PACKET EDITORIAL, Dec. 2
By: Packet Editorial, Dec. 2
Once upon a time, the Princeton Regional Board of Education had an unfortunate but deserved reputation for incivility. Board meetings that started out decorously used to degenerate rapidly into boisterous bickering, with students sniping at teachers, teachers sniping at administrators, administrators sniping at board members and everyone sniping at the superintendent.
Those were the days when Princeton chewed up and spit out superintendents like Bloody Mary digested betel nuts. Administrators came and went as quickly as witches in Munchkinland. The school board, bitterly divided between liberal and conservative factions, had a penchant for engaging in angry ideological exchanges that frequently turned personal and nasty. And the hearty souls who attended board meetings, not to be outdone, turned the time reserved for public comment into a verbal wrestling match only slightly tamer than an episode of the "Jerry Springer Show."
A series of fortuitous occurrences has greatly improved the tone of board meetings in recent years. For one thing, nobody’s spitting up and chewing out Superintendent Claire Sheff Kohn; in fact, her contract has been extended by a strongly supportive board. For another, the current board, under the steady, even-handed direction of its two-term president, Charlotte Bialek, has refused to allow whatever ideological differences it may have to chip away at its solidarity of purpose: to guide the district through a difficult period of construction and renovation with minimal disruption. Finally, school board meetings today are, in fact, televised over and over and over again on local-access cable channel 25, giving attendees even more reason to be on their best behavior.
Until recently.
Since September, a small but vocal group of angry parents, most of whose children attend Littlebrook and Riverside elementary schools, has brought a litany of construction-related complaints to the board, ranging from concerns about air quality to dangerous conditions in and around the schools. Many of these complaints have merited investigation, and some have led to action, including the preparation of a comprehensive health and safety plan to be followed during the construction and renovation process.
For the most part, the parents’ criticism has been constructive, and the dialogue between the parents and school officials has been productive. But one parent in particular, former Borough Council member Mark Freda, has taken the microphone during the public-comment period of board meetings to denounce the superintendent and the board in language that can only be termed insulting. He has, at various times, all but accused them of wantonly endangering the health of schoolchildren, willfully shirking their responsibilities as public officials and, most recently, flagrantly violating the Open Public Meetings Act.
Despite Mr. Freda’s hostile and pugnacious attitude, Dr. Kohn, Ms. Bialek and members of the board have generally responded to his comments with far greater respect and restraint than he has shown them. This past Tuesday, however, board member Alan Hegedus took the bait. After another of Mr. Freda’s accusatory outbursts, Mr. Hegedus, a Republican, sarcastically congratulated Mr. Freda, a Democrat, for his reported desire to return to public office. (Mr. Freda, who served 13 years on the Borough Council, has said he may be interested in filling the unexpired council term of Joseph O’Neill when Mr. O’Neill is sworn in as mayor in January.) As audience members and cable TV viewers squirmed uncomfortably in their seats, Mr. Freda promptly returned Mr. Hegedus’ comments in kind.
If Mr. Freda and Mr. Hegedus want to sling mud at each other, more power to them. But last Tuesday’s embarrassing exchange left everyone who witnessed it feeling badly in need of a bar of soap first to rinse the stench off themselves, then to wash out the protagonists’ mouths. Shame on both of them.