By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Each day at Princeton Day School, students and staff try to live green.
”We really want to educate the future generation and it’s really important to us that everyone knows what’s going,” sophomore Zach Woogen said Saturday at an environmental conference he and other students in the school’s Environmental Action Club organized.
About 80 participants, including high school students from other communities, came for a day in which eco-friendly workshops were bookended by remarks from keynote speakers David Crane, the president and CEO of NRG Energy, and climatologist Heidi Cullen, formerly of the Weather Channel.
The conference title, “Our future, our challenge,” conveyed the concern that students said they feel about the environment.
”We believe that it’s important to get kids and teens — people of our generation — to be aware of what’s going on because most likely as we get older, some of these problems are going to be in our hands,” said senior Colby White, a past leader of the club.
Starting in the fall, students started planning for the conference by contacting speakers and reaching out to nonprofits, about a dozen of them who attended. On Saturday, there were also demonstrations by owners of electric-powered vehicles.
”It’s hard to avoid this issue these days,” said Liz Cutler, an English teacher who is the faculty adviser to the club and serves as the school’s sustainability coordinator.
Every high school in the state — public and private — was invited to attend the conference, the second such the Day School has done. Attendees included students from Princeton High School, Hopewell Valley High School and Stuart Country Day School.
”All high school kids are going to have to deal with the environment,” said Ms. Cutler. “So every high school student needs to be tuned into these issues.”
Ms. Cutler said she would have liked to have seen more students attend, although the conference fell on a day when the SAT was being administered.
”A lot of kids are taking the SAT. And unfortunately, I think that’s really lowered our turnout,” she said.
Princeton Day School is an institution that cares about the environment in a community that does so as well. One of the nonprofit groups attending was Sustainable Princeton, an organization run out of Monument Hall, the former Borough Hall.
Diane Landis, the executive director, said she attended to promote what her organization does but also to encourage residents to sign up for a trash composting program that the town is touting. So far, 600 households have participated, she said.Princeton Day School is a private school that sends graduates off to some of the best colleges. During this academic year, the school had 903 students enrolled in grades pre-k to 12 whose parents pay tuition starting at $24,670 a year in the lower levels and escalating in cost after that.
Over the past six years, the school has worked hard to be a good steward of the environment, from composting food in the cafeteria to having beehives, chickens and a garden.
”All over, the school’s changed drastically and I know that we’ve decreased our carbon footprint a lot,” Ms. White said.
The school garden is worked into the curriculum in the lower grades. Also, PDS does not permit cars or buses to idle during pickup after school. Ms. Cutler said the students take home what they learned at school.
”So many parents,” Ms. Cutler said, “say to me, ‘Thanks a lot. Now my kid makes me turn off my car instead of idling.’”
