To The Editor:

I am writing to ask you to vote on Monday, September 24, in favor of the bond referendum to repair and restore the Princeton Public Schools and playing fields. The referendum is necessary because the life expectancy has been exceeded for many of the systems and components in buildings that were mostly built in the 1950s. This is an opportune time to tackle such necessary projects because of low construction costs and very low interest rates.

The district has spent more than a year carefully considering a list of needed projects for the town’s schools with an eye toward making the most conservative request possible. The projects include exterior and interior repairs and refurbishments, field reconditioning and the repurposing of an old middle school gym into a media center.

The referendum will pay for exterior repairs or replacements for select windows, doors, roofs, playgrounds, brickwork and parking lots. Inside the schools, repairs and rehabilitation will take place for some air ventilation systems, climate controls, lockers, select classrooms and class storage, and safer gym flooring at elementary schools.

The referendum also will pay for the replacement of the artificial turf and track at the high school. Heavily used by the school, weekend clubs, and residents, the turf is disintegrating into black particles and the track surface is coming loose in chunks. Both are on the verge of becoming unusable.

Refreshing those surfaces calls for the simultaneous replacement of the aluminum spectator bleachers and press box because heavy equipment cannot cross the artificial surfaces unless they are under construction. In case you haven’t been to a game recently, the narrow (and uncomfortable) bleachers have no stairs, and no ramps for the disabled.

The referendum also includes the repurposing of the old gym at John Witherspoon Middle School into a media center that better reflects the current needs of the students, with more technology, resources, and instructional space. The existing library and its tiny book collection haven’t really changed since I went there as a student in the 1970s — even though the school population is much larger.

For more details about the projects, go to www.PrincetonK12.org.

Every vote counts!

Rebecca Cox

Madison Street, PHS Class of 1982