To the Editor:

The Board of Education (BOE) should function as the community’s voice in public education. Those serving on the Board do so because voters entrusted them with that task. But that trust is conditional. It can be lost, broken, or squandered, particularly if the BOE, after taking a questionable action with which a large majority of the community in Princeton disagrees, continues to turn a deaf ear to the uproar it has caused. This is, unfortunately, where we are now.

On the legal pretext that nothing can be said, the BOE has persisted in its silence. In response to repeated, loud, perplexed calls to do or say something to justify its puzzling action — or to reverse its unfortunate decision — it has steadfastly refused to engage the public. At two public meetings, the BOE has sat through hours of public comment, confident, apparently, that simply listening, would be enough to satisfy the formal demands of democracy, and that citing legal concerns would be enough to justify its silence. It did ask that the public show civility, and rightly so, but it forgot that incivility can take countless forms — including the persistent refusal to respond.

What exactly has the BOE done? It had the formal right, no doubt, to act as it did: dismiss the beloved PHS principal Frank Chmiel abruptly in mid-semester; notify the PPS community in a cryptic message — which failed to name Mr. Chmiel (not so civil); refuse, for legal reasons, to address the public’s concerns, citing the confidentiality of “personnel” matters to shut down debate; and appoint an interim principal, Kathie Foster, without public discussion, despite loud pleas from the public to defer that move. The controversial vote to appoint Dr. Foster also took place, with no prior announcement, folded into a larger consent agenda, as the public tried to understand what happened.

We are asked, by a few voices, to trust this BOE, to defer to the experts, to have faith in their judgment. But why should we? They abruptly dismissed a popular principal — something very difficult to find — as if a serious misdeed had made it intolerable to keep him on at PHS any longer, instead of waiting for his contract to expire. This seems difficult to believe. Should it really be the case, the public would have deserved, some indication of the offense, which could have been communicated without sharing confidential details. This did not happen.

The BOE seemed to believe, citing legal reasons, that absolute silence was their only option. And the community is now left to speculate: Was the dismissal really urgent? Or is there an agenda, as the failed move to dismiss Mr. Chmiel last spring already suggests? And is that unstated agenda — which no one has spelled out for the public — truly worth the loss of a rare and inspiring principal, one so universally appreciated and so obviously committed to promoting equity and diversity?

Bozena and Goran Blix
Parents of a PHS student
Rollingmead Street