Meet the Princeton Board of Education candidate: Margarita “Rita” Rafalovsky

Education: B.A., Computer Information Systems from Rutgers Newark, and M.S., Information Systems from NJIT

What is your favorite book or a book you have read recently that you really liked?

A book I read recently is titled “Oh William!”, by Elizabeth Strout. It’s about the many layers of complexity in close human relationships, the endless tiers within ourselves that we continue to discover, about the journey to accept ourselves and each other, despite mutual faults and flaws. It was poetic and powerful to see how the main character was able to see harsh events for what they were, to grieve and be angry, yet recognize the frailty of the flawed people in her life, to feel empathy even for those who hurt her, and despite her own pain, to still feel love and persevere. No one character was all good or all bad. The book reminded me how important it is to recognize the frailty of the human condition, to feel empathy for others, and to channel love. It made me wonder whether we are teaching our children enough about love. What it means to love yourself, to love each other, to see humanity and positive qualities in each other. After all, love is the source of empathy, acceptance, forgiveness, unity and resiliency.

Why are you the right candidate for the school board?

My personal immigration story, my priorities for our district, and my professional background are what set me apart from other candidates. I’m a first-generation immigrant who learned English at age 8. We were economically disadvantaged for many years. Kids and circumstances vary of course, but I understand the struggles and have practical ideas about programs that can help such children. I believe that excellent public education has the potential to be the greatest equalizer. For this reason, my number one priority is to restore the district’s focus on academic excellence for all students. We must understand why rankings and scores have fallen. For example, U.S. News ranked PPS #94 in 2009, and #490 in 2022, PHS’s math proficiency score is 51 (state avg is 44), source: www.publicschoolreview.com). By comparison, Montgomery’s math score is 70 and West Windsor is 67. Are PHS kids less talented? I am a parent of two young children and as a professional who has worked in banking and consulting for 16+ years, I have the passion, skill set, and tenacity to advocate on behalf of Princeton’s community and to work with PPS leaders to define measurable district goals to evaluate performance and establish accountability.

What are the top three challenges the board must urgently address?

– Restore the district’s focus on academic excellence for all students. Simply saying that academic excellence is a priority isn’t enough. What we need is reliable data, benchmarks and to set measurable goals. – Attracting and retaining outstanding educators in all staffing areas is critical to achieve academic excellence. There are national teacher shortages, and this is even more reason to define what we will do to retain and recruit the best staff. Doing whatever we did before is not enough. We need to get creative. Some of our best teachers should be an integral source for ideas and can help in the recruitment process. – Improve district transparency and communication with the community. PPS and the Board should increase listening to all stakeholders and democratically solicit regular feedback from staff, students, parents and community members. If we’re not surveying students about their classroom experience, only about their degree of “belonging”, how can we say that what is being taught in classrooms aligns to our community’s mission and values, and is meeting the learning and intellectual needs of all our children? We should want to find out.

What do you see as the three top strengths of the Princeton schools?

– Princeton has some of the best teachers in NJ and an extensive catalogue of AP and other classes. Let’s protect this asset by recognizing and rewarding teachers who are investing the most in our students. Let’s ask our top staff to mentor and recruit others, help them build bridges with academic institutions and industries such that they can create even more opportunities for our students. – Resources. We’re fortunate to have generous taxpayers supporting our current level of spending, which ranks at the very top of the state. The BOE should make sure we deliver the highest possible educational return on every dollar we spend. We could be tapping more into the intellectual capital of our Princeton community, e.g. (a) assign champions to talented economically disadvantaged students, (b) create an Advisory Board of industry experts and university staff to advise PPS and champion exclusive research, mentorship programs and internships for all our students. – “Princeton” brand recognition. I’d like to see Princeton leverage our name more to attract and retain high-performing school staff, and setup programs that would benefit parents and students, while earning money for our district, e.g. invite summer camp and tutoring vendors to rent our facilities.

What are the top three weaknesses of the Princeton schools? 

– Governance. PPS collects data, but good governance requires defining reliable data around specific initiatives, adoption of best practices and setting measurable goals. For example, what equity means for the district and how the district measures equity is unclear, so how will we know if what we’re doing will achieve it? Similarly, how does the district define “achievement”, how do we measure it, what are our goals and how do we know whether they’re reasonable? – District transparency and communication with stakeholders. There are several situations in the recent past that should not have happened. For example, silence in response to most comments made by residents during public comment period, the public outcry it took for the district to release the math report, PPS/Board hand-picking community participants instead of following a democratic process, rushing the strategic planning process despite continuous pleas from the community to slow down. I have also heard concerns from parents about what their kids are being taught at school. PPS and the Board should increase listening to all stakeholders and democratically solicit regular feedback from staff, students, parents and community members. – Declining academic performance.

Please provide your opinion on whether the school district is making strides or not when it comes to equity in education.

How the district defines equity and measures it is unclear, so it’s difficult to answer the question definitively. The Board plays an instrumental role in defining what equity means for our community and has a responsibility to verify that their position reflects our community’s definition. It’s also the Board’s responsibility to ensure that: (1) reliable data is used to conduct the current state equity assessment, (2) that measurable goals are articulated using best practice benchmarks from other districts, with input from our community, and (3) PPS identifies specific initiatives to help our district achieve our community’s definition of equity. As a former economically disadvantaged student, I would like to see the Board advocate for specific student support initiatives. For example: (a) setup a multilingual community mentorship programs and alumni network to guide students about career paths, research programs and internships, (b) assign students to school champions, making these champions accountable for guiding students – especially talented economically disadvantaged students – to apply to research programs and university-sponsored programs, whose purpose is to raise up economically disadvantage students. I would like our district to set aspirational goals for getting even more students into such programs.

