Attacks prompt Princeton school district to cancel field trips

Field trips in West Windsor-Plainsboro district have not been affected.

By: Jeff Milgram
   The Princeton Regional School District is canceling field trips to major cities or to places that may be the targets of terrorists in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
   Superintendent Claire Sheff Kohn said the district will re-examine the policy on a month-to-month basis.
   "I am not allowing field trips to places that are potentially dangerous," Dr. Kohn said at Tuesday night’s meeting of the Princeton Regional Board of Education.
   After speaking with school principals, Dr. Kohn canceled a trip to Philadelphia by Littlebrook School students and a field trip to the State House in Trenton by Riverside School students.
   Private trips organized by teachers will not be affected, but the district does not give its official blessing in such cases. The district will decide later the fate of overnight trips, including a planned European trip by the Princeton High School Orchestra.
   "There are folks in favor of not interrupting our usual course of events and there are others who believe Americans are targets in foreign cities," Dr. Kohn said.
   The district has formed a committee to study the long-range policy of field trips.
   Long trips that involve large groups of students, such as the orchestra tour, often disrupt classwork because teachers slow down their lessons so that the orchestra members don’t fall behind, Dr. Kohn said.
   The committee also will study the issue of equity of the trips taken by the district’s four elementary schools.
   The West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School Board has not canceled any of the district’s upcoming field trips.
   The board, however, has added a clause to the district’s parental permission slips for overnight trips, stating the district would not be able to refund trip costs should a trip be canceled.
   Board members recently raised additional concern at a meeting Tuesday about the district’s liability if a student is harmed as a result of terrorist activities while on a trip and suggested looking into adding a clause on permission slips stating that the district would not be liable in such a circumstance.
   There are no plans to cancel or alter Montgomery High School’s annual senior trip to Washington D.C., High School Principal Anne Marie Webber said this week.
   "We are proceeding as usual," she said.
   Princeton Regional also is worried about security on Election Day, Nov. 6. The district’s four elementary schools and PHS are used as polling places.
   The district has asked for a visible police presence at the schools on Nov. 6, Dr. Kohn said.
Staff Writers Gwen Runkle and Steve Rauscher contributed to this story.