represent to Cranbury that there are many people in Princeton who want to see some gesture to address a disproportionate cost to us as a receiving district. The fact that state law does not seem to recognize those impacts should not stop us from pursuing this matter as soon as possible.

Todd Tieger

Dorann Avenue