Volume LXXVI, Number 39
Artwork from African American Children’s Books On View at PPL . . . . . . 5 Princeton Public Schools Feel Impact of Nationwide Teacher Shortages . . . . 8 Celebrating Albert Pujols And a Poet from St. Louis . . . . . . . . . 13 McCarter Starts Season With The Wolves . . . . 14 PU Glee Club Opens “Glee Club Presents” Series . . . . . . . . . . 15 PHS Girls’ Tennis Stars Chen, Todorov Win 1st Doubles Title at MCT . . 26 Frykholm Comes Up Big As Hun Boys’ Soccer Defeats Pennington . . 28
QB Blake Stenstrom Stars As PU Football Tops Lehigh . . . . . . . . 23 Art . . . . . . . . . . . .17, 20 Books . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Calendar . . . . . . . . . . 21 Classifieds . . . . . . . . . 32 Mailbox . . . . . . . . . . . 12 New To Us . . . . . . . . . 22 Obituaries . . . . . . . . . 31 Performing Arts . . . . . 16 Police Blotter . . . . . . . 10 Real Estate . . . . . . . . 32 Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Topics of the Town . . . . 5 Town Talk . . . . . . . . . . 6
www.towntopics.com
Five Candidates Vie For Three Spots in School Board Election With the November 8 Election Day less than six weeks away, the competition for three positions on the Princeton Public Schools (PPS) Board of Education (BOE) is heating up. Two new candidates, Lishian “Lisa” Wu and Margarita “Rita” Rafalovsky, are challenging three incumbents, Debbie Bronfeld, Susan Kanter, and Dafna Kendal, in the race to serve a three-year term on the BOE. For this article, the challengers, Wu and Rafalovsky, were asked to introduce themselves, provide some background information, and comment on why they have chosen to run and, if elected, what their priorities on the board might be. At press time, Wu, who has run for Princeton Council and for Mercer County Executive in recent years, had not responded to multiple requests for information. Town Topics plans to include profiles of Wu and the other candidates in election coverage during the coming month. Rafalovsky wrote the following in her response: I live in Princeton with my husband and two children, ages 8 and 11. We moved here 12 years ago for the highly rated public schools and for the diverse, thriving community. For me, education is personal. In 1988, at age 8, I came to this country as a poor, non-English speaking political refugee from the former Soviet Union. I’m a product of N.Y./N.J. public schools, and I strongly believe that quality public education is the greatest equalizer. Over the years, I have grown increasingly concerned about the trajectory of our school district. In 2009, PPS was nationally ranked by U.S. News in 94th place; in 2022 we were 490th. Additionally, test scores across our district declined significantly since 2014 — see publicschoolreview.com. While rankings are not the “final grade,” they are indicative of overall perceived quality. This precipitous decline occurred despite the fact that our town’s spend per student remains above most school systems in N.J. This is not a fair return on our community’s generous investment. I consider myself lucky and grateful to this country for accepting my family and for allowing us to achieve our American Dream. To show my gratitude, I would Continued on Page 8
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Wednesday, September 28, 2022
Jim Florio, Former New Jersey Gov., Dies at 85 Former New Jersey governor and congressman Jim Florio died Sunday of heart failure. He was 85. A Democrat who was elected governor in 1989, Florio lost to Christine Todd Whitman instead of winning a second term when he raised taxes after vowing that he would not. But he is also remembered for his achievements on cleaning up hazardous waste sites and banning military-style assault rifles, the latter of which earned him a JFK Profiles in Courage award from the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. “Governor Florio was a fighter who never backed down,” Gov. Phil Murphy said in an official statement Monday after signing an executive order directing flags to fly at half-staff in Florio’s honor. “He was a leader who cared more about the future of New Jersey than his own political fortunes.” Among those remembering Florio this week was William Harla, a Princeton resident and attorney who was Florio’s deputy chief legal counsel. In the decades since, Harla has practiced law at DeCotiis, Fitzpatrick, Cole and Giblin with Bob DeCotiis, who was the governor’s chief counsel. “Governor Florio was a man of great intellect, ethics, and decency,” Harla said in an email on Monday. “He cared deeply about the people of New Jersey and he fought hard for them over his career. He
was often described as a ‘fighter,’ in part because of his Navy boxing career, and he did fight hard about public policies, but not about personalities.” “When he faced a veto-proof Republican legislature in his last two years in office, he didn’t run,” Harla continued. “He engaged with the Republican speaker and the Senate president to work out state budget, and other issues — from health care to the environment to insurance reform to antidiscrimination measures — to help people.”
Born in Brooklyn, Florio was a graduate of Trenton State College (now The College of New Jersey), and earned a law degree from Rutgers University. He was an amateur boxer before entering college and then moving on to public service. Florio was Camden’s assistant city attorney, later serving four years in the state Assembly and 15 years in the U.S. House of Representatives. After his term as governor, he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2000, losing to investment banker Jon Corzine. Continued on Page 10
Three Young Celebrity Leaders Will Launch Seminary Series on Future of Democracy With Election Day 2022 approaching and memories of recent past elections still vivid, the precarious state of democracy in the U.S. has been a big topic in the media. That topic will be the theme of a series of conversations, “The Future of American Democracy,” at Princeton Theological Seminary (PTS) starting on October 13 at 4:30 p.m. with a conversation featuring three young leaders who have been wrestling with the challenges of hyperpolarization throughout the country. Jane Coaston, columnist for The New York Times and host of the podcast “The Argument”; Michigan Republican Congressman Peter Meijer, one of 10 Republican members of Congress who voted to impeach President Donald Trump
during Trump’s second impeachment; and Symone Sanders-Townsend, former chief spokesperson for U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and host of SYMONE on MSNBC, will be panelists for the conversation at the PTS Wright Library. “This will be a wide conversation with people whose own life experience is really related to the theme of the series,” said PTS Associate Professor of American Christianity Heath W. Carter, who will moderate the conversation. “For the last five years there’s been a lot of talk, a lot of concern about American democracy, and the theme of polarization in particular.” He continued, “People are worried that American democracy is failing, and we Continued on Page 9
UNRULY SOUNDS MUSIC FESTIVAL: Princeton Public Library hosted an afternoon of original music showcasing local bands and musicians at Hinds Plaza on Saturday. The event also featured rising talents from Princeton University’s graduate composition program. Attendees share what type of music appealed to them in this week’s Town Talk on page 6. (Photo by Weronika A. Plohn)