By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
The Princeton School District will appeal the decision of acting state Education Commissioner Kimberley Harrington to allow the Princeton Charter School to add 76 more students., “As we’ve said all along, we would use every legal means at our disposal,” school board President Patrick Sullivan said Tuesday about asking a state appeals court to overturn Harrington’s ruling., The district, in a news release issued Tuesday afternoon, said that in addition to filing the appeal, it also would ask Harrington to stay a decision she announced last week., “It is economically, educationally and ethically unjust that a majority of the allowable increase in the school budget will, for years to come, fund the expansion of seventy-six students at the Princeton Charter School, while leaving a much smaller portion for the nearly three thousand eight hundred students in the growing and far more diverse Princeton Public Schools,” Superintendent of Schools Stephen C. Cochrane said in a statement., The district has said the enrollment expansion would mean an additional $1.16 million per year it would have to turn over to the 348-student k-8 Charter School, which is seeking to add more low income students., “Keeping with our promise, PCS wishes to work collaboratively with Princeton Public Schools to ensure that this expansion is implemented with minimal impact,” said Paul Josephson, president of the Charter School Board of Trustees, in a statement Tuesday. “We have heard the community and following up on three earlier meetings with the superintendent and PPS officials, we await the board’s response to our invitation to renew those discussions and work together in the best interests of all Princeton public school students.”, Last week, Harrington announced she had approved the application by the Charter School to phase in 76 more children across two years, with the school also getting the OK to have a weighted lottery to admit more low-income students. The ruling was supported by the Charter School and opposed by the district, with Sullivan calling the decision “vandalism.”, David Saenz, a spokesman for the state Department of Education, said Tuesday that the department does not comment on pending litigation or on matters that might come before the commissioner for a decision., The debate about the application comes in a town that has enjoyed a tense, at times hostile, relationship with the Charter School. Critics, led by members of the school board past and present, have resented having a charter school in Princeton to begin with, given that it gets funds from the local tax levy. Supporters have said the school provides parents another option to educate their children., Mayor Liz Lempert, who publicly opposed the expansion proposal, avoided saying Tuesday whether she supported the district challenging Harrington’s decision in court. She said community members she heard from, in the wake of the ruling last week, “were upset and looking for the school district to respond in some fashion like this.”, “I think it’s been a difficult, contentious process for the community,” she said.
