To the Editor:

Three Board of Education (BOE) positions will be elected from five candidates (Rita Rafalovsky, Lisa Wu, Susan Kanter, Debbie Bronfeld, and Dafna Kendal) on November 8. The BOE election is particularly important for the Princeton community not only because half of our property tax goes to PPS, but also because the BOE is critical in setting the strategy and path for how our children are educated for their futures.

The quality of the public schools is a very important component of qualify of life living in Princeton. Our family moved to Princeton just across a street from Montgomery 15 years ago, and the decision was mainly driven by the quality and reputation of PPS at that time. As our kid grew up and went through PPS, we observed obvious (sometimes concerning) changes in the school district. Because of these growing concerns shared with many families, we have paid a lot attention to the BOE election and attended a couple BOE candidate forums including the first Princeton Asian American Forum meeting with these five candidates. 

Carefully listening to all candidates’ plans for PPS and answers to audience questions, we decided to support Rita and Lisa for the following reasons: First, Rita and Lisa share the same concern that the PPS national ranking dropped from No. 94 in 2009 to  No. 490 in 2022 (U.S. News) and they want to improve PPS ranking as one of their BOE goals. Second, both Rita and Lisa emphasize that PPS needs to make study interesting and attractive to students and make them enjoy learning without lowering the quality and rigor. Third, both Rita and Lisa want to increase and improve the transparency and prompt communications between PPS administration and student families in areas such as education material content (e.g. sex education materials, etc.), teachers’ teaching quality evaluation, and plans to recruit/retain high performance teachers.

Finally, voting is a precious right and privilege in this great country. All of us should go and vote for the community and for ourselves.

Wei Wu
Ying Zeng
Maidenhead Road