What are your solutions to addressing the issue of the growing student population in Princeton as hundreds of new housing units come online? What specific steps should the district take to accommodate an increase in the student body?

Like any exercises of predicting the future, we need to have some humility in our own abilities or the abilities of outside consultants. The last demographic consultant the school district hired estimated enrollment for the 2020-21 school year to be around 3,859 students. The actual enrollment was 3,639. In fact, enrollment for the 2021 school year reversed all the growth in the previous four years. I’d be interested in figuring out the reasons behind the enrollment decline. The BoE should work closer with the planning board to prepare for the new housing units and manage their impact to our schools. Given the current economic environment, rising inflation and higher financing costs and their impact on residents, I’d like to see the Board take an incrementalistic approach towards any potential capital projects and only do that after we exhaust all other viable options. We should re-evaluate the use of existing space, creative class scheduling, and other resources like technology. We are fortunate to have generous taxpayers supporting our current level of spending which ranks at the very top of the state. The Board should deliver the highest possible educational return on every dollar we spend.

How will you improve diversity in the school district administration and faculty?

This topic is dear to me because I emigrated from the former Soviet Union in 1988, where antisemitism was sanctioned by the government. For me, public schools are non-partisan spaces where students may discuss diverse topics without judgement and fear of retaliation, where there is no labeling and dividing, where everyone is encouraged to see each other as human beings and seek unity. Public schools are where teachers teach children not what to think, but how to think critically. PPS should hire highly qualified school staff of diverse backgrounds. How will PPS know whether we achieved our goal or how close we are? I wonder how other districts measure diversity. Perhaps we should ask and come up with our own definition for PPS. For me, diversity is not a goal onto itself. I would like see diversity tied to a school goal, like growth in academic performance or improving our atmosphere of tolerance at schools. This brings up another question: how do we measure academic achievement and tolerance? These are some considerations, and would ultimately have to be tied to our district’s definition of diversity, and how diversity fits into our ideal candidate profile for staff positions.

Do you support continuing the sending/receiving agreement with Cranbury? Why or why not? What are the criteria under which you would reevaluate the viability of that agreement? If the agreement proves to be economically unfair for the Princeton residents, would you let the potential legal procedure deter you from taking actions to terminate the send-receive relationship? Elaborate.

As I understand the history, we didn’t give ourselves enough time to examine the issue, nor did we give Cranbury enough time to prepare for the possibility of a potential termination of the agreement. As a BOE member, I’d like to reexamine the viability of the agreement within my three-year term in conjunction with our effort to better understand the impact of enrollment from the anticipated housing developments. We need to thoroughly understand the financial impact of the agreement and, if we choose not to renew the agreement, give the Cranbury school district ample time to prepare for the eventuality. I believe in doing the right thing, not rushing the process, and casting a vote: either yes or no. This is a politically charged topic, but Board members are elected to make decisions, not abstain. We need to conduct a thorough review, listen to all sides, and then take a vote.

The charter school is sometimes pointed to as a significant financial burden for the school district. Do you agree with that statement? If yes, how do you think PPS can hypothetically accommodate the 400+ Princeton Charter School students without increasing the tax burden of Princeton taxpayers to fund the additional facilities and staff required to educate them?

The Princeton Charter School (PCS) is a hot topic in our town. This question however, is about the finances, which is a dry math question. So, let’s put aside all emotions on the subject and examine the arrangement. As I understand it, on average, it costs approximately 25% less to educate a student at PCS than at our other schools. There are various explanations for this. Also, taxpayers do not contribute towards PCS’s facilities. So, from the finances point of view, PCS is not a significant financial burden and actually alleviates the facility capacity constraints in PPS elementary and middle schools. Since I am not currently on the BoE, it’s possible there are certain things that I do not fully understand or some facts that I don’t have. I look forward to being significantly more informed about our district’s finances. As a side note, I noticed that the state math proficiency score at PCS is 92%, and for reading it’s 90%. This is significantly higher than at our Princeton Middle School (71% and 82%, respectively). Has PPS sought to learn from the success of PCS? I would like PPS and PCS to be better partners.

Should the school district still try to buy Westminster Choir College? Why or why not?

Without knowing the history, all the details and factors, it wouldn’t be fair for me to answer definitively whether we should or should not. However, buying another building would likely increase our tax burden, and we are already spending above most school districts in NJ. So, I would prefer to look at alternate, creative solutions to overcrowding. I worked at banks for 16+ years, and I would like to see our PPS finances run like a business. Our budget is $90+ million dollars. I am the type of person who will sit down with the finance specialist for days to understand the composition of each line item. Considering how much we collectively spend on our taxes, in my opinion, this level of attention to our finances by BoE members is what our tax payers deserve.

What will you do to prevent increases in Princeton property taxes? What specific alternatives do you propose?

Our property tax is capped at 2% with adjustments allowed for enrollment changes and certain cost inflations. Considering the anticipated housing developments in town and the current economic environment, anyone offering promises of no increase in property taxes is not being straight with the public. Also, until I carefully review our school finances with our Business Administrator, I don’t believe I’m in a position to offer any specific solutions/alternatives. What I can promise instead is the following: if I’m elected, I would be one of the few board members who have work experience in business planning and project management. I would use my expertise to thoroughly review our school finances to ensure we spend our money wisely and smartly. Our recent developments suggest that we need to pay close attention to our expenditures on outside consultants and PR firms. Also, I would like to make sure that our school district manages its expenditures like a business. I would like to install formal procedures in evaluating our spending against our educational goals and set appropriate measures that allow the Board to track the return on investment of all major expenditures.