To the Editor:

As a proud Princeton resident and lifelong proponent of public education, I support the entirety of the Princeton schools referendum and urge fellow residents to do the same. To my mind, passing the referendum in its various parts will enable critical investments in our schools and in our children’s futures. The high school renovation is a no-brainer — no one wants to abandon the high school building for a new one, but nearly everyone generally agrees it must be expanded and upgraded. Students eating lunch on the floor in the halls and being assigned free periods because there is no classroom in which to teach them something are not sustainable conditions in one of the state’s best school districts.

That said, my focus in this letter is on making the case for the new 5/6 school. The middle school is well beyond capacity, and our elementary schools are either overcrowded or headed that way as more families with school-age children move into Princeton. The stories of crowded and deteriorating conditions are real — my elementary school age children’s class sizes are large, and I have personally attended parent-teacher meetings in a converted broom closet and events in the gym that were so hot, parents and kids had to leave before they passed out.

Building a new 5/6 school is a cost-effective, pedagogically appropriate way to meet the needs of all of these schools simultaneously. As a real estate developer and consultant, I worked on many projects to renovate and add on to existing buildings, many of them older construction like our schools. I can say that invariably, the costs per square foot for rehabs were higher than comparable new construction. Not only is the use of space in additions less efficient, but also construction on buildings in active use creates headaches for both users and contractors, creating further cost and schedule overruns. The School Board explored the option of adding to all of our elementary and middle schools. They found exactly this — the costs would be higher, and the result would be far inferior to a new 5/6 school, especially when part of the goal is to bring our schools up to modern standards. 5/6 schools have been shown to create stimulating, age-appropriate environments for fifth and sixth graders, and I support this model for that reason too. But most importantly, building a new 5/6 school is a prudent use of our tax dollars.

This is a critical point because many in our community who are concerned about the costs of the referendum may see a new school as extravagant. I share the cost concerns, but we must balance them with the urgent need to address the facilities needs and overcrowding problems that are becoming acute in our schools. In a community that values quality education, we must come together on a referendum that makes necessary and cost-effective investments to maintain a successful school system for all our kids. A new 5/6 school is a big part of the answer.

Jeffrey Oakman

Valley Road, Princeton